Keep it real ... nah ... well, maybe

 Oh, how I love to live in fantasyland, where truth and reality take a back seat to my dream world, where keeping it real is walking in the shoes of a psychopath, a Dexter-like character that sees murder and blood as justice because he decides a particular person is evil. I find respite in the world of make-believe where the spirits of my characters lust for payback, vengeance, greed, and despise honesty and goodness. Truth is not an accepted fact born from some moral treatise, something that is not a lie, something that really takes place. Truth is something made up in my mind. That which is real is something fake. I take perception and mold it into deception, and my walls of deception are never torn down. In my imagination, I complicate everyone’s beliefs and forge new paths of thinking. My aim is confusion, not pockets of clarity.

 A text message lights up my cell phone: “Hey, Aunt Pat, Happy Birthday!”

 My illusion dissolves.

 Writing another short story, this one about a psychopath, I try to walk in his shoes, explore what avenues of thought prompt certain behaviors, and needle my way into his life space, the total opposite of mine. I empathize. I want the readers to wander in my alternate world, and hopefully enjoy it. Like Michael, I don’t want my scenes to strain credibility, and much the same as Lois, I want to maintain my character’s integrity. Similar to Carole, I want to stay true to what is important to me—keeping the psychology in the story. With this, like Hannah, I need to wrap up and surround my character in an environment that keeps him real, and to share with the readers, as Sharan noted, the real story about the world I know. I live in the minds of my characters for a while, like most of you I’m sure. That’s when I find “keeping it real” blurs. Thank goodness you all wrote such great posts. They helped me focus a bit more clearly on how I see realness in my writing, and what type of “ real” is most important to me.

 

 

Comments

[Mysti Berry]

Welcome Pat! One of the things I love about your stories in your first collection is how vivid the characters are. The lady on the commuter train still haunts my imagination over a year later.

I'll be thinking about "real" all day...

[camille minichino]

I just finished "The Wisdom of Psychopaths -- What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success," (Kevin Dutton) and your post was a great follow-up. We still have so much to learn about human behavior.

[Pat Morin]

Thank you Mysti and Camille. It's hard learning to be an actualized psychopath. Hard shoes for me to fill. Camille, I haven't read that one, but will look it up. Thanks.

[Ann]

Just like gravity bends light, we writers bend reality. :-) I'm not sure how long I could walk in the shoes of your psychopath with needing to take a break for chocolate... He (or maybe she?) sounds scary!
And welcome to The LadyKillers!

[Michael A. Black]

Pat, your post reminded me of an old saying: Perception is reality. Be careful walking in that psycho's shoes. Sounds like a scary experience.