Writers struggle with attachment to their characters
12 posts across 2 communities in the last 60 days; 92% from r/writers.
“i am a 20 yo man and i rarely cry untill recently that i got off my depression pills and today i wanted to try and write a sad backstory for a random character to see if i can mimic how oda ichiro writes his backstories and i started crying and kept on crying and i was crying so…”
“One of my characters broke down after a certain circumstance and I actually felt teary eyed after. This has happened several times after hitting 50K words”
“!!TW MENTAL HEALTH Hey, so, one of my side characters, Ben, is very close with my main character, but his mental health is horrible and he probably won't make it (he gets saved). I want to write an authentic goodbye letter from him to family and friends, but I have no idea what…”
Multiple writers express difficulty detaching from their original characters, particularly when forced to kill them off. This highlights the emotional investment and challenges of storytelling, especially in longer works where plot demands necessitate difficult decisions.
SOURCES (15)
“i am a 20 yo man and i rarely cry untill recently that i got off my depression pills and today i wanted to try and write a sad backstory for a random character to see if i can mimic how oda ichiro writes his…”
“One of my characters broke down after a certain circumstance and I actually felt teary eyed after. This has happened several times after hitting 50K words submitted by /u/johndoe09228 [link] [comments]”
“!!TW MENTAL HEALTH Hey, so, one of my side characters, Ben, is very close with my main character, but his mental health is horrible and he probably won't make it (he gets saved). I want to write an authentic goodbye letter from him to family and friends, but I have no idea what to include in this to make it as real as possible. Like, factors, structure, idk. Any ideas? By the way, this is NOT so people can write letters like that for themselves, stay safe and speak to professionals if you fe”
“I've had this story in my head for a long, and this was a major plot point even before I found out about tropes, back when I was younger. But this plot point, and its fall out and its outcomes are so fundamentally linked to the everything in the story I don't see how I can untangle all the threads and changing the story without having this character die in this way, aside from just starting from scratch. So I figure that the best I can do is to understand that not all tropes are bad, and”
“Yesterday. We were brainstorming a fantasy novel and I asked for character references. The first three characters are correct. The four are complete hallucinations. Three characters are missing. And then it wrote my cats into the novel, and a litter box bot, something we were joking about in that same window. I only have three cats and they don't look like that, the names are correct though. The funny thing is, it did create a correct image first, I found it under Images, but then I guess it”
“Forgive me for my poor writing it’s like 3 am where I live So I happen to be very new to writing and I’ve been working on a fantasy story for the past 3 months everything has been going fine but I’ve ran into a wall. I’m not sure how I can put this but I’ve been struggling to write a believable romance between my two protagonist since at the moment they just seem like “two good friends that just so happen to kiss at the end of the story for the story to have a happy ending”. I’m not sure what I”
“Okay so I feel like this is a weird question to ask but a couple people have told me I need to re do my MC, and I need advice from a more diverse group of writers than just a couple old ladies. So I'm writing a fantasy book series, and it is set in the world of the gods. Human ethnicity has absolutely no weight in this story or in this world, the gods see all humans as the human race. Now, when my brain was painting my beautiful bad ass MC, she just happened to be a different ethnicity than”
“I killed off a character yesterday. Not a villain. Not a side character. One of my favorites. I knew it was coming for months — it was always part of the plan. But when I actually sat down and wrote the scene, I couldn't stop crying. Full-on sobbing at my desk at 11 PM. My cat came over and stared at me like I'd lost my mind. I wrote the last line, closed the laptop, and just sat there in the dark for twenty minutes. I've never had that kind of reaction to my own writing before. Part”
“They are my baby children. My everything. submitted by /u/SirenAndSilver [link] [comments]”
“Have you ever written a character moment in your story, where any of your characters became so helpless in the midst of a certain situation, that not only left them speechless, but also in hysterical tears? This character had no words to express how helpless they felt, but the tears did it for them. This character cries at their failure to help and to be strong and despise their weaknesses, that when they were able to face the situation, it sinks into that characters’ mind how truly helpless the”