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Sun Sep 02, 2007 4:44 am
Snoink says...



Back in my younger days, I read some pretty depressing books, such as 1984 and Poe's work and other stuff. Well, they're not that depressing actually, but when I was younger, I was entranced by them and I knew that I just HAD to write depressing books, just like that.

My plan of attack?

I decided that there could be no glimmer of happiness in my story (which, incidentally, was FREAK at the time). So if it didn't involve DEATH DEATH DEATH DESPAIR DEATH, then I wasn't happy.

So what did I do? I wrote lots of despair... and death... and despair... it got kind of repetitive actually. The results? A horrible angsty piece of paper wad.

You see, in my attempts to be "serious" and deep on life, I forgot that life consisted of more emotions than doom and despair. There are many emotions, such as happiness and joy and love that are just as much fun (and serious) to go into as complete and utter despair. To focus completely on only one emotion made the story seem lifeless and angsty, instead of the deep and meaningful story it intended to be.

That version was scraped, and thankfully so.

If we go through our story using tunnel-vision and only seeing despair, then we lose anything really deep and inspiring. Be a good writer. Despair and doom is only a small percentage of emotions. Touch all of the emotions that we, as humans, feel and you will have created a very serious work indeed.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach

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Sun Sep 02, 2007 4:52 am
Leja says...



A very good point, Snoink, that one doesn't have to be depressing to be deep!
  





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Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:20 pm
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Negative emotions only make sense when there are some positive emotions to balance with it and vice versa. I mean, you can't really be born depressed. Something happy must happen along the way in order for the depressing situation to seem even more emotionally taxing on the character.
It is only when dissonance plays one will find pleasure in consonance.
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