From the Fiction Desk

I hereby confess to the world, I cheat! No, I don’t cheat on taxes or girlfriends or anything like that. I cheat on creating my characters, and I am glad I do. As I started writing years ago I was given advice on how to make a character unique. I was told to write a brief biography about the character or have them move about a day in their world. This is great advice, but for me it was worthless. I created cookie cutter characters; you could almost recognize the archetype.

It was not until I took a seminar in a completely non-writing unrelated field that I was exposed to what would become my method of creating characters and cheating. It was a course on personalities. Actually, it was specifically a course on the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator, but I believe that any psychology course on personality types works. I like Myers-Briggs because of the wide range of personality types it identifies through 4 elements of the personality. What I did was reverse engineer the human personality using the personality types.

Instead of trying to imagine a character in their setting and going about their day to see what kind of personality the character would have, I ask myself what kind of personality would fit the situation. I imagine this to be something similar to casting actors for a show. I start off by looking at the setting of the story and ask myself what kind of personalities occupy this story? The question alone creates possibilities as you can have a character in a setting who on does not belong—and you placed the character there on purpose.

I start off the person’s personality and from there I build the character by taking the earlier advice of writing a biography about them. With the personality firmly in hand, the writing of the background becomes easier as their personality defined who they were, how they got to this point, and how they are likely to act in the story.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information and updates on the stories, novels, and blogs I am writing.

When a writer or a poet sits down to write, they should pull open the scars of life and bleed out on the page in black ink. This sounds like a simple process in black and white, though the truth of the art lies deeply in the gray ocean of the author’s psyche. It is the wading through these waters, the exploration of their depth and their dangers that give a poem or a story the power to reach out and connect with the reader.

While it may read that this is about the painful emotions of defeat, heart break, or any other negative events, it is and it is not. People know, though they tend to put aside this knowledge, that for the pleasant events, the successes, the great loves of the world you have to be tried in someway, burned perhaps, but go forth on to your success. Others are caught in the fire and unable to escape. In either case, the emotions of the tribulations are the heart of the piece. Facing the emotions of these events can be a psychological wrestling match between the muse and the psyche. The muse knows that the story or poem is submerged in the gray ocean. The ocean does not want to surrender what has been sunk for the sake of the psyche. Yet, for the poem or story to be written with all the power it deserves, the muse must dredge the emotions of the events.

The therapy then begins as the author looks at the events and the emotions. He shatters his psyche and then mends the pieces back together in new ways, leading to a re-healing of the self as the ink goes onto the page—for another to read and understand.

Thank you for reading. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates on blogs, stories, and novels that I am writing.

One of the most important things I have learned over the last few years in this sapling of a writing career is the importance of networking with other writers. Regardless if they have been well published or just starting out, regardless of their style and genre (fiction, non-fiction, newsletters, poetry, etc.) of writing they all bring with them some level of experience and the intensity of creativity that comes with the discussions and sharing of our art.

Regardless if it is at an open mic night, seminar, workshop, writing group meeting, conference, or even a social site discussion board, there is a propagation of knowledge and inventiveness that spreads between writers. Critique and writers clubs may not be for everyone. I know some fellow writers who hate public speaking so much that they would refuse to come an open mic night. Regardless of the method, the important things in networking are to be comfortable with meeting other writers and sharing information about and love of our art.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for up-to-date information on the stories I am working on and other blogs.