The Toll of Writing Death

Dear readers, writers, and fans,

As may of you know, I have a prelaunch page for my second book up on Kickstarter right now.

Because of this, I've been trying to polish the manuscript up. Because I cannot help myself, I have done this while waiting for my editor, which just means more work for me. Yay, self!

She did give me one comment, however, that had me realize a few flaws and ended up in me rewriting the entire opening (4 chapters and then some). Don't worry, I've sent them to her. This meant that I had to go through the entire thing looking for anything inconsistent with the new opening, so I decided that while I was doing that, I might as well read it out loud to myself.

If you are a writer, you are doing yourself a major disservice if you aren't reading your works out loud at least once during your revising/editing process. It's incredible the things you miss until you actually physically hear it. Also, step away from it and work on something else for a while. It helps.

Once I'm done, I will get to work on a book tour and getting images, add-ons, rewards, etc. for the Kickstarter campaign. Expect it to launch in October.

It made me want to make a post about the use of present tense words in past tense passages (yes, you absolutely can do this). But that will (maybe) be later.

What I wanted to briefly address with this post is the emotions writing can evoke, and nothing evokes emotions as much as death scenes. (And no, it's not a spoiler. It's page 1.) I'll get to that.

Have you, as a writer, ever noticed that certain scenes are just hard to write emotionally, like you can't bring yourself to put your character through what you have planned for them? Not only that, but writing your character making a mistake, doing something stupid, makes me want to yell at them as I'm writing them doing it!

I have one scene in particular that is based on an event that actually happened to me (you'll have to guess). Every time I write it, my heart rate picks up and I feel my face and ears flushing. The funny thing is, though, that I'm not thinking about what actually happened to me when I'm writing it. The fact that it happened to me just makes it that much easier to step into my main character's shoes and see it better through his eyes. It feels a bit like method acting, but for novelists.

Torturing my characters in some way is almost a pastime for me. Yet, I feel the pain they are going through. And, conversely, I feel the vitriol in the villain doing the torturing, the sadistic glee. It's a rollercoaster.

I've written a few death scenes before. Sometimes they are easier because of the length (death can be sudden and unexpected), but longer ones are harder to get just right because you want to do the characters justice. What are the perfect last words (and are they even completely spoken)? Is something in this scene metaphorical? If it's referenced later, I have to make certain every reference to it is accurate (from the recalling character's POV). And, regardless of the length, every important character's death should have echoes throughout the rest of the book. Otherwise, it's just death for death's sake, and that's poor writing (you know who you are).

But sometimes writing a death scene takes an emotional toll on me. I have one in particular that I have a hard time reading out loud because it makes me choke up. You'd think that I, as the writer, who authored their death, who has gone through the scene a dozen times at least, and who could change things at any time, would get over it at some point, right? Well, it hasn't happened yet. Perhaps this is because I love almost all of my characters in some way. I tear up when editing it. I wrote the damn thing, but sometimes it feels like the character's last words didn't come from me but were meant for me.

Writing is weird. Weird and wonderful.

It's also cathartic. Therapeutic. This is why people analyze stories (please analyze mine). Sure, the author didn't INTEND anything by making the wallpaper yellow... but what patterns do you see in the story's colors that reveal something the author didn't realize they put in there, something subconscious? I find patterns all the time in my own writing that look awesome and genius and were entirely unscripted. Does it mean something that the character who embodies ADHD originally died, but now gets revived? Does that mean I have come to terms with and am working with my ADHD instead of fighting it? Maybe. Are there parallels between my character's death and my father's? Good question.

Like, seriously good question. I'll need to think about it for a bit.

This is why I think everyone should write. That doesn't mean anyone else should ever see what you wrote (and, in fact, most people shouldn't let others see it except possibly their therapists). But it can draw out difficult emotions, help you work through things, give you a safe place to release, stoke your creativity AND analytical thinking.

I now get back to it. I still have so very much to learn about so many things surrounding this craft.