A book is a stage for ideas.
Your characters are your actors, your puppets. Your plot is the scene, the backdrop. Every experience you've ever had in your life is your material, which you use to write your story.
Most of us have acknowledge the fact that we get ideas from books, so doesn't it make sense that those ideas would have to be put there? When you write, you can take all your opinions, beliefs, and ideas, and wrap them all up in your plot and characters. Then, when a character is condescending of clergy, or judgmental of government, or expresses a certain train of thought about a hot-button topic of the modern day, it's really the writer's thoughts, making their way into the reader's brain, hopefully without breaking the 4th wall.
Of course, there's always the danger of being too blatant with using your character's behavior like this. I point to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as an example. Most of his creations come through well, but his descriptions of the 'religious 'characters are so obviously critical that one can have a hard time actually enjoying it. When we write, let's try to keep our balance.
No comments:
Post a Comment