Sarah Gibbard Cook
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Every Character Is You

2/17/2020

2 Comments

 
Two or three times a year, someone tells me, “You know that everyone in your dream is you.” Says who, besides Carl Jung? Do night sweats running around a retirement home in my bathrobe looking for my demented mother always reflect fear of dementia? Granted, random dream figures can stimulate insights as effectively as tarot cards or tea leaves. We are the meaning makers, and new perspectives invite us to fresh meaning.

In writing, on the other hand, to some degree every character is the author. How can you make responses authentic except by putting yourself in the characters’ heads, or them in yours?

The same goes for reading. A child who becomes Pooh in imagination, then Piglet, then Eeyore or Tigger learns empathy. Mirror neurons don’t so much put us in someone else’s head as create an image of their intention in ours. In that sense, one might argue, you are everyone you see or imagine, including the characters in your dreams.
2 Comments
Rebecca link
2/17/2020 05:06:39 pm

I hadn’t thought of all the characters I write as aspects of me. That does have a ring of truth to it. Thanks, Sarah!

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Sarah link
2/18/2020 08:55:37 pm

Rebecca, do you find yourself identifying some with all your characters, or just the protagonists? I recall creating one flamboyant, charismatic secondary character I didn’t understand at all; my protagonist’s lack of understanding that character was a projection of me. But the character’s actions might be more real if I did understand her better.

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    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

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