Writering angst

I’m working on another project, working title Soul Mage. It’s traditional fantasy. Here’s the Pinterest board on it if you’re interested. Anyhow, I had the entire thing plotted and was starting to write the initial chapters, when another character stepped onto the stage, bringing a whole lot of other baggage and interesting complications. So right now I’m going through my character descriptions and developing each of them in specific.

What I’ve run into is that the character who stepped onto the stage turns out to be extremely fascinating, complex, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to like him. He did something very bad. Very. I get why, but I’ll tell you what. When I wrote that bit I wanted to backtrack and change it. No, he didn’t really know what he was doing. But then I realized that it’s far more powerful if he did. If he knowingly made that choice. I gotta say, though, this takes me out of my comfort zone. I’ve also got some other bad stuff happening with characters. Tough things.

One of the things that I know as a writer is that whenever something makes you uncomfortable, that’s the time to press harder on it and make it hurt. That’s where the power is and that’s where a lot of interesting things happen. It’s much easier to shy away from it and shift it so that it isn’t as bad, but that robs you as the writer and it robs the readers and it robs the story. Pursue the painful. Don’t duck it.

That said, this is going to be hard to write. Not just subject-wise, but to keep myself pushing at that element and not ducking it, and also to do it justice.