Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Hey. A little beta reading help?

I have a favor to ask of any Friends of the Doctrine who may be stopping by today (Monday March 12, 2018). I belong to a writers group (Rhode Island Romance Writers) and I volunteered to write an article for the April newsletter. It goes without saying, at least for you guys, that, as a clark, I’ve been in a total ‘knock down/drag out’ with my inner critic, from the moment I watched my pen sign me up; the demographic of the RIRW is about 80% published, (traditional and self-published) authors. However, equally unnecessary to mention is, that from the day I hit ‘Publish’ on the first post of this here blog here, I’ve been doing things that should totally have me hiding under the bed, waiting for the well-meaning real people to leave.

So, without introduction, this is the article I will be submitting (probably tomorrow). If anyone has any thoughts, suggestions and/or feedback, I’ll totally appreciate it. (er… no, I won’t be including the music. Thats just for you, ’cause, well, this is a Doctrine post.)

Two Perspective-tools Helpful in Creating Locations and Characters; One, Fun and Practical, the Other…Kinda Weird.

There is an old saying in the blogosphere: ‘Nail the title and the rest will be a piece of cake’. Granted, the mantle of tradition from a world in existence less than twenty years, still has some novelty-shine detracting from it’s gravitas. Nevertheless, I’m here, writing this article only because of the time I’ve spent in the world between the wires. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Allow me the safety blanket of the time-honored incantation, ‘The purpose of this article is to…’

…Offer a perspective on writing opposite-gender characters and suggest a fun way to explore strange and exotic locales. Bear with me, as one of these two paths requires much more effort than the other.

(btw. I volunteered to write this article for only one reason, and it had nothing to do with a burning desire to help my fellow writers. I am writing this for the same reason that I joined the group; i.e. one of two fundamental laws of magic, the Law of Contagion. My understanding of this principle suggests that by associating with those possessing qualities, skills and abilities I desire, the likelihood of my acquiring them increases. And so, the volunteer thing… you should have heard my inner critic when I put my name in the article sign-up book!)

Part II

Creating complex, detailed and engaging characters is every fiction writer’s goal. They are the actors on our paper stages. Our challenge in creating these characters shares much with the experience of watching a skilled actor, we strive to help the reader forget that it is all make-believe.  Of course, given how few of us are, as Joss Whedon writes in the screenplay of the movie, ‘The Avengers’:  ‘Take that suit off, what are you?‘ ‘Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.’ we sometimes encounter a problem. Interesting characters have interesting qualities, not always those we writers possess. But then, part of the fun of this writing thing is imagining what it is like, (or, at a higher skill level, how it feels) to be a billionaire (or) a ketchup-packet-soup drinking poor person; how might a character of genius-class intelligence respond if they find themselves emotionally involved with a person on the other slope of the bell curve. We write our scenes and interludes, plots and climaxes such that our character’s actions and responses read as both reasonable and credible. It usually works out.

And then, there is gender.

Writing opposite-gender characters can be risky. Writing opposite-gender characters by ‘leveraging a perspective’, can be a lead-pipe cinch. The risk I’m referring to is the dissonance felt by the reader when an opposite-gender character’s behavior is incorrect. Usually it’s not so much that the Reader might throw your book across the room, shouting, “No way he’s a woman! Colonel Mustard is a man and always has been!” Rather our story would suffer a diminution of the character, the opposite of our ambition (of) creating the people in the make-believe world of our story. Of course, if we write from the POV of a same-gender character, that risk is greatly reduced.

Suppose you find yourself writing an opposite-gender character in the 1st Person.

(Full Disclosure: I stumbled into this whole writing and trying-to-get-published thing by accident. I was quite happy writing my blog, explaining my personality theory, the Wakefield Doctrine, for online friends and fans. Only problem was, my writing skills left something to be desired. In the drive to write a better blog post, I stumbled onto a story idea; I decided to follow the tale and see where it lead. To my surprise, (and initial consternation), my main character was a young woman, Sister Margaret Ryan (yeah, I know). Trouble was, the more I wrote, the more she seemed to tell the story. Naturally I followed along, very much the faithful Mr. Watson. Needless to say, with a female main character, I needed to find a way to ‘write her’ without distracting the Reader.)

Examples of cross-gender Writing Fails:

• your female character prefers to sleep in the nude, all the time. Male readers will buy that.
• your male character meets (your) heroine and thinks, ‘What beautiful hair she has, the waves and shine, my god! I’m in love!’ Female readers might like that thought.

So what’s the tool mentioned in the title? Find yourself a personality theory predicated on a person’s relationship to the world, as opposed to categorizing behavior and traits and such. Be sure to find one (personality theory) that is gender-neutral. Most, popular ‘personality theories’, are merely self-reporting of a person’s behavior. Not so useful. Those that focus on the relationship between the individual and the world around them can be useful, provided we can extrapolate across the gender gap.

For the purposes of this article, I will use an anecdotal, artisanal, personality theory called the Wakefield Doctrine. It proposes that everyone is born with the potential to experience one of three characteristic realities: the reality of the Outsider, the world of the Predator and the life of the Herd Member. At an early age, (the Wakefield Doctrine holds), we all settle into one, (and only one), of these ‘worldviews’. We proceed to grow and mature, developing interpersonal skills and social strategies appropriate to the world as we are experiencing it. The advantage of this schema is that it is gender neutral. All that is required is to apply your culture’s expectation of acceptable behavior per gender and you’re all set! The predator (personality) is aggressive, action-oriented, mercurial and not given to introspection, however, in the current culture, physical aggression is considered acceptable in men but not women. All the that drive to be aggressive, action-oriented, etc remains, whats a girl to do? This same extrapolation is applied to the Outsider and Herd Member personalities. Understanding how a person relates themselves to the world around them makes a minor detail like writing accurately opposite-gender characters as easy as… making a scott laugh, getting a roger upset or mis-understanding a clark.

The second perspective-tool?

Google Street View. Want to write a small town in the high desert of Arizona? Pick a town (any town) and get down to street view. Click the arrow ahead of you and drive the streets of Winslow or Holbrook and be sure to ‘swivel’ the view, the small stores and shoppes are worth the effort in and of themselves.

Thank you for your time reading this article.