October 25, 2013

Should Your Characters See a Psychiatrist?

Recently, I read a wonderful book with an interesting concept. A male writer seeks out a psychiatrist (who was also a writer) to help him figure out some problems with his main character.

It left me intrigued.

Reagan, my main character in the Tala Prophecy series, sees a psychiatrist in Chasing Memories. It was a fun way to have my character evaluated. But how much more fun would it be to go to a psychiatrist and talk about my character's (or characters') issues. Heck, I could even pretend to be my character... but before anyone thinks I've gone off the deep end, I'll stick with my first idea.

So, am I crazy or is this a really interesting idea?

Maybe a psychiatrist out there could start picking apart characters for writers. Just thinking out loud here. :-)

Oh, and the book was The Hourglass by Sharon Struth. Read the review here.

Of course, in The Hourglass, it turned out the character's issues were deeply rooted in the author's. So I guess the simpler solution would be for me to seek out therapy.

2 comments:

K. A. Cozy said...

Interesting idea! I've always wanted to write in to an advice columnist using the persona of one of my characters. It would be interesting to see what the columnist and commenters thought of the character's issues.

Jo Michaels said...

We all need therapy. It's because of the voices in our heads. :)

But if we didn't have the voices, would we be able to create such believable characters? That, my darling, is the question. A shrink might be the antithesis for a writer. Once we sort out the voices, where would that leave us?

I've often considered writing a murder mystery about a criminal profiler or private eye who's chasing a murderer only to find out it was him/her committing the crimes all along :) hehe

That one would certainly take the cake.

So, my advice is to avoid therapy at all costs :P

WRITE ON!