3 Ways You Can Use Negative Emotions to Enrich Your Fiction Writing
An exciting story takes readers on a journey through twists and turns. The protagonist must confront and overcome evil. They must stop an extraordinary threat within a set time against mounting conflicts and high stakes. For writers, writing short stories can be both challenging and exhilarating. Except for when you struggle with your own negative emotions.
Studies don’t define a link between creativity and mental illness. But creative individuals are likely to spend long periods alone while drafting, publishing, and revising their work. The plus side: more time to create complex stories with compelling plots and memorable characters. But the drawback of spending a lot of time alone is that you’re in charge of managing, overcoming, and learning from negative emotions. All while continuing to write compelling fiction that readers love. For those reasons, here are three ways to capitalize on negative feelings to turn your stories into magic.
1. Fiction writing and fear: Create impossible challenges for characters
Self-improvement guru Tony Robbins says the best strategies for overcoming fear are adopting a growth mindset, sitting and thinking about your fear, and surrounding yourself with success. But for fictional characters, the more unlikely the chances of survival, the more intriguing the story. Readers want characters who appear ordinary. But like we fear the most, they’re thrust into dangerous situations. They have to act courageously to solve a problem.
Fortunately, writing lets you communicate with others, articulate what you want to say, and force yourself to live within the moment. Together, these positive aspects of writing can give you the mental stimulation needed to fight fear. In an article in Writer’s Digest, Sage Cohen illustrates this point by first pointing out the fears associated with the writing life. You have the fear of the blank page, querying agents, and pitching to editors. Cohen then explains that you should do what scares you. But how? Simply by confronting your fears in your current manuscript. Take some time in your writing to:
· Show characters tackling a little bit of their fear every day.
· Show the real-life challenges of living in fear.
· Show how a character can change lives and hearts by overcoming their fears.
In Gary Paulsen’s highly acclaimed young adult survival story, The Hatchet, Brian Robeson is riding in a plane to visit his father when the pilot suffers a heart attack, forcing the teenager to think quickly and use his brain to stay alive. After crashing, Brian must learn new skills, survive new challenges, and overcome his fears to avoid certain death. Brian tries a little harder each day, and in the ending, impresses a fellow pilot who finally hears his distress signal.
As a writer, reading this story reminds you that a strong character arc should be pertinent in a story. You’ll need to emphasize the changes your character undergoes throughout the story so that by the time you write the denouement, readers will be prepared for your character’s most profound changes. The time you spend watching your hero adapt can translate to less time spent worrying about fears. If fear so often comes from what you can’t control, then spending time on creating impossible challenges for fictional characters can give you the mental boost needed to overcome your fears. Just remember, character development is an excellent way to see yourself making changes in your life as you make them.
2. Fiction writing and loneliness: Advocating for characters
Characters that have physical injuries, disabilities, and scars and wounds are characters that readers feel connected to when they’re struggling emotionally and feeling lonely. Simply think of a lonely childhood memory and you’re certain to remember a fictional character who was the hero that kept you going.
Publishing trends in 2021 suggest the eBook market will grow. Why? Because readers want stories where they can spend quality time with characters they care about. Studies show spending more time with people and empathy are dependent on each other. After all, you have to be around others to have an emotional response to their experiences.
In absence of socialization, writers should develop the habit of spending time with a fictional character that’s struggling with intense internal and external conflicts. Can you identify parts of your stories where your character is feeling as lonely as you are? If so, think of the steps he’ll take to fight off loneliness. You’ll see that they’re now the behaviors he’ll adopt to be around others more often. Using character development worksheets is a good way to spend more time with a character. By exploring multiple dimensions of a character, his personality, motivations, values, and worldview, you can develop the habit of spending time with a fictional character that is very much real to you. Part of good writing is getting to know characters inside and out. In absence of talking to strangers, Very Well Mind suggests that staying busy is one of many ways to cope with loneliness.
Fiction writing and self-doubt: Creating evil, but sympathetic antagonists
Even if you’re a disciplined writer, you can find yourself in dry spells where writing doesn’t happen as easily. In worst-case scenarios, this self-doubt can lead to writers abandoning projects and quitting assignments in fear that they can’t do the work. But these are amateur mistakes that will only tank your career and increase the self-doubt you feel. To help you overcome that self-doubt, understand what self-doubt means. That way, you’ll know why you’ll need to invest your energy into creating evil, but sympathetic characters.
· Self-doubt means having a lack of confidence in your abilities.
· Self-doubt means you may feel incapable of accomplishing anything of significance.
· Self-doubt means you may be worried about a new challenge or experience.
All of these feelings amount to you feeling a lot of rage. That’s because you’re constantly telling yourself harsh, negative things about yourself. As a writer who needs to create, having this lack of confidence, feeling worthless, and worrying about every new challenge takes away a great deal of control you have over your life and your work. So, center your rage on crafting a villain who refuses to cope with his anger. According to the Mayo Clinic, responsible adults cope with anger by getting exercise, taking timeouts, and sticking with “I” statements. A villain won’t do that, choosing instead to use transgressions against him to justify violence.
Now you can see why self-doubt is so dangerous. When self-doubt becomes rage, writing, living, and thriving aren’t possible.
Fiction writing is a great profession to get into, especially if you have a lot of negative emotions. Why? Because these emotions help you create exciting and memorable stories that readers will love. Managing your emotions means you’re likely to identify when they’re negative. Indeed, loneliness, self-doubt, and fear will hurt, but with writing, there is always a way to channel these emotions. The best part about that is that you’ll learn from them too.
As a writer, how have you used negative thoughts and feelings to enrich a story?
