I remember watching an old J.K. Rowling interview and she said that there were a few scenes she tried to avoid because of the emotional impact it had on her. Just curious if something like this has ever happened to you before, and if so, what was it? 

AuthorMarcel Wrote: I remember watching an old J.K. Rowling interview and she said that there were a few scenes she tried to avoid because of the emotional impact it had on her. Just curious if something like this has ever happened to you before, and if so, what was it?

Nope, and I am one to really write impactful scenes to drive to tears. While I experience it, that feeling drives me to craft it even better. I write tragedy a lot, if I was to cry at everything. I would be the worst damn tragedy writer there is, and that is putting the words lightly. I have feelings like normal people, and those emotions makes me thrive even harder to raise it to its peak. I do not avoid, but rather embrace it. This comes with tons of practice and hard planning. I feel, and experience what I write. Which the higher my emotions, the more I know of my improvement. This helps me push even further, and bring it to its peak.

Some might call me cold, but if I did not develop a thick skin for this. As I said, I’d probably be the worst tragedy writer there is.

Edge Wrote:

AuthorMarcel Wrote: I remember watching an old J.K. Rowling interview and she said that there were a few scenes she tried to avoid because of the emotional impact it had on her. Just curious if something like this has ever happened to you before, and if so, what was it?

Nope, and I am one to really write impactful scenes to drive to tears. While I experience it, that feeling drives me to craft it even better. I write tragedy a lot, if I was to cry at everything. I would be the worst damn tragedy writer there is, and that is putting the words lightly. I have feelings like normal people, and those emotions makes me thrive even harder to raise it to its peak. I do not avoid, but rather embrace it. This comes with tons of practice and hard planning.

That makes sense. It's almost as if you've become desensitized a little bit in that respect. 

AuthorMarcel Wrote: That makes sense. It's almost as if you've become desensitized a little bit in that respect.

Not desensitized, I still feel everything if not more. However, if I let that bother me. I would never be able to write tragedy. The higher the emotions I feel, that is how I know of how good the piece is. This makes me push even further. When you write in this genre a lot, you feel, but as you get better, you don’t cry. Since you have done this so much at this point, that it is part of the craft. Just recently I wrote what is actually one of the best tragedies I have done in a long time. I am excited to get it out when editing is done with.

While I was doing the planning, I felt how deeply it would leave an impact. And as a writer, my job is to translate those feelings as accurately as I can to the reader. So I do not turn away, avoid, or cry, I make it happen. Needless to say, the final piece was a lot better than I expected.

Yes, I have. A few times. It occurs at an unjust death.

I wrote about a kidnap victim that gets stuffed down an abandoned oil well, the chamber still filled with the mix of viscous goo and pumping solution... the young man had been tortured, and he finally embraced his fate, knowing his pain would finally be over. This is only one of the occasions.

How this occurs for me is, when stories begin to "tell themselves", I become a passenger with too much information only - I become a witness, with my outrage and empathy. The evil character is his own being, seemingly unconstructed by me, and the victim an undeserving innocent. It "happens before my own eyes", and I cannot do anything to save him!

Sounds odd, when I am the creator, of course, but when you are IN the characters, THEY prevail, and THEY act of their volition it seems.

I actually grew a little nauseated as well, it was so real.

I don't try and interpret this as "good writing", but I have been told it was. Certainly, very visceral and tragic. 

Not yet, but I hope I will at some point, imagining a scene vividly enough to make me, the creator, to cry my heart out.

Yes—I have cried many times over what I’ve written. I close myself off enough while I write to avoid crying the first go-around, but when I’m reading over certain parts of my stories it does bring a few tears. There have been parts that are so emotionally packed, I can’t even look at the screen.

It’s usually because of a death. Most of the time when I kill off characters, I have the other characters acting very emotionally to it. Even with some happy moments, I want to cry. It’s just a matter of how attached I am to the characters—every character I make is my child, some more than others. It helps that usually when read over stories, I remember almost nothing of the writing process; it’s like I’m a normal reader, but I already have an attachment to the characters.

I don't think cry, but there have been a few scenes that I go back and read (actually listen) to and they tug at the heart strings mostly because I know what the character went through to get to that point and it's really emotional seeing whatever decision or sacrifice they just made. 

Yes. Pretty proud of that one

In LoveHER, one of the gruesome deaths didn't really drive me to tears, but it made me question my mental state. I thought I was fucked up making up something so bloody like somebody getting choked with piano, having to image it over and over again. My mother called me crazy upon reading it LMAO. So I was like that. 

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For the first time ever, yeah lmao. Yesterday I was in the middle of a scene that in of itself is super sweet and nice and it's a case of dramatic irony - for me. The mc is doing nice things and waiting for someone who is never going to come back, they just don't know it yet. When I realized that, I almost started sobbing lmao

If I can't do it to myself, how could I hope to do it to my reader?

There are some scenes, especially planned ones far later on that do this to me. For now there aren't too many sad ones. Mostöy very deep and dark points for the poor MC. I certainly could have done something truly awful to other characters, but I think they deserve a happy end for now. And thus happy tears.

As I have never written anything, nothing I have written has made me cry. 

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So far, none, I've written some emotional or at least heart moving scenes, but it never made me to the point of crying, maybe a bit teary in the eyes, but as my work is still on it's early stages, none really have made me cry in general.

But! I have planned on making future scenes that, I hope, could possibly be a tearjerker, but again, I'll have to see it and write it to know if those future scenes will be the uncontrollable leaking faucet, I planned they are. 

No, not cry, but one scene made me deeply uncomfortable (which is the effect I was hoping it would have on my readers as well). 

I remember going over it, over and over again, and thinking "fuck, I really went all out on that message". And the worst part was that I didn't agree with said message, but I had to send it across because it was essential to worldbuilding and some charachter development :')

I get the whole gut-wrapping and heart-pulling but the waterways still remain dry. Maybe it is because I know what is happening/going to happen an have intentionally planned it like that. It takes a bit from the emotion for me because I need a cool head.