Have you ever gotten emotional while writing a certain scene? Like close to tears, or really angry that you want to go out and punch something? Why do we get so invested in out characters or the scenes we create that we feel this way.....
yeah that happens, doesn't it ? Last week a toy started speaking to me- for real- as it gave me a message.. and so began the story of Isk. Isk is scared of the toy..
I was thinking along these lines earlier, I had to create a couple of characters just to kill them off because I didn't want to kill off any of the current crew. I'm thinking that if we're not emotionally invested and we don't care about them how could we expect anyone else to be? I find it pretty well impossible to be detached from my main characters for very long. I don't think I'd want to write so much if I wasn't invested in the chars. 'don't think I'd be very good at non-fiction at all.
Yes, I've got a little emotional. I say a little because I plan before I write, so chances are I already know of the emotional things I'm going to put in there, and have already got over it by the time I actually write it out. I cried a little once, though, at the keyboard. Characters are why I write. I enjoy making characters grow. Usually the plot stems from my characters and their personalities and how they would react when put into certain situations. I have a hard time imagining me coming up with a plot and the characters stemming from that.
I picked up an old project that was originally supposed to be a short piece, but I might expand on it later on down the road when I get to a good spot in my current WIP. the MC had always wanted a relationship with her mom who, when she was really young, was taken to a psych ward for trying to drown the MC in a bath tub when she was born. Her grandma would take her to visit her mom every other month in the ward. The mom moved back in with them when the MC is 11, and this one scene happens when the MC breaks down and cries to the mom "why dont you love me? what did I ever do to make you hate me? am I so unlovable that you'd rather die than to be my mom?" I've always had a really close relationship with my mom, so I dont know why i was darn near crying when i was writing this scene.
Yes, I have cried, been pissed off, and for the fun action scenes, pretty hyped and adrenaline filled. Though I write to music, and try to find songs that fit a tone for a given scene. It helps to add an extra dimension to the whole process.
Yes. When you spend a lot of time getting inside a character's head, and then vividly imaging emotionally turbulent scenes, it can be easy to brew up some strong emotions.
my latest character was created in a context of personal senses of curiosity, wonder, awe; fun, laughing. . /EdIt: horror/ - the character is in the process of evolving, _ taking second place to the next part of the story nice 2 meet U
Yes as a matter of fact I get very Emotional I recently finished a writing project and part of the ending. . Takes place in a cemetery and the leading man lays down on the grave of the leading lady who was his wife. and he full blown loses control of all of. His emotions he is crying screaming yelling cursing. And in some small way I felt like I was there watching this and I started doing the same things that he was doing.
I cried when I wrote a death scene for one of the main characters in my series. I'd been building her up for five years, giving her hopes and dreams and goals and moments of triumph and reflection, and the death was pretty traumatic as well. I felt like I was killing my child.
Yup, writing Clair's backstory brought tears to my eyes. and i had the perfect song playing in my headphones to write it to. Hopsin's "Ill mind of Hopsin 6." A song that fit the scene and story perfectly. ( Clair losing her girlfriend to drugs after she'd gone clean. Leading to her nearly killing her dad for slipping them into Shanny's pocket when she was visiting, then leaving her family behind for good. ) It was pretty emotional, and i somehow managed to translate that to black and white.
Absolutely, I feel the emotions that my characters go through. All of them. Makes it hard when they are scared of something.
Probably because you were imagining the loss of your relationship with your mum, what it would mean without her and her love.
Back when I was writing my very first attempt at a novel, I knew that I was going to have my mc die. But I waited until my wife and children were all out of the house to write it because I knew I was going to cry when I wrote it. And I did. I think a more interesting question is whether writing has made any of you more emotional. I know I definitely am more emotional--that is, more prone to tearing up--than I was before I was writing. Or maybe it's just something that has happened as I've gotten older.
I've always written and writing has always been how I processed my emotions. As a child I wrote cards stating my wishes, and as a teenager I wrote angsty poems that I knew I'd never show anyone because those were words I wrote while I cried and let everything pour. I also wrote prayers, though they were more like massive trains of thoughts that, again, I cried as I wrote. Other times I wrote massive emails and never sent them. But always, it's been one form of writing or another. Throughout all this, of course I also had my stories - both narrative and manga. So I can't say if it's made me "more" emotional because it's something I've always done in order to process my emotions. Age, however, has a way of making you more sensitive. Movies I used to love, now I can no longer bring myself to watch because it's too heart-breaking. I think you come to see reality, as well as one's mortality, more and more clearly as you age, and suddenly these deep dark themes that have always been there don't seem so theoretical anymore. That's when it starts to touch you, and break you, and there's no need for that really. My dad put it like this, "Life's hard enough. Why not dwell on happy things instead?" My mum can't stand sad music. I didn't get either my dad or my mum when I was still a student - I thought they were being a bit dramatic - but now I understand.
I've shed a tear or two. I think this is a good thing. If I'm that emotionally connected to my characters then I'm going to do a good job working with them. I also believe when I have a strong emotional reaction to a scene it is also a good indicator I'm doing my work properly.
