There are many reasons for writing a story. That thing that inspired you, the character(s) that would not shut up, that horrible tragedy you suffered, or a place you visited or book you read that required some sort of artistic response.
However you wound up here, you are beside me and all of the other fiction novelists wanting to bring your book to life.
When I first started writing, I discovered a few characters I really wanted to know. I wrote a draft of a book with them in it, and it was terrible. But, it was also a stepping stone up to a bigger world and some of the characters stayed with me. I want to write because of them and I want you to care about them.
The hard part about this is that I can’t just tell you about their day. I could describe their upbringing, dreams and nightmares, and where they live and the people they know in their world. But that would be stupid boring to you. They’ve lived in my head for a decade and I know them very well. If I mentioned them to you, you might be nice and say you care but you don’t. You don’t know them like I do and I get it.
So, I have to do bad things to them. I have to put them in horrible situations and sometimes even kill some of them so you will care. I have to make you worry for their safety, wonder about the impact of a lie they told or a discovery that they have to hide from everyone or the world may end.
In the next book in my series I killed a character in the opening. The characters I created have already suffered enough in book one, but this one had to go. It just didn’t make sense for them to continue and they had to exist in the previous book. Now, they are gone. The hard part about this is that I loved them. I truly did. I had someone in my life just like them when I was fifteen.
Writing is fun. It’s a thrill to put together a story and even more so when people enjoy reading it. It is also hard because in the end, we may have to torture them.
How about you writer? Are you having a hard time hurting those imaginary people you love?
Cheers,
Bob
PART-TIME NOVEL 
I have had to carry around the burden of knowing one of my characters, one of my favorite characters would die at the end of the novel I am currently working on. I have written three novels, falling more and more in love with this character knowing the entire time that she was going to die. I have shed way too many tears for the pain of fiction characters, but in the end, I think those tears, the agony we as writers feel for our characters, is what makes the book worth reading.
At some point, if we haven’t already, we will all face our own mortality, our own set of trials. I have found reading and writing novels helps me come to terms with the confusion, pain, and hurt around me. It helps me cope with the broken world.
With those thoughts in mind, I think I am going to go break more hearts and crush dreams because I know, in the end, it will be worth it. My eventual readers will learn more from the broken hearts being mended than perfect bliss. My readers will be given more tools for success when they see crushed dreams resurrected than effortless prosperity.
Keep fighting the writer’s fight,
~Nathan
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