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I am always up late, due to my shift work. I always seem to post here and wait in ernest for a reply, thinking that I will actually get one this time of night. I just get so excited.
This excitement, over writing, is very new to me. I absolutely hated writing as a kid and tolorated it through college. Now that I have something I want to write about I enjoy it. I love to see the look on peoples faces as they talk about what I just wrote. When I saw someone recently get teary-eyed after reading an excurpt from my story I knew I had hit something on good.
I have one question though, does anyone else get emotional about their own characters? At one perticular part I was trying to outline I had tears streaming before I could get all the words down. Or am I just wierd?
I can't say I ever got teary over an outline. Then again, I don't outline much any more. I definitely have characters I'm emotionally attached to. At first, I had a little difficulty putting them through all the pain and suffering the story demanded, but I got over that.
I do enjoy seeing the antagonist get their come uppance.
[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited July 08, 2010).]
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Well I was oulining a scene in my story that was very grim. I was trying to envision the emotions of situation so I could describe it. I saw the scene in my mind play out, I pictured the death and destruction happening, I felt from the characters what they might feel having their lives torn from them. The lost of loved ones, the disbelief, the shock, the anger and rage with nothing to strike at, the feeling of being powerless and at the mercy of the merciless. I for a brief moment lived their lives. That's what brought me to tears.
Normaly I would not admit to this, but since none of you can see me or know me personally (hopefully), well...
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I've never gotten actually teary, but I do get very emotionally involved with my characters. I often have to leave some time after writing an emotionally charged scene to let the feelings drain off.
Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009
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I've worked nights for the past twenty years, give or take a few years where I managed to wangle a spot in a daytime lineup. But there's no internet access from it, so I'm usually here sometime in the morning before I have to turn in and go to sleep.
I get emotional about my characters---but I sometimes despair of ever getting anybody else to do the same.
I did have a bad experience with one character about, oh, twenty years ago (just after I started that job, actually). I worked up an outline, then a couple of chapters, along with what turned into ten thousand words of biography of the character.
I was turning it over in my mind one night at work, and it dawned on me that I'd fallen in love with my character. Now, person-to-person relationships aren't my greatest strength, even when they involve me and a real person. With a fictional character, even one of my own creation, what could I hope for?
The end result? Well, I never moved the story beyond what I'd written...I worked on the biography for a couple of years and mined it for ideas and settings a couple of times...I tried a couple of times to start up fresh but failed each time...and had no luck moving the character to another story, either...
Never fall in love with your characters...bad for business...hard to let go...
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I usually get emotionally drained when I kill someone. I once did it in a comedy (and it was hilarious) and I kept having to stop myself from going back and deleting it. There was no question in my mind that it was supposed to turn out that way, but it hurt and it turned it into dark comedy for a moment.
I usually get off 1 AM, last night I was up till 5 writing a list of my favorite books for a presentation that I had to give at 10 today. I sometimes feel I'm a much more intelligent person on four hours sleep. Of course that's just what the donkeys tell me, I don't know how much I can trust them, have you seen the flavor of hats they read?
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Cry. Well I blame it on my allergies. Yeah, I tend to get teary eyed when I write, especially when I am feeling the story and it nears its end as the characters have achieved the change. As far as thoughts late at night, mine happen just as I get into bed, and my wife wants to beat me, as I get up and write them down, then get back into bed, then bamn they hit me again. I really need to learn how to write in the dark.
Posts: 1168 | Registered: Mar 2008
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It might just be me, but If you don't have an emotional attachment to your MC it's hard to imagine writing a Great story. A good one yes, but not great to me. I've done a lot of things business wise. (Advertising for one) Taking an another persons idea and making it come to life, and the clients have walked away happy, but to me there's 100% and then there a 110%. The dividing line for me is I give a 100% to work because It's there vision and someone is paying me for my talent. I give a 110% to my writing and artwork because it's my vision and I have something worth more than money invested in it: A lifetime of dreams and ideas that somehow found no voice deep inside me, and now wishes to see the light.
Every time I sit down and brainstorm about ideas I'm digging into a well within myself, and a good portion of that is emotional content to find a needed description.
The reason I love art and writing so much is the sheer thrill of creating. People flaunt there expensive junk all the time around me. There phone this and TV that, but having real talent to me is a wondrous thing. Even if you don't achieve greatness it definitely wasn't a wasted life.
So let the talkers talk, drink there beers, and pat themselves on the back, while you work your ass off to put pen to paper.
Every word you write burns your essence a little deeper into life, and as time passes for those who sat and scoffed, there legacy will only be remembered as an insignificant background to your main character.
It's very hard to describe emotion if you can't feel it. I believe it's a tool a writer draws on to convey that important scene to the reader. The better you can convey it, the more the reader lives it. So cry, dance, laugh, yell, do it all, and then write it down, because some part of you is always a main character, so how can you not be attached.
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Ah, I know too much about mathematics to give more than one hundred percent of myself...
*****
Yesterday I started to post something about working the graveyard shift, with interruptions, for over twenty years...then I noticed it was a revival of an old thread and I already had said something about it.
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