Psychobable

The mind is a crazy crazy place. While I can only speak for myself I know I find my mind to often times have more in common with Grand Central Station in New York than anything resembling a collected and sane thing. Trains arrive, depart, derail, and rerail. People walk, run, talk and trip. The chaos reigns as pure insanity carries the day. However taking a step back from the chaos we start to see intricately created time tables for the trains, and schedules trying to be kept by the people. Suddenly the chaos has reason, the disorder has logic, and the insanity has meaning. This bigger picture provides us with a way to make sense of the chaos and suddenly all the actions and motions of the various players in the thought process make sense.

I believe that most people's minds work this way as well. There is some order, but there is also some insanity. Especially to those sitting on the outside and not able to see the big picture of what's going on in our heads. To them it just seems random and irrational, but if they were to see our thought process there would be both rationality and reason in the actions and thoughts. The same can be applied to characters in stories. As most of you may have noticed from my other stories, I enjoy diving deep into the waters of a character's mind, exploring it, seeing what is behind the actions, thoughts, and reactions of that particular character, and thinking of why they were this way in the first place. I find that the more I delve into the mind of a character they become more fleshed out and more three dimensional. Suddenly, by deciphering what makes each character tick, what makes them work, authors are able to make the characters not only much more convincing, but much more interesting to read, and even care about.

The fact is that the more we understand why a character does what they do, the better formed that character is. Even in the realm of fan fiction, if we are using a character in a way different from how they are shown in canon, by diving into their minds and figuring out why they do what they do, we can make the acts seem perfectly normal, canon-wise. Even if the situation is different, if the character is the same we will more likely find ourselves identifying with the original character. These are the familiar characters that we all know and love, and even when they are in other situations different from their original work, we still know and love them. But just making them act as if they were in canon will not reach the desired result. Instead, it is taking the same character from canon and letting them act in the new situation that is important. Situations may change, and various inputs may change, but the workings of the mind are kept constant, and that is what we immediately recognize as the character, regardless of the context in which the author puts the character. The application of a character's mind and thought process is what enables us to actually develop fan fiction to a point where the characters are believably in new contexts outside of a strict sense of canon. Without being able to keep the thought process of our character's in our minds, our characters would lose their qualities and depth of character and simply became a façade of the original, or worse, become completely disparate from their source material and merely represent that character in name only.

Delving into character's mind is a task many shy away from. It's a scary place. We hardly understand our own minds at times, so how difficult would it be to understand someone else's? While it is a common cliché of fan fic writing, (or any writing for that matter) let's look at the Mary Sue/Gary Stu self insertion bug many pieces of writing find themselves doing. While I would suggest self insertion gets a bad rap, that is another topic for another time. For purposes here, I would argue that part of the reason that such characters are so often used by authors, and are often very well developed characters, is that the author has dug into the character's mind, for it shares the same mind as the author. It is far easier to write from the perspective of one you are intimately familiar with, and self insertion allows an author to have a character that is well developed (all other things being equal, time taken to write them, etc) compared with original characters. When done well, these self insertion characters are often some of the better, if not the best developed characters in the story, and this is because of this intimate understanding that the author has of that character. Even in the case of characters simply sharing many characteristics with the author this idea holds true as well. If you happen to share a lot of qualities with the character you're writing you probably also share at least some ways in which your mind works. This allows you greater insight into the character and a better understanding of where the character is coming from, and what they would do in a given situation. So, if that's what makes these characters so great, and often very interesting for the reader (and thus easier to accept regardless of bias against self insertion), then in order for us to make other characters as believable and three dimensional we just have to get in their heads too.

This doesn't necessarily mean that we have to become regular Sigmund Freuds and psychoanalyze the characters we use to death, however it does mean that we always need to be conscious of what is going on in their minds, and how that applies to the context we have put them in. But for us to establish any ability to analyze a character, we have to look at them in the sense of what has created their thought process. Many psychologists would argue for a largely 'blank slate' idea of a person, suggesting that much of what makes up a person is in result of experiences that person has had. In other words a person isn't afraid of snakes because they are inherently afraid of snakes, a person is afraid of snakes because they have been conditioned to be afraid of snakes, and under different conditions could be made to be afraid of rabbits (this was actually proven by an experiment by the great Psychologist John B Watson in 1920). For the sake of simplicity and character understanding, I use this assumption to understand my characters and to try and figure out their thought processes.

However where you go from here varies. Some might suggest trying to create histories of experiences that have shaped the characters which, while certainly important and a great way of going about the method, is not the one I choose to use, nor the one I find most useful. It may be the more popular way of going about things, and incredibly useful for many authors, but I would suggest another tool for the author's toolbox here. The idea is, instead of constructing the reasons for the mind, use the mind. Instead of building the car, drive the car. In other words instead of merely constructing the mind and the reasons for the thought processes, go through the thought processes.

In "Roll With the Changes" I tried to put this idea into action. Instead of trying to just see what was in Chip's mind I tried to put it on, and use it . By going through a variety of different ideas, situations and experiences I gained an incredible understanding into how, I believe, Chip works. The process of writing that piece was actually not by the usual "write it down as you think it would happen," but rather by writing down the thought process that I believed Chip would have in that situation. In the same way that merely copying mathematical formulas and progressions doesn't provide us with the greater understanding that we would have if we worked through the mathematical problem to discover why it works, I have found that only by actually applying and working through the thought process do I gain the best understanding of the character I can. Rather than merely diagramming the pieces of the mind, and the reasons behind them, if an author actually uses the mind, I believe they will gain a far better perspective on that character and be able to write that character in a much better manner.

