Writing sad scenes. (And also NaNoWriMo Week 3 check-in)
Have you ever seen those posts on Twitter that are like, “I just wrote the saddest scene, I’m bawling my eyes out!” or something similar? Have you written that post? Do you #like those posts?
I have to say, my cold little heart won’t let me do it, won’t let me hit the <3 on someone claiming to be crying over their own writing. It’s not to say that isn’t a real thing, and I’m not judging, but I don’t get it, and I won’t acknowledge it.
Except here, I’m acknowledging it here.
I just finished writing a very sad scene. It involved love and death and bigotry and regret, all kinds of super 2020 themes. I like the character who suffered this loss, I feel for them in the same way I feel for all the characters that roam around, aimless, in my mind before I release them onto the page. The scene is visceral and the character telling the story is still suffering after so many years. The sadness isn’t bookended by comfort or reassurance, it is simply a story that this character remembers and tells to a small group of people.
There’s no reason for me to cry over this scene. I don’t feel it, bubbling up inside of me, I don’t think I could even force myself to cry if I really, really tried. Again, I do have a cold little heart, but for those of you who have claimed to cry over scenes you’ve written, please explain. It isn’t enough to just say I made myself cry today because it really feels like a strange humble brag. I hate crying, personally, it makes me feel sick and with Covid raging all over the place, the last thing I need is to feel feverish and sweaty with a bad headache just from crying.
Is a scene really sad if it doesn’t make you cry? Because there are very few scenes in films or books that are not my own work that make me cry. In fact, I can name the ones that have. No books, only movies. The Romeo & Juliet near-final scene, when Leo cries, dies, and then Claire Danes ugly cries, I cry. And Closer, when the screen fades in and Damien Rice’s “The Blower’s Daughter” begins to play, honestly it’s just crying off and on the rest of the film.
That’s it. Cold heart.
But the point I’m getting at is really, what constitutes a sad scene? Is it eliciting strong emotion/tears from your audience? Is it the tone of the scene, or the response that other characters give? Do we really need to be sitting here, crying over our own words to know that a scene is effective? Fuck, I hope not.
NaNoWriMo Week 3 Check-In:
Welp, still going strong. I’m 22 days in a row of mostly hitting my word count. The story is evolving into something I’ve never read before, which is good, there’s no distinct format I’m following or three act structure playing out. It’s certainly wordier than a goddamn screenplay, but I can still see it playing out on screen, which is awesome because I originally conceived the idea as a feature script and would have hated to lose that vision over the course of writing it out as a novel.
I’ve thought about what happens after NaNoWriMo, do I continue to write a dedicated word count only for a script? Can I knock out a script in a month? I think the most valuable thing I’m taking away from the experience so far is allowing myself to write without reading back first. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent at the start of my writing sessions just going back and re-reading and editing what I’ve already written. NEVAH AGAIN!
I’m 108 pages, 36,118 words in, and I guess I’ll keep pushing forward. :)