Okay, I'm going to attempt to weave a few things together here . . .
ANGER
My other blog, the one where I rant about anything that makes me . . . well . . . angry . . . is inspired by many emotions, but most often of all: ANGER!
You see, I get angry when I read news articles about . . . well . . . stupidity, ignorance, politics, discrimination, and so many other things.
I also get inspired and - normally - begin writing a post based on a simple emotion.
That emotion - often anger, sometimes other emotions - colors what I'm writing about. The anger, or whatever, is often infused into the post.
Emotions are often infused into my personal writing as well. Yes, I did have a point, I just took a roundabout way of getting there. Davin over at The Literary Lab talked about emotions and tone here! Go check it out . . . if you haven't already. He posted two separate paragraphs written from different emotional states. Again, go check it out.
When I'm writing angry scenes - protagonist confronting somebody, about something, at sometime, and all that jazz - I sometimes pull from angry moments in my life and infuse that anger into my writing, into that particular scene. You see, if my characters are angry, than I want the readers angry as well. I want my readers just as mad at so-and-so because he did such-and-such to you-know-who!
I don't want my readers to think hey, I just don't get the anger. That, my friends, would be a horrible thing.
If my protagonist is angry, my readers should be angry as well. If I'm writing the scene, and don't feel the justifiable anger of my character . . . then won't the scene fall flat?
How do you deal with angry scenes? How do you deal with happy scenes? Have you read Davin's post yet? Sorry, just checking. How do you do with extremely emotional scenes? Are you angry, happy, sad, frustrated, emotional, and all that jazz when you write those scenes? Do you set the tone with your writing? Do you write from your subconscious, pulling forth memories you thought you forgot - like the time the witch cut in front of you and grabbed the nifty parking space right by the front door, or the time you lost your beloved dog, or . . . - and are suddenly infusing those emotions into your writing?
Does it help to pull on the myriad human emotions, the memories remembered, the memories buried in our subconscious and floating to the surface, when writing emotional scenes?
S
p.s. If you click here, you'll see what angered me yesterday . . . and the day before, and, well, many times over. In fact, I encourage you to click on the link. : )
4 comments:
Scott, I clicked. I fumed. I understand your anger. But this world is sooo not perfect. There are disgusting people that live in it. And until we're called over to our REAL home, this is going to be what we have to see and hear. That woman...her life...ruined. Her mother was an enabler and the neighbor too. They should all have to share the guilt and the punishment. But of course they won't.
Anger is good for writing.(read the post) It is just another emotion that we use. Another one of our 'senses' if you will. Just as we can use joy, we can use anger. And so many other emotions. I put people who have really wronged me or my family in my stories as the antagonists. That way, my judgment can rain down upon them. :) Like a thunderstorm!
And I will pray for this poor woman. Who probably wished she would die more than once.
You know Scott, bad, horrible things happen. We just have to hold on a little longer. :)
Robyn - you're so right. I'm just really amazed sometimes about peoples ability to just . . . ignore. I did a post about a woman who died . . . and it took her neighbors 23 years to figure it out! 23 years. The only reason they found out she was dead, is that she had a really nice apartment, some of the tenants decided they wanted the apartment, and . . . well, it took them 23 years. Geesh!
I often use the basis of people that make me mad as a starting point for some of my antagonists. It's really nice making bad things happen to these people. : )
We make of life, what we make of life. I choose a positive outlook, but there are times - 37 years, 23 years - that anger overwhelms me and I must write. : )
S
To write an emotional scene or even poetry, I time travel back to a place where I felt that same emotion.
I'm glad you liked that post, Scott. It is something I've been trying to figure out for awhile. As I've been revising, I find that I'm trying to draw the emotions from my characters' history. That's something that was missing from earlier drafts. I sort of get the current emotion, but I sometimes forget that these emotions would accumulate in the character over time, so that what they experienced on page 13, still has to be there on page 103. I can't just remember what happened a few pages before. So, I've been trying to work on storing that memory of the emotions. Like you, I pull on my own experiences all the time. It is interesting how different experiences can help you understand new experiences. Emotions are sort of transferable that way, which I think brings up closer together as people.
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