Does anyone ever get emotional about your characters and what you put them through? Last night i was doing character development and a plot idea, there's a group of 7 friends that are all going to die horribly one by one by the vampire. Especially that guy who sat in the plaid lazy-boy chair, he's getting bamboo shoots underneath all his fingernails just for starters. The friends are scared at one point, all of them 5 of them decide to send the cheerleader out to see if the coast is clear. Her girlfriend Thelma (thats what i'm calling her now because she is inspired by Scooby Doo's Thelma, the sexy librarian,) doesn't want her to go alone so she goes with her. They are both secondary characters, i didnt expect the scene i had planned out for them to be so perfect. It was like watching a car crash play out before my eyes. At one point Thelma gets attacked brutally, the cheerleader was following her, there was a large vicious cut across Thelma's back and green turtleneck sweater, blood sprays in a thick line across the cheerleader's pink and white lettered skirt and shirt. Thelma's blood painting tiny points of red across her face. i cant write the inbetween stuff again i'll just start crying again. She feels Thelma's last breath on her lips... Snow drifts lightly onto them. This hurt to write last night. I didnt expect that. I didnt feel anything for these characters, expect the cheerleader because i'd gone deeper into her character adding history to her. I didnt expect to be affected this way. Anyone else go through these pangs when writing your characters?
No. I don't feel anything for my characters. To me, they don't inhabit a space of real people. Then again, I don't get invested in film, television, or novel characters either. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I don't emotionally react to characters, only situations sometimes, and that's seldom. I read and write because I enjoy it, not for any sort of sentimental attachment to anything I read or write about. My characters are things that serve a purpose to tell a story. Outside of that story, I don't think about them. I don't feel empathy for them. I don't like or love them or feel any sort of sentiment one way or another.
I didn't expect to be, I thought it would be easy for me to kill these two off for starters... Nope. Every keystroke was like a dagger in my heart.
I can only say I've actually cried once while writing my manuscript. It wasn't at anything sad either. It was when the MC told his girlfriend he loved her. And I killed all the main characters, so yeah... Like, I feel kind of bad for them and all the torture I put them through (and, like, ending their lives very prematurely) but it doesn't bother me too much. I guess probably because I don't consider them as dead or alive in my mind. They're just there. Also, I had a lot of the stuff that was going to happen preplanned before writing it, so I wasn't really surprising myself with anything that was cry-worthy.
Maybe I, am just evil, but I laughted with this evil maniacal laugh as I planned a horrible death scene for one of my character. Haha.
I do "feel" for my characters, yes. They're my "fictional children" so all the bad things that happen to them (even though I'm the cruel "father" who puts them there) makes me slightly sad. It helps to feel a situation from the prospective of the character, in my opinion.
My boyfriend and I laugh about my characters' deaths sometimes. It's awful, but I can't help it. (also doesn't help that he doesn't like to talk about my writing, so when he does I just go along with it)
I felt very tortured writing my idea out. It was fresh, maybe that's why it was so hard for me to do. I've got some horrible deaths planned for the other scooby gang one in particular is based on a real life event. I felt giddy adding him as a character to my story... He dies last. I have family who have read some of the story, i find myself laughing maniacally as well. I feel very homicidal sometimes, maybe i should go turn myself in... Does anyone else write from a method acting point of view? This helps me feel the situation and be present in my story. It hurt quite a bit being present during Trixie and Thelma's moment. Ever since i started writing again, i find myself enjoying the good character moments and the homicidal ones. I'm laughing now inside my head, a lot of bloody deaths planned. All of them entertaining. I need to embrace those character moments i think, even if it hurts writing them. Maybe that's just my writing style? I connect with all my characters in some way because i breathed life into them, the ones i love and lose are the ones that hurt the most. The ones i want to hurt the most are on the other end of the spectrum i laugh maniacally at whats planned.
Sometimes I kill characters off. Then I have a glass of wine, cry for a bit, and delete the scene. I'm a wuss. I just want everyone to be happy. (After I'm done torturing them.)
Haha, you and me both. The question is, will they lock me up in prisoner, or place me in some mental asylum somewhere.... when all things consider I would make s pretty good serial killer.
No, I don't care about my characters because they're not real. To me, they're nothing more than bits for a socket wrench.
Yes, in short, I do feel for my characters, and I do hate putting them through hard times. I remember one particular scene was so difficult for me to write that I had to keep walking away from it. I do NOT enjoy torturing my characters, even when the plot demands that they suffer. However, I do think empathising with the characters helps with the scene. Without the writer's empathy, these scenes of suffering just become plot points, don't they? It's going to be difficult to get your readers feeling emotional and upset on behalf of your characters if you don't feel emotion when you write the scene, I reckon. All the blood, gore, screams, spattered guts, whatever will just end up being engineered scene props, unless the reader feels fear, pain, grief and anger, as well.
Coyote i'm not a drinker of the alcohol, just blood. Could you recommend something red? I do want my characters to be happy. Except for the ones that are my walking blood bags. *shrugs* Hey vampires gotta eat. Necro! you get me! *touches tip of my pinky finger to yours* Lets join forces break out of whichever place they put us in, but not before draining everyone inside. TheeEEEeeen! Go on a psychopathic killing spree! Wonder twin powers activate! Form of a firemen's axe! Homer you should join Necro and i on our killing spree. It's going to be bloody good fun. We could pay Bart Simpson a visit your rival. jannert The personification of wisdom made flesh! Writer's Empathy I've never heard the phrase before but it fits. I definitely felt that last night. I feel like all the years i spent only doing my clay statues has played out into my writing. With my statues i almost never made something without imagining a picture of what it would look like exactly before i put clay to hands. I almost always came out exactly like i imagined. The same can be said for my story, i imagine the scenes as much as i can, or write out a idea of a note trying to flesh the idea out as much as possible before i put pen to paper. When i made my statues i always felt like there was some life in them even though they couldnt move. So when i write my story i cant write anything i feel unless i feel something and connect with it on an emotional level. Because just like my statues that have life to them, so does my story (i hope). tanx all for the replies going to my coffin for sleepy time.
Laughs maniacally again reading this. *Then closes her eyes glowing like candles to rest in her coffin... with Bose speakers on either side of her head playing Bring me the horizon - Deathbeds.*
I've never cried for my characters... but I do feel for them. I find myself wanting to "help" them... but not compromise the plot. Then sometimes I fill wind myself goofy smiling because of something my character "said" and then I'll realize how much I look like an idiot just sitting there smiling at my laptop screen. I feel like if you get invested in the growth of your character, developing their quirks and personalities, you become invested in them. Like reading a book or watching tv. I've yelled at some many tv and book characters! I know they aren't real, but you just get so invested in them that they seem real!
I do get emotionally invested in my characters, but it is always worse when I invest myself in them to begin with. Know what I mean? When I write about what I know (when my character's pain is my pain), that is when I may have to take a breath. Writing therapeutically is a double-edged sword!
I'm highly persuasive and readers are easily influenced. ETA: that's a half joke. Let's say I reserve passion for the evocation of emotion, not the fictional "people" who are incapable of possessing them.
It's funny, I knew that Becka was going to be molested from the get-go, and that never bothered me. What did was when I figured out why it was possible and why her dad wasn't there to stop it, and that still bothers me.
So far... I have cried when Marckus sits with the Cyborg Lady when she dies from a severe torso injury from shrapnel. He held her hand, and closed her eyes when she died. (Getting a little teary eyed thinking about it.) That was on Callisto. Been on quite a few adrenaline junky rampages with Marckus, Graxis, and Corlixia (AKA Mother Confessor from the first book). Nothing like running and gunning, shooting the shit out of the bad guys. Stabbing and hacking them to pieces with knives, swords, and in a couple instances a Medium Armor war-frame combat knife. And the ever fun barbaric hand-to-hand combat, and breaking necks, a spine once, and one instance a guy got his head crushed by a really big secondary character, and a couple of instances where somebody loses an eye from being pistol whipped, or cause Cor was stalling. So lots of red and purple blood, and bodies/body parts to wade through in a massive death swamp. Felt the hell that Zlada 'Red Wolf' Volkov goes through when Nicholas 'Rhino' Morgan dies. Also when she got captured and raped on Callisto, though she did beat the ever loving fuck out of her rapists face (or more precisely using a pair of basically brass knuckles and pounded a 3 star Generals face off). Basically you don't mess with Zlada, unless you want to be on the wrong end of her sniper rifle or temper. Been creeped out a smidgen with the torture scenes, more so with the second book than the one in the first. Oh yeah in case you don't know, Cor is a sexual sadist with a few centuries of torturing info out of people/aliens, but she is also an emotional wreck that does not like the fact that she enjoys it a little too much. That is how she got the title Mother Confessor to begin with. Had a bit of fun with the Cantina scenes when things are more relaxed and everybody is just having a good time and getting drunk. Also cried a little when Marckus leaves his pistol for an old girlfriend to kill herself in her office on Pluto. There a little secret that hasn't been told to him yet, that she really was stuck between a rock and hard place as for her being stuck way the hell out there. Gonna have to find a way to let him see her private console with the diary explaining that whole ordeal. Overall it has been a thrill ride of vengeance, fear/terror/dread, adrenaline, and sorrow.
I think this is a bit of flawed logic. Like Homer, I don’t care about my characters because they are vehicles to evoke emotion. I don’t feel anything for them outside of liking what they can do for my story. The flaw comes in that not caring about my characters the way I care about real people does not mean I don’t care about what my story says or the emotion it evokes. I know what it means to care, to experience human things, so I try to write it convincingly. How I feel about my characters doesn’t impact whether or not I can convey those emotions. I deeply care about whether or not I can get that right. And, that’s how an audience can care even if I don’t.
Trixie is never going to shower or bathe in my book, the only thing she will fear is rain or being thrown into water or maybe a heavy snow. She wants to keep her lover's smell on her for as long as possible so she's never going to wash Thelma's blood off. I've turned a super model good looking cheerleader that loved doing the pyramid in practice so she could look up Thelma's skirt. I've turned her into an unhinged bloody ratty hair squirrel girl... I'm sorry I killed your girlfriend Trixie! I'm so sorry!
