Each other’s writing process is different. I used to be a plotter who painstakingly filed out a stack of index cards with all the scenes I needed to write beforehand. Now, I’m a big proponent of what’s called organic writing, which mean you starts with a basic premise and characters and let the story naturally develop from there. But no matter what type of author someone is, there’s something all authors have in common.
We like a little pain. Or a lot.
The most special moment of the whole writing process to me is when characters reveal their pain to me. It’s hard to describe, but there’s this magic moment, almost giddy with anticipation, where all of a sudden, I see where a character is coming from. I know why he’s behaving the way he does. I understand his issues, his frustrations, his emotional blockades.
I understand his pain.
In real life, everyone we meet has a backstory. We all have our baggage, our wounds, inflicted by whatever we’ve been through or survived. And that pain determines how we behave today.
Some of it may seem minor, like always being the last one to be picked on a sports team in school, but it can have lasting emotional impact—like believing no one will ever want you. Other pain may be easier to spot, even for others, like a bad relationship with our parents, addiction, or a bad break up. And some pain is so deeply shoved inside that we’ve almost forgotten it’s there—until something happens that brings it right back to the surface.
The superficial and obvious baggage, that one is easy to discover for an author. But when our characters show us their real pain, their hidden baggage, that’s when things get real. That’s when the magic happens, when we can use that to propel the plot forward…and ultimately to bring some kind of healing.
As I said, all authors like a little pain.
It’s unpredictable when characters will show their pain, just like with real people. Some will show it easily, but with others you have to work harder as an author to get there. But when they do start to show you, man, it’s the best feeling in the writing process. To me, nothing beats that moment.
Well, maybe when I write “The End”…
(Photo by Pexels, Creative Commons License)
It’s almost like the characters create themselves instead of the author creating them…total shift in how I’ve always thought it would be…
[…] about the process of writing, and what a special moment it is when characters show me, the writer, their pain. I wanted to build on that a little, because not all non-writers may understand how this even […]