Author:
Blog About:
I am not sure how long blogs remain in front of people - I suppose I should note the number of reads to work that out, but I suspect that if it is more than a few clicks on the scroll bar it is lost to most.
I like to blog about writing and I was intrigued by Gwen's blog "Which is the easiest to write about": "Out of curiosity, Is it easiest to write about a deeply flawed, even perhaps handicapped protagonist, or one who is nearly perfect, and very high IQ?"
In my last comment on that post (reproduced below) I wondered instead which was "the hardest emotion to write from". I a talking about stories told in the first person, as I think the majority of mine are. Sometimes that first person is an detached observer, but more often they are involved and emotive as my last 10 short stories for 2020 show:
"... In the last 15 stories I have posted 10 are in the first person:
"Fan" is a young boy, less intelligent than me, but smart.
"Tit Man" is told by a stupid man, whose fascination for breasts ends up with him getting his own.
"Domination" is told by the doctor. I have tried to keep his arrogance in his attitude to his patient, and his captor, but in the end he finds himself passive and yielding (chemistry?)
"Twister" is the story told by the cop who finds "her". I got into this character. He is not so smart - methodical to the point of being dull, but has a strong sense of justice and is a person looking for love. Did I get it right?
"Beauty Boy" is not smart. Here the language might betray that I am more clever than to person speaking.
"For Daddy" is told by the father and we can judge him as unpleasant - he is. He is not "batshit crazy" as I mentioned in my first comment, but he is without conscience I think.
"AGD" is told by a scientist. He might be more intelligent than me.
"The Translator" is told by a lesbian, so I am outside my usual cast. She is intelligent and I think that shows, but the overall impression I wanted to give was her sense of betrayal.
"Office Story" is told by a transwoman, but it is not about her transition but another's. She is clever, but here the dominant emotion is envy, and that colors her narrative.
For me the intelligence is less important than the personality and the driving forces.
A better question might be: Which is the hardest emotion to write from?"
So I am posing that question now...
Maryanne
Comments
Emotions
Are powerful things and as writers we can play with them in the characters we create and use to tell the stories. Occasionally I will write a stereotypical type character to express stereotypical ideas or emotions, people who are unreasonable or driven by negatives, who love no one including themselves, unChristian Christians, because there are plenty of them about and they seem driven by hate rather than love, so they obviously know nothing about the New Testament. Perhaps the one I find hardest to use is grief or a sense of loss. Having lost a child myself, it is very difficult to actually describe how someone goes through terrible loss, yet it happens in real life so it must in our stories as well.
Some authors also seem unable to describe emotion in a subtle or nuanced form which is probably harder to do than full on things, but I like to do so in some of my stories depending upon how long the story is and its context. Occasionally, I wonder if it's too nuanced as some readers miss it while others see it and comment, which I suppose shows that you can't please all the people all of the time.
Angharad
Slightly off subject
I prefer to write about perceived naivety. My favorite is a character that has a sense of innocence to the world around them, but are not so hopelessly stupid that they don't know some things. I like to have them learn along the way. I enjoy writing about their failures, or at least their stumbling, and how they pick themselves back up after. Everyone is a flawed human being. Those flaws can be anywhere from minor to downright detrimental.
Steering that back into the conversation; apprehension, fear and surprise are some my favorite emotions. Because of their ties to that loss of innocence or realization. I also like exploring trust and acceptance in relationships. However, my least favorite to write about are anger and grief. I am not a very angry person. I get angry sometimes. I yell at traffic. But I don't get sucked in to hatred or loathing. So that is very hard for me to channel when writing.
Whereas grief, I tend to gloss over in writing. I think every story I've posted the protagonist has at least one dead parent. Every single one of those stories I have put it "far in the past" so to speak. So that my character has moved on, or was too young to realize the impact. My most recent story, Witch Hunt, I had my protagonist confront it, realizing they hadn't yet tried to move on. That part of the story was difficult, and I teared up at one point trying to pull that emotion out of myself. Hopefully I pulled it off?
~Taylor Ryan
My muse suffers from insomnia, and it keeps me up at night.
The Innocents and the Grieving
Hi Taylor,
I think that I appreciate the naive such as my transitioner in "Underage" and the other party in "The Quarterback" and "Influenced" but grief is hard to express first person because it is so complex. I have tried to express it in "Call for Help" and "The Leap" where it drove the story teller to face contemplate suicide. Anger is so much easier to express.
Maryanne
Grief and other challenges
Grief has so many forms of manifestation, some really subtle while other times overt. And some grief never really goes away, it can pop out and bring you to your knees at random even years after a loss. Whereas most days you're fine. It's a big part of the book I'm working on now, hopefully the story will do the complexities justice. Depression would be another hard one to do properly I think. I've been watching the show Jessica Jones off and on during the holiday break from work (which is almost over! noooo!), and some moments they manage showing that well but others they try and don't quite hit the mark.
1st person grief
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
~Funeral Blues by WH Auden
(Then at the funeral they probably told him bugger off
ya bleedin' poof, you warn't a member of his family!)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But for me the hardest emotion to write is pure malice + cruelty.
Sadism. I'm no Saint but going there to describe a villain's
feelings is a creepy unpleasant experience + when I'm
done I'm still not sure if I got it right, it's so alien...
(see Uncle Frank the pedophile ghost in my Christmas
horror story THE SILENCE OF THE NIGHT
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/24405/silence-night
for the ultimate emotional squickfest- UGH!)
~hugs, Veronica
The Potato says:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o4jTclx61Tc
The Greatest Sin
The hardest emotion to write about is the emotion that causes a character to be dishonest.
Honesty is basic to being a human. When you lie you give up part of yourself.
This becomes even harder to write when it's the protagonist who has become an unreliable narrater.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)