As I’d hoped, Steve Ersinghaus has expanded on my post on the idea of getting out of character and getting into new character in enabling a writer to go beyond his own experience and values.
It is all such a pressure cooker of experience, where the reading, watching tv and movies, formal study, listening to people all eventually make the potatoes take on the taste of the corned beef. But as we absorb and become or reject, what takes its shape as our personality and ideology need not be all we can write. In making a personal decision on whether or not we could be a potential Jeffrey Dahmer, if we choose one way the other is not closed to our imagination. It is the experience of what can be rather than what would be. If I wrote about adulterous relationships, abortion, menage a tois, you need not know whether my experience was first hand or accumulated observation. I recall a Spanish class where we were often asked to offer three statements about ourselves, two true-one false. No one ever guessed mine correctly.
I think that while we necessarily draw on experience in writing–all experience, regardless of manner of input and regardless of personal opinion–we can extend ourselves further, as Steve suggests, into the unknown areas. Things need not be concrete or real, although in keeping with the element of verisimilitude they need be believable within the world that is created.
The study of character and especially the notion of perception and its diversities, the absolute adamant sense of rightness held by opposing views, is a fascinating area to explore. One way to explore is to observe. The other is to write.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology