Why Every Writer Needs an Alter Ego
How to free yourself by presenting only some of the real you
Stephen King is, presumably, not an axe murderer or even your run-of-the-mill psychopath. And yet, many people I know would be uneasy being in the same room as him. Except it’s not actually him they’re wary of, it’s his alter ego.
The vast majority of savvy authors stick to one genre per pen name. There’s a simple reason for this. Readers associate certain traits and series with each author’s name. JK Rowling? YA fantasy, specifically Harry Potter. Robert Galbraith? Gritty private investigator stories, specifically the Cormoran Strike series. And if you didn’t know, Robert Galbraith is JK Rowling. Obviously, there is a major age difference in her audiences, which is also a reason for the rebrand, but reader association is paramount. When she wrote The Casual Vacancy as JK Rowling, readers were, by and large, disappointed (it’s sitting at an abysmal 3.2-star rating on Amazon as I write this). They wanted more Harry Potter, and what they got was a strange, slow mystery in the countryside. This book didn’t fit with the persona people had come to associate with her and her books.
Take George R. R. Martin now. Visualize him in your mind. Is he wearing that silly cap and those suspenders? Of course he is. Does he wear those 24/7? I assume…
