Ages ago I read that there are as many ways to write fiction as there are writers. That probably explains why so many books have been written on writing. Likewise, there are just as many reasons for putting pen to page, or fingers to the keyboard as there are writers. For now we’ll leave the Pansters vs Plotters debate out of this and stick to the motives for writing.
Maybe you’re writing because you have an important point you want to make. Maybe you want to relive an experience through fiction (as a thinly disguised autobiography) or experience a situation that never happened (I’m thinking fantasy – and not just dragons and magic-fantasy – it could be a wish to see the world differently).
I chose the word, “experience,” because I believe you need to feel what you’re writing. You can’t just watch your characters act and react. You need to jump inside their skin and live their lives. Be so in touch with your characters that you laugh when they laugh and cry when they cry.
If what you write doesn’t move you to the point that your heart pounds so fast you have to get up and walk around the room a few times, how can you expect your story to move your readers?
I’m going to go a step further and say fall in love with your story and all the characters that appear inside it. That kind of passion could eventually lead to publication, but if it doesn’t, you can still say you had an awesome time in that fictional world.
I fall in love with all my stories. Since I don’t have kids or pets, they’re my children. When my first novel, Standing Ovation, got accepted for publication my sister sent me a “congratulations on your baby girl” card. She gets it.
All my fictional “kids” are precious, but whatever story I’m working on at the time becomes my favorite. I can do that because they aren’t real kids. 🙂
My latest story, a novella titled, Broken Soul to Broken Soul is currently under consideration at a publisher. I don’t know if it will get accepted there or someplace else, or if I’ll decide to self-publish, but this story fills my heart with such joy that I created a book trailer for it.
Oh yeah, the theme of this story is … love. And yes, many times while writing it, I jumped up because my heart was pumping too fast. I also laughed and cried a little.
Aud, that’s a great trailer!
I think you have a great point getting inside your characters’ skins. It’s the only way I know how to make my characters feel alive and real to me. Which means sometimes I have to go through a scene many different times to understand it from each character’s POV (at least the important ones). And sometimes I’ve cried — like once when I killed off a character (and it wasn’t even my fault — he was a historical person, and history killed him!)
You also make an excellent point — if you’re passionate about the story you’ve written, you will always have that, whether it gets published or not.
But…great stories like Broken Soul to Broken Soul need to be shared, so I’m rooting for it to find a big wide audience!
Thanks, Gemma! I’ve never added any historical people to my stories, but I have cried over “killing” my own. Those are hard stories, so sometimes I like to write stories with the secret theme, “nobody dies.” 🙂