THE WORST MOMENTS OF YOUR LIFE (MAKE FOR GREAT DRAMA)

This feels like Love

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

Tragedy, heartbreak, and pain do not make life richer, except perhaps for the relief of having survived with a deeper appreciation of everything you STILL have. My life has not been awash in unusual suffering. I've never survived a tsunami, an earthquake, a fire, or a shooting rampage.

But that doesn't mean I can't identify with those who have, or imagine myself in a similar situation. As a writer, I use the pain and suffering, the fear and shock that I've experienced to enrich and develop the characters in my novel.

I've felt the loss of people I loved, parents, a sister. I've lived through a painful divorce, financial disaster, a near death from an ectopic pregnancy. I was stalked and threatened by a mental patient who fixated on me.

One peculiar aspect of being a writer is the ability to be inside and outside of the experience at the same time. I remember as a child during moments of rage or sadness becoming aware of a separate part of myself observing and recording everything I was feeling. In the most dire moments (once, for example, as my car spun through the air after being sideswiped by a truck) I caught myself thinking, "This will be great to write about. Time actually does slow down. If I live through this, I'll use it in my novel."

When I'm writing a scene that demands intense emotions I can easily recall desires and emotions of my own life. (Not that I've ever murdered anyone--but I know what murderous rage feels like.) Devastation, hate, love, joy, feel the same no matter what the circumstances.

Tapping into the emotions, sense memory according to acting principals, help me, as a writer, recall the physical sensation of these emotions and transfer them to the characters as I create them.