Damn that was a hard ending to write.

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Trying to wrap up the Cougar series and it reveals a lot of fill in material plus a few new things, but then ... well ....


Did you ever have a paragraph or two that just really cut you to the core?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Only with the good stories.

 

[Mastered_again]

Every once in a while you knock it out of the park. My experience anyway

 

[burgwad]

What cut you, if I might ask?

 

[StillStunned]

Like I wrote in my WIWAW about Fairytale of New York, by the end I was crying into my keyboard.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I published Living up to the Legacy two and a half years ago. I still tear up when I read the last bit:

“Just one more thing.” My dad opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out two faded envelopes, handing one to me and the other to Ethan.

“My dearest Erica…” it began. It was a letter from my mom. She called me Erica, and I understood why he had waited so long to deliver it to me. I read it slowly, three times.

It ended,

“… Always be true to yourself.
I love you,
- Mom.”

I don’t know what Ethan’s letter said, and I didn’t ask, just like he didn’t ask about mine.

All those years, I had been trying to be what I thought someone else wanted me to be.

I had been trying to live up to a legacy.

It was just the wrong one.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Similar.

 

[lovecraft68]

I did an entire chapter years ago that left me in ruins. I knew it was coming, I knew where the previous chapters were going and what I'd have to deliver, which was pure misery and despair, and I managed it, but it took a toll before, during and after. At one point my wife told me "If you don't finish that damn thing I'm sending you to talk to someone because you're more depressed than the story."

Method writing, don't try it at home.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Writing is conveying emotions onto the page. If you are not feeling the emotions that you are trying to convey, you're kidding yourself.

Have I become emotional over scenes that I have written? Absolutely. Many times.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Further to my last.

Erotica, I think, comes in two broad types. One I'll call 'porn' (and won't argue if somebody wants a different table). It's often referred to here as 'stroker' stories, quick, emotionless with no intention or aim beyond arousing the reader. The other is to me real erotica, presentations perhaps centring on sexuality but intended to engage and arouse every part of the reader - mind, body and soul.

To do that last means emotional involvement and to do that well that brings identification with your characters and, if you really manage that, it brings risks.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Submitted so it should be up in a day or two.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I spent more than three years writing my Mary and Alvin series. Thirty six chapters, published on a regular monthly schedule. The concept of the series was simple; I described it as "the biography of a relationship." It was that, but it also became something broader, a sort of family saga.

I always assumed that the series would have to end with the deaths of the title characters, one in a main chapter, the other in the epilogue. But I lived with these characters for all that time, they were like members of my family. Still, I always knew what was coming someday, and I was fairly well prepared for it when the time came. It's part of my method that I don't go far into a story without knowing the ending. So I knew the what and the how for a long while, and I had foreshadowed it several times.

But, then there was the family. There were several deaths in the series, obviously, the narrative spans more than fifty years. They were peripheral characters, though, and my emotional attachment to them was not strong. But, as the series neared its end, I realized that verisimilitude required that at least one of the important supporting characters also die. Anything less would be phony, a cop out. I had written more than 350,000 words that I hoped had rung true, I could not compromise that.

I intuitively knew who it had to be. It was a character I loved dearly, and I knew from comments that many of the readers did as well.

I wrote the last chapter and the epilogue. It was done, after all that time. Except, there was an empty space where I knew that scene had to go. I finally made myself do it. And do it. And do it. I wrote the segment over and over again. I still don't know if it really just wasn't right, or if it was just part of me not wanting to go through with it.

Eventually, I managed to find the one last sentence, nine words, that made it feel right.

But it still hurts a little bit.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

For some reason, I've done another for a different story. Maybe it's something in my life that's bringing these out. This one may be more difficult than the first, but it's striking me as almost melancholy now.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

The chapter that prompted this thread went up this morning.





Oddly, it doesn't appear anyone has picked up on the rip off of the classic Disney title.

 

[baffling8929]

The end of this chapter sort of wrecked me (section starting Thursday, May 23). I was nearly crying getting it out on the first pass.

I'm not sure what readers thought (it did rate lower than some of the other chapters). I think some of it is just me though, like my characters are super real in my head. Putting one of them in danger gave me all the feels, plus I was writing to Max Richter.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

"This would have been the best part of this story until you completely killed it with the last few paragraphs and the epilogue. Totally killed the mood with that."



Yes. I know.

But at least you read it.

 

[AchtungNight]

I’ve naturally gone through plenty of emotions with my characters over the years. The outbursts in The Rendezvous and Passion series come to mind, as do the breakdowns in a few of my stories featuring Lisa, Doug, Clarke, and Stephanie. These characters all have manic depression cycles, as do I. Sometimes it helps to pour stress onto a page.