Greg Warman
9-21-12
English 1510
Writing
Construct: Personalities in Writing
Sources:
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.
