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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Monday, June 2, 2014

How much do novelists know about how their novels are written?

Certainly more than I do. For example, they know how to coax characters to come forward, take on a life of their own, and work with them.

But where do their characters come from? Are they from inner, creative realms where stories already exist? Is there a limited number, or more than novelists would imagine? Is there any way for novelists to find out?

Perhaps novelists could follow the same procedure they use to encourage characters to come forward, but instead of looking for characters, per se, they could look to see if there are other narrator and editor personalities, and if there are any wise and knowledgeable personalities who could serve as guides to their inner world and their personality system.

Would their creative process be jeopardized? Probably just the opposite. The best writers probably know more about their various personalities, and more about how to work with their personality system, than lesser writers do.

 If I am wrong, I hope novelists will tell me.
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