In Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein said that laughter happens when things hurt too much to cry. I have no idea if that’s true. I don’t even know if he believed it. It was filtered through the mind of a human raised as a Martian anyway, so it might have been a predictably weird take and all.
But I do know writing often happens when things hurt too much to leave them alone.
Not to me. I mean, we all know I launched into this career, half baked and green as leeks, at 14 because The Left Hand Of Darkness p*ssed me off enough I knew I could do better. (This the time of the waggling of the hand, now that the green is overlaid with some grey, as if the leeks had gotten overboiled, and I’m older if not wiser. I mean, I can do different. Whether it’s better and what it’s better for is not for me to judge.)
But I know plenty of other writers who launched into this perilous sea of ink because they didn’t like the ending of a book, or the way a minor character was treated, and who wanted “to make it better”. I.e. to make the pain stop. I know this is often the launching point for — usually, in my reading experience — very bad or at least profoundly odd fanfic. (I have told you of the fanfic that started trying to fix all the problems of the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice and at one point forgot what it was doing and turned into a non fiction study of how to invest and make a fortune in Regency England, right? Fascinating of its kind — no, I don’t remember the title, sorry — but a fail as fanfiction.)
Lately I’ve become very resistant to tension in other people’s writing. Look, I know why. This tends to happen when I’m overwhelmed and mildly depressed. I can’t take any more stimulus of my emotions, so I just want to read bland stuff. (Hence Jane Austen fan fic or silly cozy mysteries. And even those sometimes need me to jump ahead to make sure some minor tension is resolved well, before I can read sequentially. ) I go through entire months of this, which is annoying, but happens.
The thing is, that if I get exposed to a story that hurts enough it then forces me to write it, with all the terrible tension and evil. Because I have to fix it, and that’s the only way to do it. To wade into the bad first and fix it.
I became aware of this as I unwillingly was made to watch/listen to the Planet of Apes movie. I think the second, where we go back to retcon how it happened (in the original and in the book it was nonsense, and I could trace it for you but it’s too long. It was something like “Nuclear war, and just-so-evolution.” Also poorly digested ideas of divine retribution upon a whole species. It’s not a bad book, but profound it ain’t.)
There is this very smart chimp, smarter than most of the human children, certainly smarter than children his age, being raised lovingly by a human family as a loved and cherished child. And then he meets the world outside where he’s mistreated, treated as an animal, hurt.
Look, the pain was almost unendurable. In fact, I had to put on headphones because I couldn’t take that movie.
And yes, I know why. You don’t need a degree in psychoanalysis to tell me why that hurt me, particularly. It is the story of any gifted or Odd child who is lucky enough to have a loving family. And I did raise two of them. You know the world is going to shred them, and you can’t save them, but oh, you wish you could. Even though the world shreds all of us, and growth and yes happiness come from it, ultimately.
Will there be a story about that? I don’t know. I do have a slate of things to write.
But I do know if I wrote that it would be very powerful. Because it hurts so much.
I always tell early-writers: Go where the pain is. The situation you can imagine that’s almost unendurable to you. Go there, and start with it. Then work from there with your character.
I’m not going to tell you it’s a recipe for great fiction. I’ve seen great fiction arise from a dare or from a mental game.
And at times, as I pointed out, the “fix it” fiction devolves in weird ways. And it can become Mary Sue. (Don’t become Mary Sue.)
BUT writing a pain project will tell you more about yourself, your motivations and above all your drive and your abilities than anything else ever will.
So if you’re at loose ends and have no idea what to work on next? Go to the pain and start there.
Mad Genius Club 
15 responses to “Where It Hurts”
I put my heroes through a lot of pain sometimes (some of the more squeamish readers complain), and the type of pain (though varied between physical and psychic) is always rooted in something personal to me, though not necessarily in ways decipherable by others.
I hear you. Right now I am reading some bit of fluff from Amazon about Mr. Darcy being disowned by his still-living dad and trying to run a bookshop. It’s a perfectly fine Regency romance but as fanfic based on pre-existing characters I rather feel like I’ve stepped into the Mirror Mirror universe and Bearded Spock and Intendant Kira are going to show up any moment now.
