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It is not important, unnecessary, and in fact utterly impossible. You need to put yourself in the character's shoes, imagine how he feels, write that, try to evoke emotions in the reader. It helps ...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:39Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46736 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T12:29:49Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46736 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
It is **not important, unnecessary, and in fact utterly impossible**. You need to put yourself in the character's shoes, imagine how he feels, write that, try to evoke emotions in the reader. It helps if you have ever in your life experienced something similar, so you have a reference point. But writing in that moment? If your character is in excruciating pain, does it make sense to cause yourself excruciating pain, and then try to write? Quite aside from the fact that this would be unhealthy in the extreme, writing well while you are experiencing excruciating pain would be nigh impossible. The same is true of other strong emotions, and even not so strong ones. If you've ever been worried, you know it's hard to focus on anything, least of all writing, while you're worried. It's when you're calm and focused that you can write about your character's concern. **Writing is about imagination. It isn't and cannot be about making yourself physically go through what your character is going through**. For one thing, that would be extremely limiting.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-07-19T10:03:08Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 13