You Can't Make A Dog Into A Horse

Emotions! I have often discussed how as a writer my characters are real to me.  I have a vision of what they look like. The conversations that occur in the novel are conversations that I have felt I participated in.  Their motivations are so familiar and predictable to me it is as if we have become best imaginary friends.  The story unfolds under my fingers but for the writer it is the lives of the character that are falling into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle being put together.

Yet, in the scenes of pivotal action and great emotion it is often difficult to get the words down.  A writer can feel blocked by the daunting task of expressing that emotion. It has turned into a hurdle of Everest proportions and importance that the reader understand the catalyst of the story. What was told before led up to this one scene.  What occurs in this scene becomes the emotional stepping stone to realization or action or even separating the beginning to lead to the end of the story.

It is with difficulty that these emotional scenes are written or it is with difficulty that these scenes can not be written because the emotion being portrayed are not just those of the characters but of the writer as well.  The writer has sliced themselves open and his or her emotions are bleeding openly for the world to see and critique.  It may be also that the writer is pulling these emotions from their own past experiences so there is a tangle of the real with the imagined.  The writer having faced those emotions in the past with having to recreate them for fiction.  It is no wonder for me this pivotal scene has turned into a Herculean task.  I am an emotional writer and person. I give and show freely my feelings and I have put them into my characters.

However, I was reading a quote today by someone unknown that said, "If the horse you're drawing looks more like a dog, make it a dog."  This idea appealed and struck me instantly.  The scene so difficult to write may come easier if I approach it and regard it in a different way.  Maybe I was envisioning how the scene will lead and how each word would progress and yet, it is not progressing as I had envisioned. So instead I need to focus only on each word and thought and follow its path to see how the story is truly forming. I was envisioning a horse but creating a dog. I was hoping the story would go one way and it may actually be following another design.

The thought of this is quite exhilarating in truth. I have let go the pre-conceived ideas about my novel and can watch my characters lives come alive as a creator and at the same time as a spectator.  I am not writing the summary and obituary of someone's life.  I am writing the tale and continuing of someone's life.  I am not looking back, I am only looking forward.  I am not forcing my dog to be a horse any longer. I am releasing the tight emotional grip, like a hovering parent afraid to let their child go, and instead I am giving my story a bit of leash to grow and cultivate and get through the emotional scene to accomplish...The End.