Did it ever happen to you that you cried

[Gray Rose]

while writing your story/novel/screenplay/whatever? I am writing this short story and I keep crying, I guess the thing comes from a painful place. Not sure my readers will have such a strong experience reading it, but... I guess I am on to something with this... On the other hand, damn, it is so hard to write... I keep wanting to put it off, and every word is agony.

[scarletpeaches]

Yes, when I saw how bad it was.

[callalily61]

Yes, when I saw how bad it was.

>groan<

I haven't cried at my stuff, but I've scared myself. (And no, scarletpeaches, not because it sucked. :)) I write horror, and I scared the MC. I reread it late at night with an eye to revising, and I got spooked.

[JoNightshade]

Nope, never cried while writing my own stuff. In fact, I take great delight in torturing my characters.

Although I never write anything that's directly related to anything painful in my life, as you said. The closest I got to anything personal was my female MC in Ghosts, and mainly I was really pissed off that she kept stealing my experiences and opinions. Jerk.

[dempsey]

No, but that's primarily because my heart is a cold, black place.

[Gray Rose]

Nope, never cried while writing my own stuff. In fact, I take great delight in torturing my characters.

Although I never write anything that's directly related to anything painful in my life, as you said. The closest I got to anything personal was my female MC in Ghosts, and mainly I was really pissed off that she kept stealing my experiences and opinions. Jerk.

Jo, it is not directly tied to my life, but it's a fantasy taking place during the Holocaust.

Or am I just too sentimental? Ehhhh.... I never cry watching movies, I swear!

[maestrowork]

Catharsis could be self-cleansing, but you have to consider if your tell the story well enough that the readers feel it as well.

[JoNightshade]

I have been known to cry at a book or movie from time to time. But it has to catch me off guard - if I know I'm "supposed" to cry, I won't. So in that sense, it's hard to catch myself off guard since I'm the one doing the plotting. :)

[Maryn]

Gray Rose, I don't cry easily. If my own story moves me to tears, it's a good bet that it'll move at least some of the readers, too--with the qualifier that it has to be the story itself, not that it really happened, or my own personal connection to it, like that.

Maryn, tough guy (marshmallow inside, though)

[Susan Gable]

Yes. This has happened to me while writing.

If I don't feel it, how will my readers?

My husband knows to just turn around and walk away if he catches me crying at my keyboard. :)

Susan G.

[TheIT]

I've cried while writing a couple of scenes. Once was when writing about one of my characters attending his wife's funeral, and another was while writing about my MC's reconciliation with his father. I just hope the emotion I felt while writing comes through in the words to the reader.

[Marva]

Maybe three stories I wrote made me cry. All were, of course, based on real life stuff. Bringing up the memories can be painful.

1 - essay about my dog's life and death (I know, I know, but it did get published)
2 - story about the murder of my ex-husband
3 - story from the POV of my grandmother talking about the loss of her baby daughter to Typhoid during the Depression

All seem pretty good reasons to at least tear up.

[Sunkissed27f]

Hmm.....only once....and I wrote it when I was 15 over 10 years ago, I wish I knew where that WIP ended it up!!

[Gray Rose]

Catharsis could be self-cleansing, but you have to consider if your tell the story well enough that the readers feel it as well.

I have no idea if I tell the story well enough, and god knows I am not looking for catharsis or therapy through my stories.

Gray Rose, I don't cry easily. If my own story moves me to tears, it's a good bet that it'll move at least some of the readers, too--with the qualifier that it has to be the story itself, not that it really happened, or my own personal connection to it, like that.

Maryn, tough guy (marshmallow inside, though)

Hope it will work out this way for me, Maryn. I really hope so.

[jenngreenleaf]

Yes, this has happened to me.

[Ziljon]

I cried when I wrote the last section to my setting of "The Hound of Heaven," for orchestra, choir and organ.

I'd set these words: "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He, whom thou seekest" for pianissimo choir, strings, harp, and a solo french horn, and , coming after all the bombast which preceded it, it was just so true. It was the most beautiful music I'd ever written, and I just cried and cried.

I'm still crying because I've yet to get the piece performed. :(

[IceCreamEmpress]

I have a short story that I cannot read in public because I always burst into hysterical sobs.

It's a sad story (other people have cried while reading it) but I think it also dredges up some personal sorrows as well.

[JeanneTGC]

Sure, all the time, particularly when I'm killing off a character I like or a character is going through something very painful.

