Yes I definitely think that my main characters have a lot of "myself" in them and sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it isn't!

It's good if you can use your own emotions and imagine yourself into the situation, because then that makes it more real (well i find anyway). However the hot/cold thing - i know exactly what you mean. Like sometimes I'll write a really emotional scene and then have them sit down and eat tea and biscuits or whatever ...

I think I have a different, but related, problem. I'm not someone who's great at expressing their emotions and I keep getting criticised for not letting readers see how my MC feels. So rather than my emotions getting in the way, my lack of them (or lack of expressing them) causes problems!

Psychoanalysis over...

I keep getting criticised for not letting readers see how my MC feels.

Yes, I have/had that problem too. I've found Terry Pratchett's novels good for picking up tips on how to express thoughts and feelings, but it doesn't come naturaly, and if I find I've written anything even slightly cringe-worthy I can't stop myself from editing it back out again.



- NaomiM

I think it says a lot for how well written your MC is, Jane, that you reader doesn't want you to kill them off. - afterall, isn't the customer (reader) is always right?

When I'm reading people's MS for editorial reports I rarely come across a completely 'wrong', unconvincing ending for what's gone before, but I often and often come across a too-tidy one. The classic is after a well-paced, well-built novel with real coherence and intensity, the last chapter is stuffed with a brisk run-down of What Happened Afterwards to every single character. I used to think that it was the writer wanting to make sure everyone was okay after the bomb-blast/death/shotgun wedding/drunken spree, but with one MS I suddenly knew that it was actually the writer's friends who'd said, 'But what happened to...', and in conversation I discovered that indeed it was: the orginal ending had been much briefer and more open-ended. As you say, Naomi, it's a tribute to how well-written the characters are that readers care about them, but it often doesn't work to indulge our foolish desires for closure...

I'm not someone who's great at expressing their emotions and I keep getting criticised for not letting readers see how my MC feels. So rather than my emotions getting in the way, my lack of them (or lack of expressing them) causes problems!

I think this is probably natural in writers who are less demonstrative by nature, and we all have aspects of writing which don't come naturally, and need to be consciously developed. But another thing that's very common, I think, is simply that in your own novel/story, you just don't need much written down to trigger in you the effect you're trying to convey. A simple example is the book which describes the exotic island in loving detail, but totally fails to evoke the character's home town. It's based on the writer's home town, so the writer sees it in full the minute s/he writes, 'He walked down the High Street.' But I don't see it...

Similarly, an event in your novel may evoke thoughts and feelings in you so naturally that you actually fail to give the reader enough clues to what the characters are feeling and thinking. This happens in just about every manuscript I do reports on at one point - or on one issue - or another. It can be as hard to write something you know very well, convincingly, as it is to write something you don't know well enough...

Emma

Naomi - thanks for the Pratchett tip - I'll give him a read!

I find the opposite actually - if my character is going to suffer, especially at the end, I find that gloom and anxiety descend. Book 2 of Joshua has a hopefully very sad ending and I admit that the knowledge of what was going to happen hung over me like a cloud all through writing the book, from the minute I realised that this was how it had to end.

Conversely, working towards a truly happy ending has the opposite effect. I need to experience - vicariously at least or from experience - the emotions of the character to have a hope of writing them. So nothing helps better than to have a bit of a wallow - put some music on that the character might listen to, try to get into their heads, connect it with something in my own experience if possible...

And then emerge into my own life with some pretty strange feelings! Friends have commented at times that I look a little blue when I come away from the computer.

But this is normal, isn't it? This is why we writers ate such nutjobs, right?

Tell me I'm not alone...

<Added>

ARE such nutjobs, I mean...

This is interesting! I know that my relationship with my father gets into every single thing I write - it's awfully depressing...

....not if you get to metaphorically kill him off, each time.