Comments on: Come on down the rabbit hole with me

By: Matt’s Bookosphere 7/18/8 « Enter the Octopus

Matt’s Bookosphere 7/18/8 « Enter the Octopus — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:19:59 +0000

[...] Richmond guest posts at Ecstatic Days: Here, Here, Here and [...]

By: Michelle

Michelle — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:31:59 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Graham, and for the link to your post and the New Scientist article. In your post you say “But I like the idea that when I write fiction I am also writing a simulation of a world that will run in people’s minds.” I agree! It’s strange to think that when someone reads our fiction, in particular long fiction that they settle into for an hour or more at a time, in a sense we get to control the reader’s thoughts. Of course any type of writing is a dialogue–between the words on the page and the reader’s unspoken words of response–but during the time the reader is immersed in the fiction, the writer is to a large degree controlling the conversation.

Interesting what you say about false memories, too. My previous novel, The Year of Fog, is in large part about memory, and includes several case studies of patients whose memory is exceptional in some way. There is a scene in which she realizes that a memory she has held dear for most of her adult life is actually a “false memory” created by her mother.

By: Graham Storrs

Graham Storrs — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:56:24 +0000

Two things spring to mind reading this (which I enjoyed enormously by the way). The first is the research by Keith Oatley I recently read about in New Scientist (and blogged about here: http://grahamstorrs.blogspot.com/2008/07/science-looks-at-fiction.html) which seems to show that when we read fiction we take on the personalities of the protagonists. It actually changes us. The other is the notion of ‘false memories’. These are easily implanted in people’s minds – there are now standard techniques which psychologists use to put false memories in people when they run experiments. I write fiction too and the intense involvement one experiences with the world one is creating is almost certainly going to leave deep traces. I suspect I’m not alone in imagining the scenes and the people I write about so vividly that the distinction between them and reality is often moot. Oatley describes reading fiction as running a simulation of the fictional world in your mind. Unless the writer is brilliant, I suspect that creating these virtual worlds is a much more detailed experience.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:28:32 +0000

Hi there, Will. Thanks for your comment. And the feeling of inhabiting your characters’ lives…interesting and strange, indeed! While I always feels that I have complete control of what my characters do, I do find that I lose myself a bit when I’m deep in the writing of a novel, as it’s easy to become extraordinarily focused on the world within the book.

By: Will Humphreys

Will Humphreys — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:36:34 +0000

Not having written much fiction myself, I’ve often wondered about the experience that writers have creating characters and worlds. In this post, you’ve managed to answer some questions I hadn’t even been able to fully formulate about this. I remember some comments Jack Vance made in an introduction somewhere about how he could see some of his characters in his mind’s eye and how they had a life of their own and even how he missed them. It is almost as if the characters take on a life of their own and begin to move off into their own space. It must be an interesting and strange feeling.