Personality Quirks: B is for Bacilophobia

Are you a writer looking for some interesting personality traits and quirks to create characters? Or maybe you’re a logophile, someone who loves words, and wants to collect more of them. Either way, you’ve come to the right place. Reminder: gender neutral pronouns used.

Bacilophobia is a fear of microbes. It is also known as mysophobia, verminophobia, germaphobia, and bacteriophobia.

Monk, the TV detective. Howard Hughes. Sherlock Holmes (maybe). Donald Trump (purportedly). The person who avoids shaking hands. One who carries disinfectant wipes to decontaminate surfaces. A person who avoids crowded settings.

Etymologically, any word with phobia in it is derived from the Greek φόβος (phobos), "fear". Bacilo is from the Latin baculus meaning “stick.” Bacili are disease-causing bacteria.

In a mild form, we see someone who is always cleaning up after shimself and others. In a more pathological sense, a bacilophobe would find the condition interfering with having a normal life.

Your bacilophobic character:

You can play this character for laughs (like Monk) by showing how the obsession with germs looks to the people heesh encounters. Your character wipes doorknobs before entering, uses a wipe on shis hands after shaking hands, and other behaviors that are done matter-of-factly, seemingly unaware that non-bacilophobic people don’t do them.

Perhaps your MC has a parent in a care facility who won’t eat in the communal dining hall because of extreme bacilophobia. The parent might not allow anyone into shis room to clean it or to check on welfare. Isolation is the preference, with the only food allowed being brought by the MC from certain cafeteria-style restaurants (where all the food is on display). Because the parent won’t allow anyone to check, the parent lies dead on the floor for several days before being found by the MC upon returning from a trip. Guilt ensues.

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Bacilophobia is a real thing and writers can use it for character development from @RomanceRighter http://bit.ly/2o3UhtA

Personality Quirks: A is for Alexithymia

This is no April Fool’s. Happy Saturday. And happy first day of the April A-Z Blog Challenge.

Are you a writer looking for some interesting personality traits and quirks to create characters? Or maybe you’re a logophile, someone who loves words, and wants to collect more of them. Either way, you’ve come to the right place. Reminder: gender neutral pronouns used.

Alexithymia is a condition of someone not understanding or being able to express shis emotions.

Dexter (from the TV series). Hannibal Lecter. The cold fish. The absent mother. The distant partner. We’ve all met one of them at some time or another. The person who holds shimself in.

From Wikipedia, we find this etymology:

The term alexithymia was coined by psychotherapist Peter Sifneos in 1973. The word comes from Greek α (a, "no"), λέξις (léxis, "word"), and θυμός (thymos, "emotions", but understood by Sifneos as having the meaning "mood"), literally meaning "no words for mood".

At its mildest, an alexithymic could be the removed and distant parent or spouse your MC can never connect with. Carried to an extreme, the alexithymic personality might be a psychopath or sociopath, someone with no conscience who cannot empathize with others and who has extreme antisocial behaviors.

Your alexithymic character:

Your protag, adopted at age three, finds it difficult to connect with her adoptive family despite all their loving efforts. She searches for her birth parents as a young adult and looks forward to a reunion with her mother. Her mother is a sociopathic liar and scam artist who uses the daughter’s interest against her. The MC wonders if her inability to connect to her adoptive family is an inherited trait.

Or, a young mother finds herself unable to bond with her newborn. Is it post-partum depression, exhaustion, or is something else at work? A normally reserved and contained person, she wonders if she is capable of the selfless love the child demands. Does her restrained relationship with her husband signal a bigger problem or is she just being fanciful?

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow, brought to you by the letter B!

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April A to Z Blog Challenge Theme Reveal

Are you a writer looking for some interesting personality traits and quirks to freshen up your characters? Or maybe you’re a logophile, someone who loves words, and wants to collect more of them. Either way, you’ve come to the right place.

Welcome to Personality Quirks A to Z. “Romance Righter” is a blog addressing relationship issues, including romance, especially in terms of and with applications for writing novels. Therefore it is the perfect site to talk about personality quirks.

Most days this month (my masters give four Sundays off; I’ll post on Sunday the 30th) you will find a new-to-you—I hope—word that describes a personality quirk or trait, even some personality disorders, that I will define and then give examples for how to create a character displaying those traits.

To avoid the awkwardness surrounding manipulating pronouns, I am using gender neutral pronouns I wrote an article about in Elementary English (a publication of National Council of Teachers of English) decades ago. Heesh for he or she; shis for his or her; shim for him or her, and shimself for himself or herself.

The letters highlight a problem I have always had with this challenge. There are more words to choose from than I can reasonably do! This year I intend to stick with just one word and resist the part of me that wants to give you more as I have in past years. So I will fight decidophobia, the fear of making decisions, that plagues Librans like me. One word a day. I promise (myself)!

