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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Thursday, July 14, 2016

Novelists have a normal version of multiple personality: Are there a limited number of successful ways for their alternate personalities to be organized?

You might think that there were an infinite number of possible plots for novels, or that there would be an infinite number of ways for novelists’ alternate personalities to successfully collaborate.

But if there are a limited number of basic plots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots) or dramatic situations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations), why wouldn’t there also be a limited number of ways for a novelist’s alternate personalities to successfully work together?

To answer this question, you would have to find out how the alternate personalities were organized in a large number of novelists, and then see if there were a limited number of basic organizations. I don’t know when this will be known and done—or who will do it—but I think it would be possible. 

The results would be of interest to aspiring novelists and writing programs, who might like to have some frame of reference for this aspect of the writing process.
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