[TrickyFiction]

when I'm killing off a character I like or a character is going through something very painful.

This is it for me, too.
It's self-torture; that's what it is.

[Moon Daughter]

I haven't full blown cried at my own work...more like got teary eyed. However, when I was reading the ending of "My Sister's Keeper", I cried like a little biatch.

[Thrillride]

>groan<

I haven't cried at my stuff, but I've scared myself. (And no, scarletpeaches, not because it sucked. :)) I write horror, and I scared the MC. I reread it late at night with an eye to revising, and I got spooked.



Calailiy61, happened to me, too! I was banging away at my keyboard, at what I hope is a gripping part and I think I got carried away. My cell rang next to me and someone nearly had to peel me off the ceiling!

(LOL! I must really go to the zone, because this was in the day at Borders/Seattle's Best)

Cracked me up.

~Thrill

[kuwisdelu]

I haven't cried, no. But after one novella about my MC's descent into madness and murder that ends with him killing several people before finally strangling his wife, I was left rather out of breath and in a very uneasy emotional state. I think I was left wondering just how much of me there is in him...

[Shadow_Ferret]

I don't write weepies.

[KTC]

When I came to the last 4 or so pages of my marathon novel, I cried. It might have had something to do with the fact that I was going on no sleep for about 60 hours...but I just felt the crescendo...I didn't know where I was going to stop. On the second last page I had no idea I was going to be finished in just over half a page...but I was crying because I captured a beauty and a truth for my main character. He found himself belonging after a long battle of not belonging. He was experiencing inner peace and I felt like I was him for a moment...I was attached and experiencing what he was experiencing. And...besides...Gordon Lightfoot was saying some really nice stuff about my character's guardian. Yes...Ole Gordy made me cry.

[Azure Skye]

I cried when I killed off one of my characters. It was an intense scene and her grandson watched the whole thing happen. I was crying for him, not for her.

[nancy sv]

Just last week I sat down to get some work done on my memoir about our bike trip. As we pedaled our way across Texas and Arkansas, I knew my mom was going to die soon and I somehow just had to get through that part. I kept writing and writing, and was shaking like crazy - but somehow I couldn't stop. By the time I finally the point in the journey where Mom died it was 3:00 in the morning, but I was determined to get through it. So - from 3 - 4 in the morning I sat there at my computer crying like crazy and trying so hard to see the screen so I could get that down. Then I could finally go to bed - but it took a good hour or two to stop shaking.

[sunna]

Nancy, that's so sad!


I don't cry easily or often, but the ending of my MS makes me get a bit misty pretty much every time I read it. Other than that, there are I think 2 memoir pieces I wrote in college that I cried while writing (they made the professors cry too, so I didn't feel too silly), an essay on my godfather when I was 11, and one poem I wrote about my grandfather's death when I was 13 that I bawled my eyes out writing.

[Thrillride]

Ack. I just remembered. I cried while writing a non-fiction piece.
AND (hate to admit this) I cried when the dog was killed in a fiction piece. I cried for the 5 year old girl who owned her.


~Thrill

[Storm Dream]

I've cried a couple of times, mostly when I was lifting a scene from real life and streamlining it into a story. You know how it goes: Awful, angst-ridden breakup, you're miserable for weeks afterwards, finally get over it, decide "Hey, this would be an AWESOME scene in a book, my readers are gonna use up the tissue box!" and translate it to writing and...

...suddenly all those feelings come flooding back, and you miss that SOB like crazy and want to call him and say "Hi, you're novelized!" but you threw out his phone number and talking to him will just hurt more anyway.

Yeah. Like that. Once or twice.

I try to avoid it now. I'm more productive when I'm happier.

[Stormhawk]

Only once, but I was younger then. Now I'm a stone cold bitch. :P

[scarletpeaches]

I've cried a couple of times, mostly when I was lifting a scene from real life and streamlining it into a story. You know how it goes: Awful, angst-ridden breakup, you're miserable for weeks afterwards, finally get over it, decide "Hey, this would be an AWESOME scene in a book, my readers are gonna use up the tissue box!" and translate it to writing and...

...suddenly all those feelings come flooding back, and you miss that SOB like crazy and want to call him and say "Hi, you're novelized!" but you threw out his phone number and talking to him will just hurt more anyway.

Yeah. Like that. Once or twice.

I try to avoid it now. I'm more productive when I'm happier.

