When a story starts feeling... too personal

[Coldwarrior12]

Do you ever start writing something that was just meant to be fun, but slowly realize it's digging into your own emotions, desires, fears... stuff you didn’t expect? Like, it started as just a power fantasy, but suddenly you’re writing scenes that feel way too raw? I’m having that moment right now, and it’s kinda freaking me out (in a good way?). Has anyone else had a story turn into emotional self-therapy by accident?

 

[Eldoria]

I experienced it. I wrote fantasy stories simply to fulfil my wild imagination. But without realising it, I touched on the darkest moral points, even those that often occur in the real world. I read my writing over and over again, but I still couldn't answer the moral questions raised by the side character (Joanna de Vire), and I could only stand in silence alongside the protagonist (Alice Vermillion). It felt both touching and painful. I didn't plan for that chapter to be written as a melodrama. If you're interested, please check out this chapter:
Blood Rose: Her Last Mercy was Death - Vol 2 Chapter 2: A Knight Who Couldn’t Answer:

Blood Rose: Her Last Mercy was Death - Vol 2 Chapter 2: A Knight Who Couldn’t Answer | Scribble Hub

www.scribblehub.com

Perhaps you feel what I felt.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I frequently try for that but get distracted by the fun stuff myself.

 

[Deleted member 166465]

Do you ever start writing something that was just meant to be fun, but slowly realize it's digging into your own emotions, desires, fears... stuff you didn’t expect? Like, it started as just a power fantasy, but suddenly you’re writing scenes that feel way too raw? I’m having that moment right now, and it’s kinda freaking me out (in a good way?). Has anyone else had a story turn into emotional self-therapy by accident?

What if I told you that you have never read anything that is 100% made up?
Characters modeled after people you know.
Names of people you know.
Emotions you have felt or are feeling right now.
Places you know, or seen, or been told about.
All stories have their kernell of reality.
What you are experiencing is totally normal and everyone feels it.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Not by accident, but yes.

 

[georgelee5786]

No

 

[KUWABARA]

There's scenes in my outline that gets me overly emotional and sometimes when I play them out in my head I get pretty teary-eyed, I have to be careful like when I'm at work for example since it'll make me legitimately choke up if I'm not careful. I can only hope I'm not making it too gut wrenching for readers (not that it'll gain any real traction since it isn't litrpg or isekai :p) when I get around to it on the first draft haha.

 

[lambenttyto]

Do you ever start writing something that was just meant to be fun, but slowly realize it's digging into your own emotions, desires, fears... stuff you didn’t expect? Like, it started as just a power fantasy, but suddenly you’re writing scenes that feel way too raw? I’m having that moment right now, and it’s kinda freaking me out (in a good way?). Has anyone else had a story turn into emotional self-therapy by accident?

No. I'm in control of the story, so it doesn't go where I don't decide it's going to go. I lead the story, the story doesn't lead me. Ideas pop into my head as I write along. I usually write 3,000 words in an hour or two without an outline, so a LOT of things are popping into my head. I have to pick up and put down ideas constantly. I'm constantly filtering what goes in and what stays out, but the story never leads me to strange places, because as I write, I guess you could say I imagine the story as a river, and I can turn the river--not too sharply, overwise it will be stilted with heavy-handedness. But I direct the river of the story where I can see far into the horizon. I'm not treading water with the horizon out of sight because my face is in the water so to speak?