Blog post # 1 - Perception of Perspective

Everything in existence is susceptible to the perception of perspective, and perspective is entirely unique. I am highly into philosophy, and actually write some fiction myself. That is a truism throughout my own writing. When reading a narrative, the events that take place will always ultimately be your own mental image of the words you read though there are many influences on a reader as to the portrayal of an authors writing; some coming from the way an author writes to begin with. I am sometimes perturbed by how much watching the Harry Potter movies influence my mental imagery while reading the books. When reading fiction, it’s the ability to remove yourself from reality and become a mental artist of words on a page either through one of the characters or a third party perspective. When reading the first two harry potter books, I mostly imagine myself as a third party viewer and think things like “how would I feel if I were actually there?” Much like Harry falls into Tom Riddle’s Diary, I walk with the words of the narrative, envisioning everything the characters might be experiencing, and letting my own imagination run as wild as it can within the context of the novel. I like to think of myself as just an average student at Hogwarts, bearing witness to all of these events through the senses of a character that doesn’t exist, receiving anecdotes and sometimes actually witnessing the events that take place throughout the novel from other characters that may or may not exist in the books. But that influence may also come from the way Rowling writes, because from my perspective, she writes as though she is a character that does not exist in the novel but is still there bearing witness to all of these events, telling the story as if she were speaking to a friend. I suppose I fail to identify with any characters in the book, choosing to view Rowling’s world through a third party lens. I can see how people with more similarities to some of the characters would more readily put themselves in those characters shoes because they can relate to those characters past and what he or she might be thinking as that character witnesses the events that take place. Our mental image of someone else’s words ultimately comes from our own experiences, memories, and active imagination. Rowling is just letting us in to a world she created in her mind that is a reflection of her own experiences, memories, and active imagination. As I begin to write my own fiction, I am quite amazed by how much of it is directly related to my own experiences and emotions throughout certain memories and projections of myself into a fictional world where I have complete control of what happens.