Oh, I'm feeling that. Except I don't get miserable for weeks...I love to draaaaag these things out for months.

And yeah, I've novelised a bastard ex. Hurt like a smear test with a car jack and an ice-cream scoop, but I did it.

Then I saw him, and he'd got all fat and he was going out with some bint who had a face like a bag full of spanners.

And I realised the novelised version was only slightly less wooden than the real thing.

Funny how these things work out.

[Norman D Gutter]

My story book of poetry has such a good message, and some of the poems are so good, that I cry some times while reading it, or reciting them in the car.

Now, if I could just get a publisher as excited about it as I am.

NDG

[Stew21]

I cried for the last two pages of my last MS.
Partly because it was so touching (to me) to have known those characters for so long and to see them reach a conclusion. I was crying for them. Partly because I was so overjoyed that I had actually finished it.
I cried at nother part in the book too, a "big moment" for a character, and that part again in revisions.
The characters just meant so much to me.

[heatherleacubs]

I cry very easily, so yeah, this happens to me a bunch. I get teary with certain scenes when I'm writing them and even when I'm thinking about/planning them.

[BenPanced]

I got all misty at the end when reading my recent NaNo manuscript. I was really pleased with the ending. Now. To make the journey to that ending better...

[Sage]

I cried twice and nearly cried again for HEVNSNT. I didn't cry while writing DownLoad, but thinking about the end makes me want to cry sometimes.

[Danger Jane]

I haven't cried, no. But after one novella about my MC's descent into madness and murder that ends with him killing several people before finally strangling his wife, I was left rather out of breath and in a very uneasy emotional state. I think I was left wondering just how much of me there is in him...

That's how I am. I've never cried, although I've come close. Generally, intense scenes just leave me very unnerved, because I'm kind of a method writer. When I wrote my MC dismembering her brother (madness/obsession/desperation induced), I TOTALLY freaked afterward. I think I was wondering the same thing: could I have done that??

[Joycecwilliams]

I have cried numberous times while writing. Uusually when it is something that I really indentify with strongly.

[IdiotsRUs]

Actually this is quite wierd. I've had this character bumming around in my head for a while. I've been thinking on her backstory, why she does what she does, and I came up with a doozy. But too extreme I thought, nobody will buy it. I'm just being too drama queen.

I dreamt about her last night and woke up crying ( having played out a whole climactic scene in my head as I dreamed). When I read the papers this morning, I read an article about a woman who has just published ner biography, and she went through exactly what my character had, to the last detail. Not only that, she had reacted to the trauma exactly as I'd envisioned my character, differing only in the methods. ( blimey I was right!! first time for everything)

My only problem now is the feeling that if I write about this character I'll be trivialising what this poor woman went through. Do I have the writing chops for it?

[Bartholomew]

I cried writing a death scene for one of my characters, once.

[ishtar'sgate]

while writing your story/novel/screenplay/whatever? I am writing this short story and I keep crying, I guess the thing comes from a painful place. Not sure my readers will have such a strong experience reading it, but... I guess I am on to something with this... On the other hand, damn, it is so hard to write... I keep wanting to put it off, and every word is agony.
Yes, I cried a bit when my physician was being led away to be burned at the stake. My MC was upset and crying and it made me cry. An awful way to die and he didn't deserve it.
Linnea

[lfraser]

No, but I did shock myself when a scene unexpectedly veered off into hitherto (for me) unexplored territory; to wit, one of my characters started to describe in graphic detail what he would like to do to my MC -- activities that were both sexual and violent. I know there are people who like that sort of thing -- hell, I once had a friend who got PAID for that sort of thing -- so I'm not entirely ignorant, but it never occurred to me that one of my characters would, um...enjoy something like that and actually force me to write about it.

[SageFury]

while writing your story/novel/screenplay/whatever? I am writing this short story and I keep crying, I guess the thing comes from a painful place. Not sure my readers will have such a strong experience reading it, but... I guess I am on to something with this... On the other hand, damn, it is so hard to write... I keep wanting to put it off, and every word is agony.

I think a true writer reacts to their work.

I actually teared for one of my books endings, because not only was it perfect but it was a sad unexpected scene that hit me all at once.

I've had more adrenaline moments than anything =)

[stace001]

I have a scene where my MC's dog has been poisoned as payback for something, and she finds him barely alive. It's very intense and heart-wrenching and when I read it, I get choked up a little. I kinda hope others have the same reaction when they read it, then I know I've written a good scene.