Psychology

Welcome to blog number 9! Thank you for your visit. This week is another solo act from me. Hoping to get the authors back in next week so keep watching this space.

So today I will be discussing how Psychology can help when writing... 

Psychology is such a useful tool when it comes to writing, I find. The study of why a person performs an action is interesting and can really help a story come to life. If you’re not familiar with psychology I’m not saying you should enroll onto a course to be able to use it for your writing. Just browse through a couple of books and pick up some new facts you didn’t know. Key facts to know for me are; how people react in certain situations, what makes people tick, gestures people might use to cover up a lie... All these things can provide a much more detailed, truthful description in your story. 

Those of you who have some knowledge on psychology may have heard of something called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). What this means is every human has a preferred way of perceiving something. They demonstrate this preference in their everyday life when they use their senses (visual, audio, feeling). Here is an example of someone demonstrating their preference of being visual with their speech:

“I see what you are saying.” “Show me what you mean.” 

Visual people tend to like tidy spaces and are also creative with subjects like art. 

Now, let’s look at someone who prefers audio:

“I hear what you mean.” “Tell me more.” 

These types of people enjoy music and prefer comfort to fashion. 

‘Feelers’ demonstrate their preference by saying things like: 

“That feels good.” “Can we keep in touch?” 

They enjoy being practical with their hands. 

Each person will transfer information into their preferred form; visual people like pictures/graphs. Audio people prefer sounds and discussion. Feelers are more hands on and digest information using emotions and feelings. 

So, you see. All these wonderful characteristics are available to your characters now. Just decide which preferred perception you want your character to have and away you go with a totally new route of creating and developing your characters. 

Body language is another route psychology can take you down when researching for your characters. Some key things to know about body language:

• Happy people will be very open and feel secure
• Sad people will be more closed off and have insecurities 

Insecure people may use their bag or surroundings to form a barrier between themselves and another person. 

Secure people tend to lean in when in discussion whereas insecure people will lean back or turn away. 

Then there’s the famous giveaways of a liar:

• covers mouth
• scratches ear
• touches nose
• rub an eye
• pull a collar

More wonderful characteristics you can provide your leading roles with to represent emotions/feelings/personalities. 

Just remember there is always a reason behind every action. This is especially important to think about when writing your villains part - they must be bad/evil or do the things they do for an internal reason that is very significant to them. Be sure to reveal this at the end when your villain is caught! 

My final tip is to write about things you have experienced because it can be really difficult to write about something you’ve never done as you will be merely guessing at how the character feels. Become your character when your writing for them. 

Keep in mind that if your writing isn’t affecting you it isn’t going to affect the reader! 

Thank you for stopping by. You can follow me on Twitter via @amieblinks