Support for Indie Authors discussion

Does your own book make you cry? And I don't mean when you see your sales report haha. In the writing, editing, and proofreading process with my own books, I transition between crying like a baby at the sad content and laughing at myself for crying at my own work. It seems silly to feel sad about sections of the book when they came out of my brain in the first place and I already know what's coming. Just wondering if this happens to anyone else?

Yes, I feel all the emotions my characters go through. It has made book 2 rather difficult to write at times as it has some dark spots. One chapter in particular had me choking back tears and for the most part I'm tied in knots while writing. All in all a bit of a mess really. LOL.

Must be Murder
Yes, I shed tears while writing this book. My characters were very personal to me. It was easy to share their happy and anxious moments. I think a good author has to feel what his characters are feeling and thinking.

Yes, sometimes, in a particularly sad scene.

Definitely. I was certainly not expecting to cry at the end of my last series since it was supposed to be humorous, but there I was, wiping away tears as I reread the ending. :)

Not every book, but one particularly sad scene made me cry writing it. Reading it... only almost.

Oh boy, yes. I have this scene where the main character thinks that she may have found proof that another character that is missing is dead. I bawled while I wrote it and bawled when I re-read it. Of course I have been known to cry over emotionally charged commercials, lol

I get pretty attached to my characters, but not as much as my wife does. She's probably read my first book about 15 times, but still cries when one of the characters gets killed. Every time.

There was a chapter early in Blood Ties that made me shed a few tears, but I seem to yell at my main character more than anything. I've lost count of how many times I've sat back and gone, "Jill, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"

I think it is normal to cry, even for something we wrote because we live with those characters and feel with them, so when something hurts them, it hurts us too. It doesn't matter that we write it.

I have a scene in particular in my book that made me cry while I was writing it, and still does every time I read it. Maybe I'm too emotional. :P

Yes, there are a couple of scenes that bring a small tear to my eyes whenever I read them. I thought there must be something wrong with me, but from the comments here it sounds like this is perfectly normal.

Or we're all weird.

One or the other...

The Noah City stories do. The rest, not so much.

Yes, a few times.

I was surprised when the sad thing made me cry as I wrote it. I knew it was coming after all, but there were still tears.

I was more surprised when the happy thing made me cry. I was legitimately shocked how sweet the character ended up being. Awe, warm fuzzies!

Oh yes!
True's Love in particular had me sobbing properly; especially the airport scene.
I felt like a complete numpty! I'm the author. I know what's happening, and what will happen, but yet the tears still came.
My husband laughed at me!

But the scenes we cry over are the same ones our readers cry over.
They feel the real emotion we've pumped into our book.

CB; I've found that before. I started writing a character with a particular aim, but ended up keeping him as I couldn't bear to let him go. An incidental turned out to be a major role!
I swear books hae a mind of their own!
So often I find them taking me down a path other than the one I intended.

I put my characters through some intense experiences, but the scene that moves me most was actually a last minute addition, where an important secondary [an oxymoron?] character breaks devastating news to one of the leads, and you see that he's crying. He's normally such a stoic man so this got to me more than anything else.

wow, now I'm concerned. I didn't cry while I wrote my first book, is that a bad thing? does it mean the readers won't get emotional too?

It's probably a good thing your sad scenes make you weepy. I can never tell when I'm writing something if a scene is sufficiently sad, scary or funny until a reader lets me know it made them upset.

Well, on a first read anyway. If it's been a while since I touched the writing, I'll get more invested reading it. Easier to be detached from the writing portion of it. After that much time, the internal editor shuts off completely and I can just enjoy the story. That's when the tears, or giddiness or whatever else I was aiming for hits me. Ha ha.

I'm with you Safa, never actually cried during a scene, but I do feel the intensity of the emotion. However I get more caught up in the unexpected action scene moments (with excitement of course).

There is a particular scene in the last few chapters that, when I read them, I hear the song of Pendulum - Watercolour in the back of my mind. It is a perfect intense, emotional, high-action song for the final stretch of storyline the protagonist goes through. If only I could do animation well, I would make my own (anime) version of a clip with that song. ^_^

But, sadness does not always equal crying. I can sometimes feel intensely sad and marvel in the feeling of being sad. Sadness makes you appreciate the times of happiness even more, I think.

