Now I've Gone and Made my Characters Cry

[kriadydragon]

I have such a love/hate relationship with emotionally powerful scenes in stories. I adore to pieces coming up with those kick-in-the-gut moments full of exploding anger or sadness or joy or whatever, but when it comes to actually writing them I suddenly find myself seeking every possible excuse not to write today. It's just so utterly draining trying to feel what the characters' feel and understand why they feel that way in order to get those emotions and reactions across. It's something I like to get as right as possible in the very first draft, mostly to get it over with since it is so draining, but also to make sure those emotions are still there and as powerful as they can be when I edit, because I often find myself prematurely disappointed in the story if they're not.

Does anyone else find emotionally powerful scenes a cringe-worthy prospect? Or is it something you can't wait to get to?

Also, do you find that writing makes you hungry? I know it does me :P *Iz hungry and laments our lack of cereal and milk*

Comments

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

"...do you find that writing makes you hungry? I know it does me :P..."


You must have gone through considerable 'cereal and milk' when you were writing
Castles in the Sky, Jabberwocky, and Hound of Hell You Cry. . .

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

There's a good chance I may have lost weight writing Castles ;)

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, but not surprised given the content.......Poor Sheppard
He never gets a break. . .

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

In reply to your question if anyone else finds emotionally powerful scenes cringe worthy...
I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean just don't want to deal with it? or bothered by the content? if it is the latter I finished writing a scene in the ff I am trying to FINALLY finish, hopefully in 2012, and by the time I finished the one scene, I was exhausted.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I mean is it something you don't look forward to since you know how difficult/draining it's going to be. I love thinking up emotionally powerful scenes but writing them always wipes me out, and for that reason I tend not to look forward to writing them.

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

"...don't look forward to since you know how difficult/draining it's going to be.."

(((((NODS)))))) fully relate
Difficult before and draining afterwards

[sholio]

Maybe I'm a little crazy, but I love writing those scenes! They are usually my favorite scenes to write. For me, it's the payoff for doing all of the buildup, because you can't just write a scene like that out of nowhere - you have to go through chapter after chapter (or, in a shorter story, page after page) of mostly slow-moving scenes that lay the groundwork for those big cathartic explosions of emotion. But those are the scenes I look forward to most of all. I think they're so special for me in part because you don't get to write very many of them, and in part because they're the scenes that really make you feel something - and the scenes where the characters really get to shine. It's emotionally wrenching to write them, but for me it's a good kind of wrenching - and usually by the time I get there, I have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen; it's just a matter of getting all the different bits of scene whirling around in my head to coalesce into something coherent.

... though it's possible that this is one of those situations where the process is actually much more difficult than I remember it, and I'm remembering only the good parts of writing these sorts of scenes, while the bad parts have faded into the background.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Heh, you're not crazy ;) Those kick-to-the-gut emotional moments are the best thing ever. They're the moments when your characters become more than card board cutouts there for the sake of having a character, they become human.

I think for me it's mostly because those moments are so mentally draining that I find excuses to hesitate like crazy. It's not that I don't want to write those scenes - I do - I just know how it's going to leave me afterwords and it's that exhaustion I don't look forward to.

[ninja007.livejournal.com]

Well written scenes are always worth reading. And your stories have always been amazing.

Just part of the ride...

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Thanks :D

[nefhiriel.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. I know what you mean about it becoming a "cringe-worthy prospect," even after I've been so eager to create an ansty situation. I just did that in my original story, and now I'm doing it in a fanfic. I don't think it's always that way. Some angst is easier to write than other kinds. I think it might have something to do with the whump-to-angst quotent. Sometimes a character just gets hurt--and it's bad, yeah, but it's not an emotional roller-coaster. Other times, you get go along on the ride with them. Writing strong emotions invariably gets my emotions all twisted up, too.

But, yeah...I've been there. It's almost like I get preemptively embarrassed for a scene that I know is going to have grown men all but crying in it because of the situation I've put them in (yes, we all make them cry). :P

And, YES, it makes me hungry, too. That may be part of why my metabolism always seems to go into overdrive at night...

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Some angst is easier to write than other kinds. I think it might have something to do with the whump-to-angst quotent. Sometimes a character just gets hurt--and it's bad, yeah, but it's not an emotional roller-coaster. Other times, you get go along on the ride with them.

Very true. I think that's why in-the-heat-of-battle whump is so much easier to write for me, because the person gets injured but because it's kind of inevitable, and as long as said person is still alive, then it's easier for the other characters to move on. Where as whump such as, say, torture - and especially torture that is witnessed by another character - is going to demand a lot more deep emotional explorations (and that's not to say heat-of-battle injuries don't lead to deep emotional explorations, either, but torture definitely packs more of a punch).

My current original fic is leading up to a scene in which protagonist one gets roughed up while protagonist two - who's a little girl - witnesses it with nothing she can do about it. I'm already feeling jittery about that scene, and that's not even the penultimate gut-punch moment of the entire story.