Trying to diagram the mind of the character itself causes problems from the outset in that we find ourselves trying to answer every question about their previous experiences and thought process. What was their childhood like? How were their parental relations? How did their schooling go? What sorts of relationships were they involved in? etc etc. While these questions are certainly helpful, and can be useful in creating more three dimensional characters they eventually run the author headlong into the issue I dealt with in my last essay, that of trying to answer all the questions. An author simply isn't able to answer all the questions no matter how hard they try, and the attempt at trying to answer all the questions can drive an author not to write in the first place since they feel they haven't fully captured the character. Avoiding this problem has the added benefit in that the silence that the unanswered questions leave is a huge benefit to the reader as the reader can answer those questions for themselves, often filling in the gaps with their own experiences and thus gaining a better experience out of reading the work and a better connection with the character.

How to start is tricky, as there is far more than just one way. But alas, most of this essay has been about my strategy, so I'll focus on that particular method. For example, in "Roll With The Changes" I started with a simple question, 'What is the difference between Chip in the shorts and Chip of the Rescue Rangers?' Going from here I figuratively "put on" Chip's mind and set myself up with the dilemma of the two lives that we've seen Chip live. How would he reconcile these two lives? How did he feel about the choice between the two? These questions and others I tried to answer some successfully, some less successfully, but the point is that I didn't start from some childhood experience, or some historical experience, I rather took a few simple ideas and then applied what I knew of the methods in which Chip's mind works in order to answer the questions.

If you would like to continue to think of this method as a math problem, instead of looking at the original variables (experiences) that are plugged into the equations (mind), you instead pay more attention to the equations, for they are really what make things go, and they are far easier to decipher. The same equations are running the mind regardless of what variable you start out with, or what answer you get in the end so the constants you look for in a character are the equations, methods, and thought processes that they use to decide on whatever conundrum may be at stake. The key in all this is remembering that the process is more important than the inputs, and that only by knowing the workings inside the mind can you then put together a character that makes sense in any situation.

The problem with taking characters' actions out of context and not utilizing the method of using their mind as the driving force behind them is widespread. There are many cases where you see people use characters and because the actions are straight from canon, they act in such a way that is not in line with who we know as the canon character. This is an easy trap to fall into because, especially when simply using their previous actions and trying to cross-apply the actions to the new situation, the character doesn't make any sense in the new situation. The problem is that the variables of the current situation one is using aren't necessarily the variables used to generate the reaction derived from the canon situation, and while they may be the most similar reaction to the situation that one could think of, they could in fact be quite out of character. For example, in Seer No Evil, Chip met Cassandra, the gypsy moth psychic. In that situation he responded a certain way. If one were to then have a psychic in their story and use that action of Chip's as a guide, he would react in the same way, regardless of why. However, if one were using the equations that make his mind work as a guide, they could very well end up with a different outcome upon meeting a psychic. Staying true to the character is more important than mirroring their manifested actions.

Note that this is not to suggest that one should abandon using character histories, as these are important to deciphering the equations and thought processes that a character runs by. Just like in math when we try to figure out an equation, or a model that explains how the inputs turn into the outputted numbers we use both the inputs and the outputs as clues. In the case of figuring out characters minds this same method applies. For example in a character like Chip we can see a certain thought process of being very straight forward, and running on a very similar to Sherlock Holmes system of deduction. Once we have figured out this thought process, and this equation we can then use it in whatever situation we think that the same thought process is applicable. Then we might go on and recall that while Chip can be tough on others we have seen a thought process of caring from him before, whether it be consoling Gadget, trying to care for other creatures who have been robbed, by solving their cases and making things right, etc. Now that we have deciphered the equations, and thought processes we are beginning the exercise of creating this 'thinking cap of another'. By continuing to examine different situations that the character goes through we keep adding to this 'thinking cap' making it more complete, and better able to help us to write the character properly.

At first it can be quite difficult, as most people are only used to trying to live in their own minds, but once you work at it, it becomes easier. Putting someone else's thinking cap on is not only helpful in writing, but in the real world as well (for example by being able to decipher someone's thought process and personality via their actions). Being able to take a character and suddenly not have to worry about what situation that character is in, and how far it may be from canon, is liberating, and highly advantageous not only for fan fiction, but for all sorts of writing. An author must try to establish and utilize a toolbox of techniques to build characters, settings, and stories, and I believe that this 'think cap of another' is one of the important tools. Is it the only tool? Of course not. Will it solve all the problems an author faces? Of course not. But, what it can do is help an author in various situations, and especially help an author keep their characters consistent no matter the situation, because they are applying the same mind formulas to each variable.

So it's that time again folks, no not for the wheel of morality, but rather to put on thinking caps. Just this time they aren't your own, they're those of whatever character you might be writing. I challenge you to try out characters you've never tried; characters that perhaps haven't even interested you. I can tell you from experience that you may be surprised what you find (especially in characters that haven't interested you before), each character has their own set of formulas and equations churning away at each situation up in their mind, and they are not only helpful to the author, but also interesting to find. So dig in, explore, and research what makes the characters work, what makes them tick, what makes them, them. Only by diving into these insane vats of logic and rationality, as well as seeming irrationality, can we truly write the best characters we can, and perhaps try to make sense of the Psychobabble that's going on in all our heads.