Have you ever asked yourself: "Did I write that?"

[Talaith]

One of the other threads got me to thinking about this. Has anyone else ever had someone read a story you just wrote and that person come back to with a comment that made you ask yourself "did I write that?"

A couple of examples comes to mind for me. I have this one series of science fiction mystery stories I wrote a few years ago and for some reason the main character's wife kept getting a bad rap.

In the first story people thought she was one of the bad guys. In the second they thought my main character was cheating on his wife with her. By the third story everyone seemed to accept her but they all thought I hinted throughout the story that I was going to have her killed off by the end.

No one could point to anything specific in those stories that made them think that way, and I certainly couldn't find anything, but they were common reactions in just about everyone who read them.

The other example is the time one of my sisters told me she loved my use of color themes to set the mood for the scenes in the story she had just finished reading. I had no idea what she was talking about. She ran through the story with me and sure enough there was a pattern to the colors of people's clothing and the settings they were in that matched the mood of the scene.

[kegasaurus]

I had a story read in my English class about a bazillion years ago. It was about the fear I used to feel when dad dropped me off at nan's house and the story was read out on one of the frequent days when I couldn't be bothered going to school.

The teacher liked the way I drew out the fear through the surroundings.

I got to school the next day to the congrats of my school mates which when I read over the story, I found it didn't deserve.

I have about thirty short stories sitting next to me which I constantly ask myself 'Did I write that,' but there is always a word added to the end of the thought and that word is 'crap.'

[Talaith]

I have a stack of stories like those too - I wish I could say I had no idea what I was thinking when I wrote them, unfortunately I always remember what I was thinking. I am particulary prone to feel that way when I read through some of my older stories where I tried to involve humor. :eek:

[gabador]

Yup. That happened to me. I was reading through my book, and I got to a fight scene. Somebody said something in there, and I got the shivers, you know, the kind that make you either feel sentimental, or think "cool" And then I said " DId I write that? It certainly doesn't seem like it." Because it wasn't a sack of incoherrent...
Funny thing is, a couple weeks later I read through it again, and still thought the exact same thing. Weird.

[Holbrook]

Not so much "Did I write that" but was that me or him?

I have, I think, an alternate personality. Or rather a part of me that up to recently I haven't let near the computer.

When I did it was strange. I wrote a whole story, some 85,000 words, in less than three months.

You might think that's a long time, but the time I actually get to write each day can be from zero to about three hours total.

Odd moments snatched here and there.

The story, well the first chapter is up on this site, the second is in the process of going up.

It is unlike any other work I have written. Its fast paced, and has it's tongue firmly in its cheek with regard to fantasy.

Up to this story I had to work hard to form my characters, but the main one in this work, walked right up to me, sat down next to me and began to talk.

It was very, very strange....

[user123]

I haven't had anyone say that to me, but I have often thought it when going over my work.

[OgreWolf]

:D