Yesterday I finished a short story, where the ending is based partly on my memories. This is a haunting, a nightmare~ish memory, the one you keep repressing, yet eventually, it has to see the sunlight.
I worked along the story to have this memory well grounded, and when I was writing, memories of the past have, for some minutes, become things of the present, and I underwent the same pressure again.
As with all therapeutic writing, it took much of the stress away from me and I felt liberated.
But here comes the uneasy part:
This writing was not intended to entertain/educate only me, this writing will be read at a reading evening of our writers' group this Friday.
(I have already contacted someone to read it aloud for me...so I am not worrying about my massive stage fright)
The question rather is that am I able to make the experience as important for the reader as it was for me?
I owed myself this story, but I also owe the reader (or the listener) to be able to grasp it.
This is the trouble of writing from one's own experience: the writer has bits of information he knows so well and feels so minute and/or evident that he leaves them out of the story. Yet these are needed for the experience to be complete.
On a second thought....
I know that no reader/listener will feel the exact same thing what I felt. No problem with that.
But he has to feel something not unlike to what I felt.
How do you overcome the problem of writing things out, writing about haunting memories? How do you make the feeling as memorable for the reader as it is/was to you?
6 comments:
Haunting memories... I tend to ignore them... (That's not a good thing, is it?)
Probably a good writer can pull the right strings in the right direction to make you feel joy,or fear, or sadness... but each reader will base his response on his own experiences. How do you touch the right chords? I guess by making the reader care for the characters in the first place...
Certainly food for thought...
Yes, making the character likeable or one the reader/listener can identify with is a good point.
Very good point.
Sometimes when I beta read I come accross characters that resonate no chord at all within me... (but that's fodder for an altogether different post)
Thank you Vesper, for your contribution.
I can't share the story here for two reasons:
1. it is not written in English :)
2. I don't want it published before sending to some competition when the times comes.
But I may send it to you by email, but it is still not in English.
But to be on~topic: how do you make your characters likeable?
I don't know if Rita is made well...
Re: hanuting memories
I don't think it is okay to have your mind occuppied with them all the time, but ignoring them isn't good, either.
It is so good that we have writing as a tool to deal with memories.
hanuting = haunting
I'm the last person to offer advice on writing... :-)
How to make the characters likable? I'm still wondering about that myself... I tried a simple google search and a lot of advice came up. Try it yourself. Some of that I had read before and there were things also that I hadn't thought about.
Even bad characters should have redeeming traits to make them more credible otherwise they're just cartoons.
I'd love to read your story but if it's not in English or French... I'm sorry, no Hungarian... :-) Though it would be nice to see how it looks in Hungarian. :-)
And you're right, writing is a fantastic tool, even a sort of remedy for all kinds of ailments of the heart. I really don't know what I would do without it. :-)
I still owe you the translated version of the story when the main character focuses on the white walls of his room.
Do you remember that one?
I don't know whether that character is likeable... or not.
I was told he is really realistic by more than one readers.
The story got published and I got my first ever money for a fiction.
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