How does it feel?

Yeah, that song's gonna be in your head all day today. Sorry.

THE INSPIRATION: The Language of Emotion

“Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.”

—Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart

I know it’s not a big sell to tell writers how important language is, but during a recent read of Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, I realized that the ability to understand and relay emotions is deeply vital to what we do.

In the end, storytelling is all about emotion. It gives us meaning and empathy, and an access point to each other. Emotion is how we connect with each other, and our stories, so having language that can deftly navigate that space is essential to good writing.

We go to stories to feel, so writers need to know how feelings work.

THE FAT ORANGE CAT: How does it feel?

In your writing today, go deep into how one of your characters feels. Go beyond mad, sad, glad. How do they feel? Are they frustrated, overwhelmed, melancholy? Nostalgic? In a rage? How does that emotion present in their body? What senses are activated? Are any dulled? Spend as much time as you can in that feeling and emotion. You may not use all the words you write in your final scene, but you’ll definitely use what you learn.

THE TROPE: The Pyrrhic victory

One of my favorite tropes is the Pyrrhic victory, where a character fights tooth and nail for something they desperately want, only to win and discover that it came at too great a cost. This runs along the lines of “be careful what you wish for” and “was it worth it?” My favorite Pyrrhic victories are the ones where it was worth it… but not by a huge margin. The contradictory emotions that go along with a Pyrrhic victory create such complex emotions in both the characters and the reader that, when balanced well, it’s one of the most powerful narrative experiences available.

Some examples of Pyrrhic victories in stories (without spoilers): Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog; The Lord of the Rings; pretty much every storyline in Game of Thrones; The Hunger Games.

THE QUESTION: Give up?

“How do you know when to abandon a story that isn’t gelling? When is it time to cut your losses and just start something new?”

—Maybe Done

Dear Maybe Done,

I’ve always believed that the clock starts ticking the moment you start a story, and if you don’t get it done before the bell rings, you will never get it done. For what it’s worth, I think the bell takes years to ring, but once it has, you as a writer have changed too much to probably make much of anything out of what you’ve got. I’ve had this experience a few times, and I’m about to go back into a book I started when I was a waaaaaay different person from who I am now. Will it work? I don’t know.

But the decision to give it up is a big one, and unfortunately, I can’t tell you how you know it’s the right choice. There’s the sunk cost fallacy—I’ve put this much energy/time/money into this thing, I have to keep going until I get something for my investment—and I think that is often what keeps us working stories we should let go.

In the end, I think it’s a lot like ending a relationship; you just know when it’s over. You can find reasons to justify it, but in the end, I think it’s a gut feeling. When sticking with it takes more out of you than letting go, it’s time to let go.

Good luck.

THE PRACTICAL: If you gaze into the X-Files, the X-Files also gazes into you

I remember when I first watched The X-Files. I think it was during Season 3, when it was getting really good. I was completely on board for all of it, until about Season 7, after which it went off the rails. I did a full re-watch in the mid-aughts, right after it ended, but I haven’t touched it since.

Ian and I are watching it now, from the beginning, skipping only the episodes we remember being pretty bad so it’s a curated watch but… still.

Wow.

I know the better episodes are coming, but some of the stuff we’re watching now is just ridiculous. Mulder is such a drama queen, and Scully is amazing but she puts up with way too much of Mulder’s bullshit. Then there’s the whole “She’s dead! She’s alive! She’s back! She’s gone! She’s not really her!” that is Mulder’s sister Samantha and oh my god. Ian and I keep looking at each other and laughing and saying, “Did we really buy this when it aired?”

Oh, yes, we did. Hook. Line. Sinker.

I notice when I go back to old stories that they tend to fall into two broad categories for me; those that remain as powerful as they were on first watch, and those that present like the pictures of that old boyfriend with the Flock of Seagulls haircut. You can see how he was cute but how did you ever take that hair seriously?

The stories that remain powerful are great, but the Flocks of Seagulls are also fun. They manage to freeze a particular fashion in time, and we change around it. Revisiting gives us as much a window into ourselves at that time as it does into the story itself, and it’s a lot of fun.