From an early
age, right into my teenage years, I used to go to Tae Kwon Do class twice a
week. My best friend had been training for far longer than me, had been to
numerous competitions and was a skilled fighter. We fought probably an
estimated three hundred times against each other and of those three hundred
bouts, my friend’s skill, speed and strength prevailed two hundred and
ninety-seven times.
That’s right, I
won a grand total of three bouts against him.
Years later, my
friend still gets rankled when I bring that up in conversation. The fact that
he beat me two hundred and ninety-seven times goes out the window; he just
begrudgingly remembers my three victories.
‘Reframing’ is a
technique I picked up on years ago and one that has not only changed my perception
of life but has been of massive assistance with understanding characters’
points of view in writing. It essentially means changing your point of view of
an event, to a different outlook. The above example is a tongue-in-cheek jab at
one of my best friends, but the premise is the same. At looking at the stats,
it’s clear he’s a far better fighter than I am, yet by that same logic (and to
my friend’s chagrin) he still has to live with the fact that I beat him three
times.
This can be
helpful when exploring a character whose values or goals may not align to your
own. To try and get a better understanding of a character’s point of view, I
try to see and hear things entirely from their perspective. I essentially build
a frame around it and based on that character’s beliefs, try to understand how
and why they react the way they do.
Likewise,
reframing can come in handy in everyday life and day-to-day situations. When my
first self-published novel crashed and burned after a very promising start, my
initial response was to see it as an absolute failure. Afterwards, I reframed
it as a learning experience. I took a cold, surgical look at everything I had
done for this project, from the cover design, to the marketing, even to the
pacing and flow of the story. Within a week, I had identified a dozen amateur
mistakes I had made and vowed to learn from the experience, rather than look
back on it as something traumatic.
Unfortunately,
we all have to deal with negative experiences but changing how we view them can
be a powerful aid to improving our outlook. Without reframing, there are
countless things I probably never would have achieved. I certainly wouldn’t be
celebrating my debut novel Big Red being released worldwide!
Big Red
By Damien Larkin
We have always been here...
Traumatized by the effects of Compression travel, soldier Darren
Loughlin holds the key to the fate of Earth's Martian colonies. With his
Battalion decimated, his fractured memory holds the only clues to the
colony-wide communications blackout.
With time running out, Darren pieces together his year-long tour of duty with
the Mars Occupation Force. Stationed in the Nazi-founded New Berlin colony,
ruled by the brutal MARSCORP, he recounts his part in the vicious, genocidal
war against the hostile alien natives and all who question Terran supremacy.
But as his memories return, Darren suspects he is at the centre of a plot
spanning forty years. He has one last mission to carry out. And his alien
enemies may be more human than he is...
Damien Larkin is a part-time Planning
Analyst and a full-time stay-at-home father of two young children. He enjoys
turning terrifying nightmares into novels and currently resides in Dublin,
Ireland.
Links:
I'm also celebrating the fact that the awesome Alex J. Cavanaugh presented me with the You Rock Award. When I received the news on Monday, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with Daisy being sick and all the life complications that came along with that. This news definitely helped brighten my mood, so thanks for that Alex!
