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May. 24th, 2014 03:10 amI might have written something that legitimately shook me up and required taking a break before I was mentally prepared to finish it.
Let me make something clear: I am a cruel, cruel writer. I put my characters through hell and back all the time. I'm not sure if this is a healthy trait or not, but I frequently relish in finding ways to put fictional people through horrible emotional and/or physical pain. (I always give them a happy ending, mind you. It's not fair to put a character through that much stress and trauma without a light at the end of the tunnel.)
So I am kind of legitimately concerned about whether I ought to unleash a story that made me uncomfortable on unsuspecting readers.
Emotional writing -- the good kind, anyway -- is kind of like making a video game: if you the creator are having difficulty beating your level, your audience is guaranteed to have an even tougher time. I've had readers tell me they teared up over things I shrugged at as I wrote it. What the heck kind of reaction can I expect from other people if I was so distressed by this story that I had to take a break before I could continue writing the damn thing?
Of course, there's always the possibility that it hit my buttons just wrong is all and the average reader will be relatively unaffected. Still. I worry for my betas.
Let me make something clear: I am a cruel, cruel writer. I put my characters through hell and back all the time. I'm not sure if this is a healthy trait or not, but I frequently relish in finding ways to put fictional people through horrible emotional and/or physical pain. (I always give them a happy ending, mind you. It's not fair to put a character through that much stress and trauma without a light at the end of the tunnel.)
So I am kind of legitimately concerned about whether I ought to unleash a story that made me uncomfortable on unsuspecting readers.
Emotional writing -- the good kind, anyway -- is kind of like making a video game: if you the creator are having difficulty beating your level, your audience is guaranteed to have an even tougher time. I've had readers tell me they teared up over things I shrugged at as I wrote it. What the heck kind of reaction can I expect from other people if I was so distressed by this story that I had to take a break before I could continue writing the damn thing?
Of course, there's always the possibility that it hit my buttons just wrong is all and the average reader will be relatively unaffected. Still. I worry for my betas.
