Writing Bravely (Even When It's Uncomfortable)

One of the biggest problems we face as writers is being authentic, because the truth can sometimes be scary. Even though we are fiction writers and are making stories up, those stories must contain real emotion, because if they don’t have that, they will have no resonance. They will feel flat, and have no substance, and the reader will not be moved. If we stay safe, our stories stagnate.

Emotions come in all shapes and sizes, and the character in your story can feel any one or more of a number of them. Anger, sadness, lust, grief, happiness… the trick is to project those feeling onto the character from your own history and life experience. But – and this can often be the tricky part  - this can trigger feelings and traumas in us. So you need to be gentle and know the issues that you have to tread gently around.  Be gentle, but brave. The payback will be worth it. 

If there is a particular topic you fear writing about, create a character (just for this exercise) and start writing by asking the questions: What does my character fear dealing with and why? Once you have the answer to the why, ask “What if (???) changed?” And then ask how he might approach it then. Asking “why” questions in a character study where you have projected the emotion or situation onto a character can bring up very interesting revelations. But they are all so valuable on the page.
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I find it really useful to read the work of writers I admire, who are putting their emotional output into the world one way or another. Reading widely in your genre and style is a good way of seeing how someone else did it. Look at the work that moves you, at sentence level. How did they do it? What rhythm or format did they use? Emulate it.

At Time to Write, my twice-daily writing group, we use the Wednesday evening session for dissecting great stories (and some not so great, because it is important to see how those were constructed, too). This is always such a fascinating thing to do and really does give you food for thought. You can join us if you like by clicking on Courses and Events in the menu bar above. All details are there.

Two things to ask you about – and you can reply in the comments below - Is there something you’ve been circling but not quite writing yet? And… do you read much in your genre, and do you think it improves your own writing? I would love to know…
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Until next time…