BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

STEPHEN KING
does the same three things
Toni Morrison
described in the prior post

1. Alter consciousness
Q: Okay, so tell me how you go about writing?
KING: The actual physical act is like autohypnosis, a series of mental passes you go through before you start. If you’ve been doing it long enough, you immediately fall into a trance.1, p. 101
2. Autonomous characters
“And if you do your job, your characters will come to life and start doing stuff on their own. I know that sounds a little creepy if you haven’t actually experienced it, but it’s terrific fun when it happens. And it will solve a lot of your problems, believe me.”2, p. 195
3. Control or prune
Q: Have you ever had a character take over?
KING: In Carrie, the old drunk that tells about the explosion in town had to be pruned back...He just wanted to go on and on. And Watson, the night watchman in The Shining, was supposed to be a minor character. He had a lot more to say than I ever expected he would, but I never pruned him back. I’m glad I didn’t.1, p. 75

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King says, “You have to be a little nuts to be a writer because you have to imagine worlds that aren’t there. You’re hearing voices, you’re making believe, you’re doing all of the things that we’re told as children not to do. Or else we’re told to distinguish between reality and those things. Adults will say, ‘You have an invisible friend, that’s nice, you’ll outgrow that.’ Writers don’t outgrow it.”3, p. 4

However, you really don’t have to be crazy. I would guess that about thirty percent of the general public has what I call "normal multiple personality" to some extent. It is just that novelists focus on it and use it professionally.

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  1. Underwood T, Miller C (eds): Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King. McGraw-Hill, 1988.
  2. King, Stephen: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner, 2000/2010.
  3. Rogak, L: Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King. Thomas Dunne, 2008.
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