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.

— Share site with friends.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Writing Novels: If you don’t think like the novelists discussed in this blog, should you even try to write a novel?

In a post last year—search “Where I’m Coming From”—I gave half the story of how I came to write this blog. The other half is that I was planning a novel.

There were two main characters, a woman and a man. The woman was a feminist bioengineer; the man, a psychiatrist. The story was to have been, first, about her secret project to change humanity; second, about their relationship; and third, about his interest in multiple personality and literature, which might have been used as comic relief.

However, the more I have learned about how novelists think and how novels are actually written, the more futile I think it would be for me to make the attempt. I could do it, but I doubt that it would be the real thing.

Are there any great novelists who do not think like the novelists discussed in this blog? If you know of any, please tell me.

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