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, September 5, 2019


Margaret Atwood says: For sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” she did not have the ability to write a continuation in the voice of Offred. Why not?

“What they were begging for was a continuation in the voice of Offred, which I would not have been able to do…That voice was there. She said her thing.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/books/handmaids-tale-sequel-testaments-margaret-atwood.html

If Margaret Atwood had created the character of Offred in the way that most readers and literary critics assume, of course she would have been able to write a continuation in the voice of Offred. Why not?

But a great writer like Atwood does not create her major characters. She wouldn’t know how and doesn’t try. What she does know how to do, and actually does, is listen for voices in her head, voices of characters with great stories to tell.

To write The Handmaid’s Tale, she had listened. She had heard the voice of Offred. And Offred had evidently said all she had to say. "That voice was there. She said her thing."

Search “Lady Oracle” and “Margaret Atwood.”
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