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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35268
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35268
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm not sure that you do get through this. A story is an experience. To write the story, you have to live the experience, emotionally at least. When a story does not ring true, I think that is usually because the writer chickened out of really putting themselves through the emotions, of fully immersing themselves in the experience of the story.

I remember hearing it said of some poet or another than when a visitor asked the poet's daughter where her father was, she replied, "Daddy is upstairs, hurting himself." She meant, writing.

Some writers seem to do it to lay to rest the fears that haunt them. That seems to be the case with Stephen King. Sometimes, in other words, the writer experiences the story and its emotions and all the pain and fear that go with them, and can only escape from them by writing them down.

For others, it would seem, the difficulty is that they would (like most healthy people) turn away from the things they fear and focus on the good things of the moment. Writing then requires that you force yourself to imaginatively visit those things, in detail, and for a long time. If you have a choice about whether to do this or not, that is going to require a lot of courage.

Maybe the question you should be asking, therefore, is how to find the courage to put yourself through the pain of finishing your story.

Original score: 33