How My Degree in Sociology Influences Me as an Author

I am often asked what inspires the books I write. Like many authors, my standard response is that inspiration can come from anywhere: a news story, a poem, a song, or a conversation I overhear on the street. But when I step back and consider this question from a broader perspective, I realize that what drives all of my stories is something larger than a single thought or moment-in-time observation that sparks my interest.

Rather, it is my endless appetite for understanding the human condition—the drive to uncover clues about why we are the way we are—that leads me to become truly obsessed with an idea, to the point that I spend months researching and imagining an entire narrative around it. It’s a hunger I can trace back to my college days, to my struggle to figure out what I should do with my life.

Initially, I’d planned to major in psychology, thinking that helping people work through their problems would be a noble pursuit and a good fit for my personality. (And honestly, I was a huge fan of getting paid to sit in a comfortable chair all day.) But then, during my sophomore year, I took an introductory course in sociology and became instantly fascinated by the study of how our society is structured—how its various functions affect and shape us as individuals, much of the time in ways we don’t even realize.

I learned how to identify the various factors that influence a person’s actions and belief systems, including, but not limited to, religion, ethnicity, economic status, education, and family. I looked at my assignments as puzzles, sorting through the factors, pairing them up into endless formations that could influence who a person turns out to be, and how he or she would respond to situations differently, depending on how they were conditioned, and in what societal circumstances they were raised.

I didn’t know it, then, but in studying this field, in completing these assignments, I was already practicing a writer’s task of character development, which is fundamentally about determining the inner workings of a character’s personality: what they believe, hate, love and desire above all else. Majoring in sociology helped me to take this task one step further, teaching me to identify why they believed, hated, love, and desired these things.

As a writer, showing the reader why a character behaves the way he or she does is elemental to good story telling. In order to explore our culture’s growing epidemic of acquaintance rape from both the victim and the perpetrator’s point of view in IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME, it was vital to fully sketch out each main character’s past—how they were shaped, which experiences molded their sense of self, and then show all of this to the reader.

If my characters were to simply act without any reference to what motivates them, the reader would have no reason to become invested in their story.

For example, if I haven’t done my job of fully fleshing out Tyler, the male protagonist, as a complex, multi-dimensional individual, the reader will lack an understanding of why a seemingly kind and good young man could commit the heinous act of raping his best friend, nor will they be compelled to care. But if I provide adequate context, if I explore the factors that define and mold his choices, the reader is more likely to understand, though not necessarily empathize with, his actions.

I had to show how this character’s family situation—growing up with a sexist and misogynistic father who regularly belittled his son—planted dangerous, subconscious seeds in Tyler’s mind that, in a moment of crisis, enabled him to carry out a horrific, life changing act of violence.

Providing this kind of background is not an excuse for what he did; rather, it’s meant to provide context, not only for this individual, but also, for the very real epidemic of acquaintance rape as a whole.

I’ve been writing since the ripe age of seven, when my second grade teacher took a selection of my short stories and compiled them into a hand-sewn book, but I never believed that I could spin my love of putting words on the page into a career. (It’s too hard to get published, people told me. Didn’t you know that Gone With the Wind was rejected 200 times?) After graduating—only to become an overeducated, underpaid restaurant worker—I decided to give the storyteller in me a chance, and twenty years later, here I stand, with eight novels to show for my efforts.

Writing about polarizing topics is, without a doubt, rooted in my background in sociology—in my captivation with what makes us “tick.”

I tend to be inspired by controversial subject matter (mothers and alcoholism, homelessness and mental illness, domestic violence, and currently, sexual assault), and then proceed to flesh out flawed, realistic characters who are dealing with these issues and finally, to help them navigate their way through.

My job as a writer is to put ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and explore what happens to them as a result, and my goal is always to get people talking, examining their own belief systems, and the sociologist in me can’t help but to hope that if I’ve done my job well, my readers will see the world from a slightly new and more empathetic place.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing