Okay. Today marks the third day I cried while writing. I get why I did this and the other times but I just wanted to share. I also wanted to open this as a thread for anyone else who had an emotional experience and wanted to share. For some reason it still feels so weird to actually cry. I mean I came up with the scene. I knew where it was going. How could I not be ready for it! Edit to add: I am not claiming that being emotional is a sign of good writing. This is more intended for others to gush about there own time. Because having a moment made me want to hear other peoples. My scene that made me cry today. A girl that died. She was destined to die when I started writing. Plot and such and I knew that and it didn't bother me but today I was writing not even the death scene but the establishing her scene. She was talking about her hopes and dreams and it got to me. Poor girl. R.I.P. Bethany Tarvoss. @cutecat22
I came up with an idea for a character death that shocked me to my core at first. And it takes a lot to do that. This particular character is a good friend of one of the MC's, and though he is not a good fighter (he's a lightweight scout) he always does his best to help those around him. But when the main villain reveals one of his powers, that character ends up possessed by shadow spirits as well as fifty others. The MC's are forced to kill him first, then each individual of the rebellion they had tried to hard to start goes down one by one in the villain's plan to weaken them both physically and emotionally. They try to not kill him, consider letting themselves die, but know that in order to save both humanity and the other races they must live long enough to kill the villain. I was so shocked about the idea of killing such a gentle soul that I literally screamed and flipped the table, so to speak. As well as many of the other characters that had all fought so hard only to have it end the worst way. And what makes it worse is that the villain himself is an innocent man trapped and controlled by another shadow spirit, which pretty much represents the devil himself.
That is pretty brutal. It reminds me of the first time I cried writing. Because a innocent soul did die but the difference being he did it to himself. He stabbed himself on a soul eater blade to give the blade his soul which then made it strong enough to protect his friends. He was kind of a dick about it though and by that like agreeing not to because the MC saw him thinking about it and then doing it anyway after it was too late for the MC to try and stop him.
Maybe you're just a really sensitive or empathic person. Maybe something about this character is triggering something from your past. I think this stuff is kinda cool, but I'm training to become a psychotherapist so of course I would. I don't think writing has made me cry before but I look forward to it!
I cry pretty much every time I kill a character. But I also cry at long-distance commercials. I'm a cry-er.
No Twilight references here, my manuscript was well underway long before I encountered that pop culture train wreck.
This has happened to me. Not full blown crying, but tears welling in my eyes, an overwhelming feeling of melancholy. It's a good thing as far as I'm concerned, it shows emotional investment in your story/characters.
Lol. I never saw Twilight but I asked my friend what she liked about the characters. 5 minutes of silence later she stormed off and called me an asshole. lol. Worth it.
I've never cried because of something I wrote. Apparently a love connection in my novel made my mom cry, though. And I'm not gunna lie... In the second Twilight book, there's a part after Edward leaves Bella that's just blank pages with the passing months typed in the middle... Flipping through them.. October.... November... December... January.. Or whatever the months actually were... I cried. lol Silly, right?
A simple 'four months had passed since Edward left...' didn't suffice, huh? I've felt moderately sad for my characters, but not full blown crying.
I've had moments where I've been stricken by the gravity of what my characters go through. I've never cried, though.
That reminds me. A week ago one character was having a panic attack. I caught myself breathing quicker while writing that. Maybe I am just weird. lol
If you're weird, we're both weird. I often mumble dialogue to myself when writing it; I've also been known to half act out fight scenes.
I think we authors are all kind of weird in our own ways. I mean, we're the ones who create entire worlds out of thin air so a bit of weirdness is perfectly all right.
If you actually move YOURSELF while writing, that can't be bad. However, it doesn't guarantee good writing either. You are seeing and feeling your characters beautifully, but you still have to make your readers see and feel what is moving you. That ...well you won't know if you've succeeded until you get feedback. I made myself cry in only one place in my MS ...and it's a place that probably won't strike others the way it struck me, because they don't know where it came from in my life. However, I've had other people point out places that made them cry, so I guess there's some emotional involvement in what I wrote. However, it's interesting that no two people have got back to me saying they've cried in the same place as somebody else! It's all down to what happened in their life that connected with what I wrote. You can't control that, can you?
Moving yourself while writing means barely anything to the end result. Just because you feel the emotion of a moment doesn't mean you are conveying that to the reader. You've internalised it and given it extra meaning, but the reader approaches it differently, and can be missing a lot of what made it emotional for you. I've never cried or become emotional writing scenes, but sometimes when reading it back.
Depends what you're writing about. If it's about a character dying, drawing their final breath in the last throes of cancer; and if you've experienced this in life and use that to draw on creatively, as I have, then you'll perhaps forgive me for being moved to tears as I went through that process.
Wait... so we create worlds out of thin air? Well now that makes authors sounds more like Gods than weirdoes.
