Writing Construct - Intro + Synthesis

Greg Warman

9-21-12

English 1510

Writing Construct: Personalities in Writing

Sources:

http://www.biggsbooks.net/lessons-beyourself.html

http://rachelheldevans.com/writing-platform-be-yourself

http://diymfa.com/2012/08/24/how-to-present-yourself-as-a-writer-guest-post-by-j-m-cook/

http://www.narrativemagazine.info/pages/pers.htm

            What determines what we write about?  A past experience has been the root of some great pieces of writing.  Dreams, visions, and aspirations often fuel the flame in the creation of a new writing. How the writer thinks, what they think about, and their personality take over in their mind, allowing them to write about something of interest to them.  First, the writer will strive to define their own voice in their texts. After having a common voice that they write with in their texts, they tend to create patterns in their work.  These can be strategies in their writing to connect with their audience, such as humor, horror, romance, suspense, and other simple things like incorporating plays on words and foreshadowing.  All of these ideas, when used, begin to define the writer more and more. As the writer begins to feel comfortable with their own voice and the path they take in what they tend to write about, it is argued that this is when their inner personality is shown in their writing, which makes the text real, true, and interesting. This is how I was taught to write.  Look into yourself and write something that interests me and it’ll be “good enough.” With all this, though, to be a great writer, you’re probably going to need more than one popular text.  The writer’s been built to be themselves in their writing.  The writer, after they have had a period of success with previous texts, will feel a sort of demand from their audience.  At this point, the writer must determine whether or not they should write using their personality, or change it up to meet the demands and expectations of the audience. 

         

   Personality in writing links the audience to the author.  After many works, the audience is drawn in and can recognize a piece of writing by the author’s voice and personality in the writing. Biggs argues that the personality the audience grows fond of is due to the fact that the writer’s true morals, beliefs, ideas, opinions, and spiritual strengths are depicted in their writing.  Briggs’ offers that “Your stories are going to be and become part of you; some writers feel in an odd way as if their stories are ‘children’ — children of the mind. As children, they are going to be at least half you, and half whatever inspired them,” (Briggs 1).

           

           

Within the resources I’ve gathered, I’ve found contradiction in how a writer must dictate their personality in their writings.  Two of the resources, Biggs and Evans, state that to be a great writer, you must find yourself, be yourself, and always show yourself and your personality in your writing.  They argue that by doing this, you’ll find it easier to relate to your audience in your writing and that your text will be easier to understand and grasp on to. The other two resources that I have, Cook and Jenks, argue more about developing an idea of how you want to be perceived instead of completely flaunting your own individual personality.  They argue that to be a successful writer, one can learn to mold and frame their personality which will then cause their ideas in their text to be expressed in a personality, voice, and tone that aren’t personal to the writer, but what the writer intended to create to grasp the audience’s attention.  Jenks and Cook go on to argue that creating a “fake” interesting and original personality, it will gain popularity from the audience better than if you were to be yourself. Cook argues that a writer must be well developed and skilled to devise a personality that isn’t true to his own.