Those are such amazing feelings, and it's so important that authors feel that way. It's not so difficult to understand, when you think about it. Think of all the emotions we repress on a day-to-day basis--the memories we let slip away, the fights we have with friends or partners that we brush under the rug for convenience. Those feelings don't go away: they fester and rot if they're negative, and they pool and coalesce if they're positive. They bottle, and get bigger, waiting for a chance to be FELT by you, because that's the only way they go away. All it takes is a scene of a mother dying, or of a romance you didn't realize consciously that you so desperately wanted. Or a scene that fires up your heroic spirit, fires it up so much that you want to leap into action and save the day yourself. All it takes is one scene for those emotions to come bursting forth. I'd go so far as to say that these feelings are the purpose of writing--the whole game. People WANT these emotions, they want a catalyst to pull out what that they have locked away inside of them; the feelings they shove down and refuse to feel. They're powerful, moving, important emotions, and the more you as the author experience them while writing a certain scene, the more you'll be able to evoke them in your readers. That, in my opinion, is the best kind of writing. I don't think I'll be alone in saying that sometimes, to write a certain scene, you have to get yourself to feel that emotion. You have to have a drink to get happy or depressed enough to write the scene your character is in, or you have to remember terrible experiences to accurately portray them on paper. Or, on a positive note, you have to go out and have an amazing day just to scratch the surface of how happy and excited your character might be. That's the human experience right there. Evoking that is the purpose of a writer.
Fox and the Hound and Dumbo never made me cry as a kid, and now that i'm an adult, i cant bring myself to watch them because I'll cry
I haven't revisited those two films as an adult but I definitely wanna watch Fox and the Hound again - used to be one of my favourites. Now that I have a little daughter, Dumbo is probably definitely gonna make me cry. I literally just cried over a scene from a Chinese drama today: this character returned to her camp to find all her comrades dead and all the time as you're watching it, you're just thinking, "What about her daughter? Where's her daughter?" After a while, they found her hiding under a bed and the mother ran over and took her in her arms crying. Oh the crying! I cried too! Esp because I remember that time when my nanny was late coming back with my daughter but didn't tell me (because she'd left her phone at my place) and OH MY WORD my mind went wild. That moment when she rang me (I'd gone out hoping to run into them, but they'd gone home in that time), hearing my nanny say they're home. I bawled. My nanny was horrified, wondering what was wrong - they'd only been downstairs feeding the ducks! But anyway, that TV moment I just watched today - THAT was the cry. So yeah, Dumbo's totally gonna make me cry. I think even as a child I was disturbed by the idea. I don't think I ever processed it per se but the moment when they took the mother away, and the moment when Dumbo met her again in the locked up cart and all she could do was stretch out her trunk to hug him because her shackles kept her too tightly to the wall... oh man... they've always stayed with me.
SO MUCH THIS. I have 2 little boys now, and I absolutely FELL APART watching Before I Wake on Netflix. (But seriously, go look it up, it was amazing) I can't stand reading news about little children hurt or killed and I am so much more sensitive to it in movies and films now too. If I ever have a little boy character, I don't know if I'd be able to harm him in any way, lol.
My university had Foreign Movie Night periodically. One movie was based on the childhood of a man who fled El Salvador during the revolution. Its called Voces Innocentes, and I cried! sat right in the back of the auditorium and cried. It was one scene where the children were taken to the camp (soldier were rounding up all the boys when they turned 12 so that they could turn them into child soldiers), and a small band of villagers who were fighting back, took the boys into their camp to protect them. The soldiers found the camp and the boys fled. Well, the soldiers caught them, lined them up on their knees, and went down the line, shooting them in the ed execution style. The main character closed his eyes, crying, and you could hear all the other boys crying and the gunshots and them falling face first into the mud (the main boy didn't die, obviously.... the rebels found them and the soldiers, killed the soldiers and the remaining boys got up and ran away). I don't have children, but traumatic is traumatic! anything with parents or children dying or being ripped away from each other is sad to me.
Speaking of horrific scenes with children - Boy in the Striped Pajamas - never read the book but I watched the film. Right at the end as the German parents rushed into the camp and you know the German boy and the Jewish boy were both being herded into the gas chamber and you're sat on the edge of your seat hoping against hope the parents make it in time, while at the same time just knowing they won't. Then the silence after the door was closed. Oh my word.
Yes, on more than one occasion. Not so much when killing off a character, even one I like, but sometimes certain parts of dialogue or even concepts within the setting make me have overemotional feelings or something. I wrote a story where one of the main scenes, rather early on, was when an alien fleet appears above Earth...like a fleet big enough it basically formed a "ring" around the planet like Saturn...and humanity was in shambles trying to discern if these things were good, bad, indifferent, God, all of the above, like what. And the President gives a speech, and mind this is like two hours after they show up, almost literally, where he basically says he knows how powerful they are (the "average" kinda ship they had was putting out energy that was like a tenth of the energy of our sun, and they had some ships that were tenfold that size and power) and he knows how they could literally push a button and have one of the little "escort destroyers" reduce a continent to ashes...but he says that it would be pointless. There is no show of power or strength in killing someone who can't fight back ("It takes no strength to strangle a baby in a crib" was the exact line) and they had thousands or tens of thousands of years on us so killing us would be like a grown man killing a child, no strength, no strategy, just slaughtering an enemy with no hope to fight back or even ability to put up a defense. And he essentially begs them, not as a President but as a simple man of Earth, that they should not destroy us but allow us to live and to grow so one day we may even be like they are and be able to do this kind of stuff and build such amazing things. Because right now we're just infants in a crib, unable to even conceive of what they wrought, and killing us is irrelevant and shows no power or strength only viciousness. Wow I kinda got worked up thinking about it... But yeah, TLDR, sometimes I do get teary eyed.