Plan to come back often, and let me know in the comments below how I can find your site and read your musings this month. 

Here’s where to find out more about the April A to Z BlogChallenge.

Friendship, Friend, Friending

I am participating in a small and relatively new activity within the Unitarian Universalist Association of churches. #UULent (on Facebook) is trying to bring together far-flung UUs to have a shared experience. 

As the site says: 
Yesterday was the first day of #UULent! Consider joining UUs from all around the world in a spiritual discipline of deep intention and appreciation of our world, our place in it, and an openness to Grace in our daily lives.

#UULent is designed to be used individually, as a family, or as a congregation. For each day in Lent a word has been selected. Each day participants are invited to reflect on the meaning of the day’s word, then create a photograph that represents the word, idea, practice, or concept and post it here and/or elsewhere.

Beginning on Ash Wednesday and for each day until Easter, the word for the day and a related quote will be posted. Reflect and engage throughout the day, checking for the word and quote in the morning, then come back later in the day to add your photo* and to see the images and words others have shared throughout the day (*YOUR photo - please respect copyright!).

May this intentional practice and discipline impact your daily life in ways that bring you closer to your spiritual core and offer you resiliency for life.


Now, I'm not a photo kind of gal. You might have seen my food pix each February over at "Parsley, Sage, and RosemaryTime" so I am doing my reflections with words. Each day I post at least one quote and then I ruminate on it and ask others to do the same.

One important part of #UULent, in my opinion, is through reflecting, either visually or with words, on a word each day. You are engaging in a form of meditation. Meditation has been shown to have mental and physical health benefits. Even those not given to traditional forms of meditation or prayer can find the same benefits by setting aside a few minutes each day for targeted reflection on these words.

On March 13^th the word of the day was “friendship”.

The quote posted by the group on the #UULent site was:

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. - Virginia Woolf 

Think on that. What does Woolf think that friends offer that neither priest nor poetry do? It’s not just that there’s a person. A priest is a person. In fact, a person you are expected to open up to, to tell all to. So what does a friend offer that a priest does not? Or is it that the priest is in a seat of judgment whereas a friend is not. I think Woolf’s quote could make for some interesting discussions over an adult beverage.

The quotes I posted were:

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.  William Butler Yeats

Friends are the siblings God never gave us.  Mencius

Today's post at #UULent. The word for today is "friendship". To honor the word, make a new friend, heal a broken friendship, tell someone why he/she is a friend. Consider for yourself what it takes to be a friend and how you are a friend to others. What is the most important trait in friendship?

“Friend” is used so loosely. I have lots of “friends” on Facebook, people I’ve never met, yet some of whom I have grown to know their hearts because of our interactions. But is “friending”, friendship? What makes an acquaintance into a friend? Or not?

Maybe you'd like to join me in this venture, whether you are a UU or not. Here's the list. Hop aboard.

April A to Z Blog Challenge

Hey, hey. Sorry it's been so long, but you're going to get tired of me next month. The April A to Z blog challenge, well, my part of it, is happening right here!

How does it work? For 26 days in April (we get Sundays off), a different post goes up. Day one, the letter A; day two, the letter B, and so on.

Come back on March 20th for the theme reveal! Hint: This blog deals with relationships and personalities, so all you writers come back and see what's here that might help you enrich your characters and tales.

See you next week for a regular post, and then again on the 20th for the theme reveal.

Writing Antisocial Personality Disorder Characters

Psychopaths, sometimes erroneously called sociopaths, are hard to identify, but, oh, my what interesting characters to write. Their smaller pre-frontal cortexes, regulating impulse-control and behaviors, means this is a condition not just “bad choices by bad people”. The sociopath and psychopath are victims of something they cannot control.

However, the general thinking is that psychopaths are born that way and that sociopaths are created out of extreme childhood circumstances and violence, sometimes even head injuries. The old nurture-nature argument surfaces.

Sociopaths tend to be reserved, inhibited and sometimes described at loners, whereas, psychopaths are confident, dominant, and even social. Whereas we might call psychopaths amoral, sociopaths do have a sense of right and wrong and might be martyrs or crusaders for causes that are skewed against normalcy.  

As to sex difference, three times more men than women are diagnosed as sociopaths or psychopaths. Identified women, much more often than men, reported sexual abuse, parental issues like substance abuse, or emotional neglect as children.

WebMD distinguishes between sociopaths and psychopaths, those who are clinically diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, as whether or not a conscience is operating.

The psychopath doesn’t have a conscience. The sociopath has a conscience, but it is a weak one. The psychopath has no qualms or regrets about shis behaviors or actions. The sociopath displays some guilt or remorse, but not enough to keep shim from the behavior. Self-centered and guiltless, they take actions fearlessly since they don’t accept personal responsibility for consequences for actions.

