Anyone want to help this writer out?

[laurenthemself]

I just found this entry on the nanowrimo community -- the author is asking for information on multiple personalities, and I thought that people from here might be willing to offer advice/assistance/links over there, before the commenting gets too skewed.

Comments

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Yeah... IMO, the problems come in when someone assumes they know exactly what a particular way of life is like even if they don't live it themselves, based on having read one book or something. This applies if you're writing for someone of a different nationality, different culture, different religion, someone who's gay, autistic, multiple, etc-- you have to read what people say about themselves and their real lives, rather than assuming that what you see on TV is accurate and enough to go by.

But if you're too harsh on yourself, preventing yourself from writing about characters you feel are too different from you because you're afraid you'll "offend someone" (as people in this system have done before), then, well... I think that silencing yourself from creating, even if done in the name of respect, can be more harmful than good. Pass it around when you're done-- show it to a proofreader who is more like your character, and see if they feel you're playing to inaccurate stereotypes. Even if they do, that doesn't mean your entire work is unredeemable-- if you've done your research properly, it'll probably just be details you get asked to tweak, not the entire plot.

I'm not even going to dignify that comment in the thread about "just make it up" with a response.

That they then proceeded to pay absolutely no attention to what we told them is irritating to us personally, as a kind of insult, but mostly the fact that we'd taken a great deal of time and energy explaining things -- some of them would write us fifteen or twenty emails asking a lot of very well-conceived questions, and we'd respond happily and at length, only to receive a final email very much along the lines of what Elaq describes.

The best (?) one, IMO, was the guy who tried to base the villain in his play on you. After you'd spent all that time answering his questions in email.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

*does a very creditible Evil Laugh(tm), showing off his "DAMN I'M GOOD" t-shirt*

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

But no chatelaine.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

No chatelaine. I'm not that insecure.

[appadil.livejournal.com]

What the hell? I typed a post in response to this, I previewed it, it seemed to send, and I signed off... and my post is not here. Did it just get eaten by an LJ glitch and not go through or something? I've never had that happen before.

Anyway, what my ex-post fundamentally said, only more elaborately and eloquently because I wasn't as busy when I wrote it as I am at the moment was:
Thank you for the clarifications, and I'm sorry if I overreacted or was too literal. I can understand and sympathize with your frustration and wish there was some way to keep stuff like that from happening. Some people really need a visit upside the head with a clue-by-four, I guess. Also, good points about the double-sidedness the "write what you know" rule.

Sorry for doing a rush job for this post, but I felt as if your posts warranted a response and I didn't want anyone to feel as if I was ignoring them.