Loving a Deathseer was the first thing I drafted among my self-published works and probably the most pain-driven, although I’d rather not analyze it at that level right now. Otherwise, I do mostly write fixit fic – Marrying a Monster, for instance, is partially the result of a Bollywood actor I liked playing a paranormal investigator I didn’t, so I set out to write the paranormal investigator he should have played, for lack of a better word. But there’s all kinds of other stuff in there – road trip hijinks, the heroine’s mean girl acquaintance making trouble, the mantis-people, the yeti analogue, etc.
“The launching point for very bad fanfic” – indeed. I call this the “Why Was Aslan So Mean to Susan” fanfic group.
Writing into the pain – yeah. (sigh) I need to gird my loins and do that.
And then there’s all those people who identify with Mrs. Bennet and her daughter Lydia and are endlessly indignant at Austen’s treatment of them. I assume they will start excusing Mrs. Norris any day now. Somehow very few of them ever get around to defending Lucy Steele or Mrs. Clay, the two Austen villainesses I do have a soft corner for.
Eh. I’ve read a couple of nice Susan redemption fics where the lost Queen returns to join the others.
Never had any outrage over Susan, but I very much disliked all the other characters going out in a train accident instead of having full lives and families.
But my biggest gripe was the Dwarves in The Last Battle. Believing in False Aslan nearly got them carted off to bondage in Calor. They had cause to lose their faith.
They turned into every stereotype of alt right racists, murdering Talking Horses in the name of “The Dwarves are for the Dwarves.” They believed the people who debunked False Aslan because it was convenient for them, and disbelieved everything the debunkers said about the actual Aslan because it was inconvenient for them. No, I don’t have much sympathy for the Dwarves of Last Battle.
Didn’t they get stuck in Purgatory? I felt it was too good for them. 😡
A purgatory of their own making.
“I call this the “Why Was Aslan So Mean to Susan” fanfic group.”
I read that bloody thing. Perfect example of why I write now instead of reading.
Wasn’t that a Hugo nominee?
Are you referring to a story written by the vastly overrated Gaiman? Sorry, but I never saw the great attraction to his work. I always got the impression that he sees himself as too good for all the juvenile comic-book heroics and was writing down to his audience.
I always read stressful books backwards.
Also, just a note. James Thurber said that humor was emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. It’s probably not a universal definition but on occasion it definitely works.
“Look, the pain was almost unendurable.”
Oh yeah. I know. That’s because it’s friggin’ Frankenstein. Again.
The pain is from banging your head on the coffee table because it is so frigging unbelievably, intolerably STUPID.
I’m -so- sick of watching Frankenstein in new clothes on TV. The “cautionary tale” that just never ever stops cautioning us all not to be so uppity and eat our vegetables like good little boys and girls.
Trash anime is better than -anything- out of Hollywood since 2010 because there’s no Frankenstein. (Kaiju #8!!!! Let’s gooooo!)
Which is why I wrote “Unfair Advantage” in the first place. I wanted to see a guy get handed irresistible power and BE CAREFUL with it, so when he nuked the bad guys from orbit he didn’t singe the daisies in the flowerbeds next to them.
Irresistible power to destroy! The weapons of Mankind are useless against him! Frankenstein’s Monster, the oxygen-injected version with afterburners, running nitro and not giving a single F who doesn’t like it, solves the world-ending alien attack. And nobody dies. THAT is what I want to see.
I do not want to see “tension” from the mind of some ghastly pervert who lusts after small children. Because it hurts when I bang my head on the coffee table like that. 😡
Sarah, why do you keep pushing that red button?! ~:D
Jerry Is a Man. Bicentennial Man. Both of those, I believe, came out of Odds saying “Make it stop hurting!”
Undoubtedly there are more – those are just the first two that popped up this morning.
can’t remember exactly but I think it was OSC who said that the motivations to writing are many, but do it anyway. Do it because you think you can do it better. Do it because you hated it. Do it because you want to see something different. But do it.