It is also pointed out that the majority of those with an antisocial personality disorder are not violent. The ones who make the news are, but thousands are walking around, living their lives without attracting legal attention. But for our books, we mostly make psychopaths or sociopaths our villain and perpetrator of violence. But it could be an interesting novel in which the sociopath next door is presumed guilty but somebody else “done the deed.”

I have a sociopath (although I leave it open to interpretation whether Cal is actually a psychopath) in my “Dinner is Served” series (first book Mission Impastable). Keeping him ambiguous is one way I have built tension in his relationships with others. Are they genuine or not? Is he capable of having a loving relationship with anyone?

In a study published a couple of years ago in Personality and Individual Differences,

researchers found that individuals scoring higher on an emotional detachment/disagreeable personality factor did not respond to yawning stimuli. You know what I mean. Someone yawns and then you do. It’s a sympathetic response. If one lacked empathy and sympathy traits, then that person did not respond with yawning.

Now think about that in a novel. A character could be unmasked as a psychopath by a clever sleuth. Or, your villain might know that non-yawning response is a characteristic and, thus, heesh tries to conceal it with a fake yawn, also detected by your clever sleuth.

Another study in Personality and Individual Differences found that narcissism and psychopathy traits predicted social media use. The more selfies men posted, the higher they ranked on the scale. Of course, taking selfies alone is not a predictor, but you could certainly have your villain obsessed with documenting shis life with selfies, Vine videos and the like, constantly documenting shis life on Facebook.

Interestingly, another study found a higher number of antisocial disorder personality people with a preference for bitter foods and drinks than the normal population. Maybe your villain likes shis coffee strong and black. Like me! Bwahaha!

Sociopaths and psychopaths are skilled actors. Manipulators who must win, who must dominate. I’d guess a good number, if not all, bullies could be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Try these tips and traits to beef up your antisocial villain.

If you enjoyed this post, I would appreciate you sharing it on Twitter and/or Facebook. 

Tweet: #Writers: Have a psychopath/sociopath in a novel? How are they different & alike? @RomanceRighter tells all http://bit.ly/1OLY0Cy

Facebook:  Writers who are writing characters with an antisocial personality disorder might pick up some ideas of how to do it right in this post by Angelica French Author.

Brooklyn and Ethical Characters

 I have to admit that I am not as discerning as many of my friends. Part of that is because, when I can, I choose friends who are smarter than I. When they’re smarter, I’m much less likely to get bored with the company or the friendship.

I carry that over to my writing critique groups as well. I want to work with better writers than I am so they can carry me along to the finish line of publication. So far so good! These people are also pretty amazing in book groups and as movie partners, as well.

I suppose it is not a surprise to those who know me that I went to see Brooklyn, a period movie, about an Irish immigrant. I am a real sucker for those kinds of tearjerkers. Even when I know I am being manipulated, the tears stream unfettered. Love it!

Now the fact that this movie was set in the 1950s, in my life time and yet is considered a period movie was enough of a shock. That brought on tears on its own!

Still, I settled in for a lovely transport to another’s life while in the company of a treasured writing crit partner. We both enjoyed the actors, the scenery, and the authenticity to the period (though we thought the heroine had too many clothes for her station in life).

The next morning, after our workout at Curves, we went for a pastry and coffee at the Basha’s grocery in the same strip mall. (I didn’t say I was without flaws.)

While licking my fingers of the cinnamon twist sugar, C.V. said something like, “I’ve been thinking about the movie, and the more I think of it the less I like the character Eilis. She was reared to have integrity, and she showed integrity early on, but her actions with both men were not ethical or moral.”

Wow! Deep. I was just enjoying the romance plot line, and dissing her for choices she made, but I never went that deep. I am far too forgiving of writers’ choices, I’ve decided. One can critique without necessarily being critical. Maybe that is a flaw of mine, too.

        

C.V. was right, of course. I, too, was uneasy with her actions and choices from mid-movie on, but I assumed it was an authorial decision to create a flawed character who finally did the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons.

But are we to that point where we expect our characters to have less integrity and we accept that as long as it turns out right, it doesn’t matter how she got there?

I attended a panel on anti-heroes at the Left Coast Crime conference recently. Authors on the panel posited that our definition of heroes has been influenced greatly by the more interesting anti-heroes in film. Think Tony Soprano, Dexter, Walter White. The lines for morality and ethics seems to have shifted.

Is that why I didn’t notice, or at least didn’t wholly disapprove, of Eilis’ actions as much as my friend? Has my sense of right and wrong been gradually eroding? How can I still like a character who doesn’t live up to the standards I set for myself?

Please respond below. I will be coming back to this topic to explore how authors are writing characters and what that means for readers.