I do, big time. If I don't feel it, the readers won't feel it.

I don't cry easily, but I cried when writing the end of Book 3 in my Shiva XIV series. My main character faced the mother he lost... And it tore me up. I'm having to edit it now for publication and re-read the whole thing over again. I'm kinda scared to get to the end! Lol

But I think it's probably good if it affects us like that. If we feel it, our readers will too.

Yes, I've cried at the sad parts in my books and got goosebumps during the chilling parts or the awesome parts - so did my mother (yeah, I know, its my mother).

Frequently
Fiction payout is emotion. If I don't feel any emotion, how can I expect my readers to do so. Even so, it is surprising to me, after reading the book a hundred times that there are certain passages that still make me cry. I wonder who wrote those?

Safa wrote: "wow, now I'm concerned. I didn't cry while I wrote my first book, is that a bad thing? does it mean the readers won't get emotional too?"

I wouldn't worry. The readers response and your response need not match exactly.

If you cry at some parts of your own book, then others. who are like you, will also cry.

One reader posted "...made me cry (unforgivable)." In discussion with her, I found out that she cried at a completely different and unexpected part of the book than I would have guessed.

So people may cry, even if you don't.

Reading my own poetry sometimes will evoke strong enough emotions to make me cry. Each poem I wrote has a pretty detailed story behind it, and chronicles an emotional time in my life.

Safa wrote: "wow, now I'm concerned. I didn't cry while I wrote my first book, is that a bad thing? does it mean the readers won't get emotional too?"

Not necessarily. Maybe it's just too early. There are a couple of stories of mine that did not make me cry while working on them, but when I read them later they did. And lack of tears does not necessarily mean you don't feel anything for your characters or your story. I wouldn't worry about it.

Safa wrote: "wow, now I'm concerned. I didn't cry while I wrote my first book, is that a bad thing? does it mean the readers won't get emotional too?"

I've written dozens of books, and only about three of them make me cry. Don't worry about it!

W. wrote: "Frequently
Fiction payout is emotion. If I don't feel any emotion, how can I expect my readers to do so. Even so, it is surprising to me, after reading the book a hundred times that there are certa..."

Absolutely right on. I am amazed at the different emotional responses I see and hear from people who have read my book. Different things strike different people, and in ways I could not imagine. Myself, I still cry at certain passages.

My story Where Darkness Dwells was an emotional write for me to begin with. The subject matter forced me to separate myself from my characters and the anguish they dealt with. But as I went back and read it, not for the purpose of edits or publication, but just to read it, it made me very sad. And I've had several people tell me it made them cry. It's something I take as a compliment.

Here's a problem with getting emotional reading your own books, in my opinion. You spend weeks and sometimes years working on the story, going over it time and again to get the wording right, editing out all the little glitches and spelling errors. After a while, you become desensitized to the work.

There are only a couple of movies that I've seen that will get me emotional over and over again because they remind me of a time in my life that was so full of hope and promise, but MOST shows don't affect me the same way after I've seen them once.

The same thing happens to me with my own writing. I've spent so much time with it that I've kind of hardened myself to the feelings in it after a while.

I'm a man. I'm 30. I don't cry....

unless the Cowboys or Horn Frogs lose, the Enterprise blows up, Batman and Superman fight, or my kids tell me they don't want to sit in my lap anymore and watch Batman the Animated Series.

But other than that, I have a strict no cry policy.

Yeah, good luck with that. LOL!

No, I understand, seriously. Not everyone sheds tears easily. Nothing wrong with that.

some years ago, I was working on a story. One of my characters fell into a bit of a pickle, but I managed to save her. She was in the hospital and recovering somewhat, and was on the phone with another character when suddenly a terrible and unexpected thing happened... and she died. I hadn't planned it, and I hadn't seen it coming. Hubby came into the room and saw me sitting at my computer, sobbing -- he assumed I'd just gotten some bad news, and was more than a little annoyed when he finally realized it was 'just' a character.

But normally, no I don't cry.

Yeah, that's the way non-writers see it. These are just characters to most of them.

I played a lot of Adele when I needed my characters to be emotional. I just bawled while typing at my computer. The funny thing is, I wrote a romantic comedy. Just one more reason why my husband thinks I'm crazy.

T.L. wrote: "I swear books hae a mind of their own!
So often I find them taking me down a path other than the one I intended.

I know! The amount of one time joke characters in my book that became the more popular characters in the series is... well, it is two. Still, that is a lot considering they were originally just one time jokes when the book started.

Marie wrote: "Does your own book make you cry? And I don't mean when you see your sales report haha. In the writing, editing, and proofreading process with my own books, I transition between crying like a baby a..."

Nothing that's made me cry from sadness, but I'm hard hearted. When you've held hundreds of people's hands as they die, you tend to look at death as a different sort of passage.
I have cried from laughing so hard though. I look back at what I write, and I can't help but lose it, as I see how my sense of humor twists dark situations.

Cry.... and cry..... and cry..... and cry some more.
Then I get angry.
Then I scream.
Then I exhaust myself.
Then cry some more.

I have a book that every time I edit it the ending always gives me a good kick to the feels. But my main emotion when reading is guilt because I'm an absolute brute to the poor main character.

I much prefer it when I manage to write a character that I want to punch in the face, because them getting their comeuppance at the end is wonderfully satisfying.

Dwayne wrote: "The Noah City stories do. The rest, not so much."

Me, too!

I recently read a short story I had written some 20 years ago and it brought tears to my eyes. I don't remember it having that effect on me when I wrote it. In fact, I never thought it was that good of a story at the time, but I've changed a lot since then. Kind of a nice thing to have happened.

It's funny how it can happen sometimes. The Knaasts Saga made me cry at the end.
I can't see how Martin could kill so many good Characters in the Chronicles of fire and ice. It's so painful!

Marie wrote: "Does your own book make you cry? And I don't mean when you see your sales report haha. In the writing, editing, and proofreading process with my own books, I transition between crying like a baby a..."

Yes, definitely! I wrote multiple scenes that made me weep when they spilled onto the page. However, when my husband read the book aloud I cried a bit more. My husband also had misty moments while reading so I know it wasn't just writer's guilt, haha.

Tamara wrote: "Marketing makes me cry."

Haha! YES!

YES! I wrote a contemporary romance book for PCD awareness month. Although some of it was my life, it was about a Facebook friend whose husband died suddenly. It's all made up of course, but I couldn't help but cry...and laugh...and cry some more. Colin, my lead man is the name of the turtle of my dead PCD friend. I know...I know... too much information! LOL

Tamara wrote: "Marketing makes me cry."

I'll drink to that!

These replies are great. A little bit like therapy, right? When I first started writing my series, I intended to kill off a certain character. But I became so attached, I just couldn't do it. It was supposed to be a pivotal point in the story but I chickened out and redid the whole storyline so this character would live. The book turned out loads better in the alternate version, so, win-win!

I sometimes come close to crying when I write the scene, but reading? No. I've never cried whilst reading any book, mine or otherwise. I've been saddened by plenty of scenes, just not enough to cry.

I do get choked up over parts of our books. (My co-author, not so much.)

The prologue of my book makes me cry no matter how many times I read it.

I'm just a big bag of emotions!
I've cried reading books as well as writing.

When I read I read to escape to another world, so get totally immersed.
I love/hate reading Jane Eyre. No matter how many times I read it I get caught up in every emotion, and always hope for a different path! Weirdo!!

I'm the same with films.
Australia; EVERY time I hear "Mrs Boss, Mrs Boss, I can say your name!" I'm in floods. Actually welling up just typing that.
Wow! :-/

But those emotions are very handy.
I wrote Rekindled Love using real emotions in my fictional story.
Yeah, cried writing that too!! But then there is a very dramaticly sad scene. I defy anyone not to cry when reading it!

xx