#so like. I've never actually recovered but I am way funnier and cooler in my moments of partial recovery

[no-one-hears-me]

wow I really am terrified of gaining weight

[not-poignant]

The angsty boys really out here learning and growing, huh?

Do you think a character can be more emotionally mature than their author? As an author of many years, have you identified any blind spots in your characterization and therefore been able to learn and grow personally through said realizations?

P.S. The past few excerpts have been so soft I just want to print them out, shred them up, and use them to stuff a stuffed animal so that I can squeeeeeeze them. Ugh, I can’t even stand it 💛

Do you think a character can be more emotionally mature than their author?

Oh absolutely.

I would even go so far as to say this is actually more common than the opposite.

Authors are good at writing what they've never had any experience in. This includes writing characters funnier than they are, smarter than they are, dumber, cooler, more emotionally mature, more immature than they are. It's not just about writing settings they've never been in, jobs they've never had, life experiences they've never gone through, on every level you just can't know if something reflects the author's experience in that thing, including their maturity.

I've had readers assume all kinds of things about me based on my writing, and I'd say a good chunk of it isn't true! (Though I'll always feel touched by the military person who assumed I had military experience because I wrote it like someone who had lived it - I don't have military experience, I have a good imagination. That's my job).

As an author of many years, have you identified any blind spots in your characterization and therefore been able to learn and grow personally through said realizations?

Yes and no.

Fiction makes things a lot easier than they are in reality. The fact is a lot of PTSD takes years and years to recover from. Most of my stories are over in 6-12 months (within the timeline of the actual narrative itself.) Fictionalised healing narratives give characters happier endings, faster. It distills something of the human experience for people, and gives us all a road map, but it's not always a very realistic one, or it is, but only in some ways and not others.

Like, I have definitely learned things from my characters, but there's also been things I haven't been able to apply to myself. Writing the character isn't 'doing the work' for example. Knowing that communicating hard things is important doesn't actually make doing it any easier. Seeing lots of examples of characters surviving the process doesn't always make it possible to feel like you're going to survive the process.

It's why when people tell me 'this story made me realise I needed to see a therapist for my own issues, I'm doing so much better now, thank you for helping me do this' I have the urge to say 'thank you' but also a massive urge to tell someone that like, they were the ones who made themselves do it, who found the strength/courage, who self-reflected, who were ready or had a 'right place right time' experience to go on that journey. And some of those people are far more healthier mentally now than I am. I've actually watched like real people read some stories, have some realisations, and now achieve things in their life I still struggle to.

My job is to be good at imagining things and conveying them, but that doesn't mean I - or any other author - picks up the skills or emotional maturity or even knowledge that we write down! It would be great if it worked that way.

Anyway TL;DR it is possible to grow through writing (and reading) characters, but it's also possible to just write stuff and not actually change / grow from it (at least not in a way that's immediately noticeable).

As for blind spots in my own personal character, I'm constantly confronted by them. I have a lot of flaws as a human being!