Do you have anything that you celebrate simply because it’s a celebration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The New Year is like that for me. I’ve always thought of my birthday as the new year, but I still love the excitement of the calendar new year, and I’m more than happy to celebrate it with everyone and anyone who is interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cinco de Mayo is the same way. It’s a great party, but I have no personal connection to Mexico defeating France. I just celebrate it because it’s a party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m guessing that St. Pat’s day is probably like that for a lot of people not named Pat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My point is that, sometimes, it doesn’t matter why we’re celebrating. We’re just happy to be celebrating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t think that’s just true of celebrating, either. I think the same sort of thing happens with emotions. Imagine a character who feels sad about being sad, for example, or one who is made happier by being happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those characters have an interesting emotional momentum. Once something triggers a sad feeling, the character stays sad (or maybe gets sadder) until something breaks the cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the thing that breaks the cycle is internal, or perhaps the character is not self-aware enough to do that. Either way, it could make for a compelling character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Better yet, what about a character who has different emotions about their emotions? How about someone who gets frustrated or angry about being sad? Their emotional journey could be sad -> angry\/sad -> angry… and then what? Sad again? Or does the anger burn it all away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What about someone who is afraid of being happy, who feels like too much happiness could hurt them, or someone who is happiest when they’re angry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m currently working with a character who has emotions about emotions, and I’m finding the path he’s travelling both interesting and difficult to get right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
How about you? Have you written about emotions that build (and perhaps feed on) other emotions? How did you deal with them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This started as a New Year’s article, but went quickly to a writing problem I’m struggling with. I hope you enjoy it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Some emotional questions to start your new writing year.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[35,96],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-writing","tag-fiction","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-pR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}