Realism in our stories

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I have seen snippets of "Game of Thrones" and find certain scenes far too graphic for my tastes. I am considering purchasing a season of it on DVD to watch and in some of the scenes I have seen on Youtube was greatly surprised to see a whole heart eaten. I hope it was that of a cow or something and not human. I am thinking of not purchasing the series.

Then I remembered that I wrote a story (Katia in Afghanistan) where the protagonist was eating the still beating human hearts of the enemy. Hmmm, am I courting a double standard here? Perhaps the difference is that one is in prose and the other in Video?

It is doubtful that I will write another such story, though.

I've hit upon a solution to my desire to continue writing but for publication in general society. In the last story I am currently completing for publication in my anthology, this September, there will be two chapters of any with TG content. One will be TG and the other will not, problem solved.

If there is any success what so ever in my book, I plan to just leave it in there in later work, perhaps. Our culture is moving and growing.

These are very hard times for me, swinging without warning from very dangerous utter despair, and then to giddy happiness in a way I have not previously experienced. Oh, that I had a companion to steady me. No calls to the police please.

The question I have is: do other authors here experience this sort of travail when writing?

Comments

Emotional Swings

If you're talking about emotional swings while crafting, drafting or final editing of a story, then yes. I would hazard a guess as to say that all fiction writers experience emotional swings when crafting a scene on their own, or having the characters drag you across hill and dale into territory labeled "here be dragons". "This isn't where we're supposed to go," you wail at the screen of dialogue.

"Too bad," the characters chorus in return as they take turns carrying you along like a baby spider floating away from the egg sack.

You experience joy, sadness that brings tears to your eyes, anger so great that wish wholeheartedly that the character was standing in front of you so you could pop his/her head like an erupted boil.

And at the end of the day, when you save your work and turn off the computer, you realize that Hemingway was right, writing is very easy. You just sit down at the computer, and bleed.

I try to make my writing as

I try to make my writing as plausible as possible within the setting. Suspension of belief aside, if I can picture it, and maintain the overall logical consistency of a story, I do my best to describe it properly.

On the mood swings, I've been trying to write for the last fifteen years. Only in the last two years have I had any success, and I've only been able to complete anything in the last few months. Come to find out I've had cyclothymia the whole time. My mood would swing every week to two weeks from depressive lows to manic like highs. When I started taking a mood stabilizer, I could finish what I started and make progress.

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Not really

erin's picture

Writing is either grinding labor or joyful romp for me. I may sweat, swear, run up and down the hallway shouting or scare the dog by acting out some scene but I really don't have an emotional roller coaster over writing. Just not built that way, I guess.

I have to dig deep to access emotions sometimes to feel what my characters feel, but when it goes onto paper, it's generally scrubbed. In fact, when I am emotionally troubled, I sometimes use writing to cleanse my feelings of pain and distress; though that is usually by writing poetry or picking out tunes on the piano for some song lyrics I've already written.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.