What's the difference between a river-kelpie and a hippopotamus?

[thanate]

I didn't spend a lot of time with other kids outside of school when I was growing up; I didn't have a lot of close friends at any given time, and the standing rule that my room had to be clean before I could invite anybody over usually prevented me from doing so. I don't know if this was a cause, or just a contribution, but somewhere along the line I developed a bit of a thing about the idea of how people change when you're not around, and how they interact with each other when you go away. What I do when I'm not with you, from the other side of things.

Those of you who know my family know that I wasn't raised in a particularly normal fashion; the "no we are not normal" explanation could probably take up an essay on its own. But I would go over to friends' houses and be confused by how they lived, and wonder how much of what I saw was particular to me visiting, and what they did when I wasn't there. And why did they have dogs, or birds, or televisions and toysets for making your own goop, and did they really play with them, or interact with their families like that when I wasn't there to see? It didn't worry me, particularly, but it generally made me glad that I lived with my family and not theirs.

I was thinking about this the other day, contemplating trying to socialize with real people again from time to time, and it was occurring to me that (for instance) I've known fishy1 since 1993, I think, when Natalie took us to the Icecapades and she was a superior high-school student standing around making disparaging comments about them trying to grow grass at the intermediate school. (Goodness, were we ever so young?) At this point, we know at least certain aspects of each other quite well. But she's married to someone I don't know as well, and they live with a third person I only know fairly superficially, and are the sort of household that has a parade of visitors and alternate lovers and occasional large high alcohol content sorts of parties, and these things are all rather foreign to me.

Everyone I know, in fact, knows people I don't, and spends large amounts of time with them (or has in the past), be it grauwulf going to work every day, or my friends out in California, who mostly don't know each other, let alone anyone else I know. The same thing applies to me, of course. It's like some hugely complex constellation of venn diagrams that spans the entire world, and with most groups, exactly who is present at any given moment also effects how a set of people behaves or interacts. You've got your in jokes with Fred, that Amanda doesn't know about, but since she's friends with Jim... you know what I mean.

And I've been thinking about writing, and character, and this sort of immense complexity is interesting to translate. Particularly since you've got some people who have particular characteristics that don't change a lot from situation to situation, and people who can be very chamelioid to the point of using different personas with different sets of people (er... Miles as Lord Vorkossigan vs Admiral Naismith comes to mind, although I'm more thinking of Tremaine from the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy at the moment.) There are also extenuating factors-- stress in general, siblings who are at that point where they can't stand each other and what to anyone else would seem completely innocuous gets interpreted as a deadly insult, or people who have whatever sort of admiration/love interest that causes them to overlook other people's flaws.

Comments

[laeticiav.livejournal.com]

That was an interesting series of thoughts. You know, I've really never thought about that exact thing, though I sometimes wonder something similar about my dolls... I feel so external to almost everyone's lives and then so central to just a tiny number of them (3!) that in the first instance, the alienness (I can't think of the right word for it) is so natural I don't even think to see it and in the latter case, the fact that they do have lives without me (social obligations, friendships, Italian lessons, medical school, 2 children and a husband) doesn't seem to be relevant.
I don't know how that all plays out in writing ... that's a very interesting thought. I want to try fiction. Academic writing is drying out my brain. Next project, I swear. Next project will be a novel about monks... (probably will be awful because I'll write like an academic... sigh).

[thanate.livejournal.com]

The other corollary, of course, is how much we do that nobody else knows about. A lot if it is stuff like walking from one place to another, and when we eat lunch and what we think of it, and how many times we go to the bathroom or make faces at ourselves in the mirror. But there are also whole worlds of little perspectives that we forget nobody else has...

I've been reading Martha Wells, and having just read her take on voice (http://marthawells.livejournal.com/245654.html) it's absolutely fascinating to watch her characters change depending on who's talking, and who they're talking to. Also, I find that the better academic writers seem to manage to tweak even academic voice to be readable rather than completely dry. Possibly thinking about your favorite academic reads, and how they manage not to be horribly boring, might help your brain be a little more creative?

I'd definitely be interested to see your novel on monks, should you ever get to it.

[laeticiav.livejournal.com]

If I start thinking of myself playing bit parts in everyone else's life, I'll get paranoid and never leave the house...
I try very hard to make academic writing clear and accessible. (I also terrorize my students about it). There are some academic books that I think are beautifully written and I enjoy those greatly. Anyway, I spend far more time editing than I do writing, so I hope that pays off for my prose.

The monks will be so much more awesome in fictional form...