Thread by @SamSykesSwears

I’ve always said I write broken, damaged, wounded characters because they have more conflict. And that’s technically true. But deep down, I think I just want to figure out how people go back to being okay. To living with their wounds.

I guess that’s why scars figure so heavily into my books. They’re reminders of what happened. You can never make them go away, so you just sort of figure out how to make them work, figure out what they mean to you, how to accept them as a part of you.

Like any pain, really.

Because, honestly, that’s a question with no real answer. There’s no actual diagram for figuring it out. It just takes a lot of time, reaction and consequence. And time, reaction and consequence is what a book is, more or less. So every story about it is new and hard.

It’s also why I never mind when reviews give me shit about my characters crying and having angst. Pain is uncomfortable to watch because none of us want to think that, under all of us, that’s what’s left. But without looking at that, we can’t figure out what’s under the pain.

Because, I mean, what’s the alternative? Not tell the story? “Everyone agreed quietly to never speak of it again and go back to fighting dragons?” It feels dishonest to pretend we come away from our wounds just mildly inconvenienced. We change. Or so I like to think.

There was once an audience question on a panel where someone asked if relationships really matter when the fate of the world’s at stake and I think about it all the time because yes, they matter. Getting cut isn’t the same as a bomb being dropped, but it still fucking hurts.

But I guess that mindset isn’t uncommon because people are always trying to write stories to quantify, quality or otherwise measure pain so that we don’t have to be afraid of it anymore, but that’s so fucking stupid because you can think about it all you want and it’ll still hurt

People always want clean stories with satisfying arcs where every answer at the end is the right one, but that’s so fucking pointless because to have the right answer at the end, you have to have made every right answer along the way, which is just a lie. It can’t be done.

So you write characters who hurt and then you go with them as they try to figure out how to make it hurt less. And in the end, they’re either okay or they’re not. And that’s not clean and it’s not always satisfying, but it is truthful and it is real. So you just keep doing it.

It’s weird because the audience is almost tangential to this. Every great novel is just an author talking to themselves for 300-900 pages trying to figure something out.
I say “almost” because you also hope that the answer you find is one that someone else was looking for.

It’s also wearying and terrifying because when does the pain stop? And the answer is scary because it usually doesn’t. You can’t get rid of scars. You can only ever hit a point where they don’t bother you as much. But there’s something beautiful in that and it’s worth looking for

Or so we tell ourselves. To make ourselves keep going.
But there’s something beautiful in just keeping going, too.

Anyway, I just finished my smoothie, so I’m done talking to myself here. Here’s a cool picture of a dog that’s some kind of pug-rottweiler mix, I think? His name’s Bob and he’s on Instagram. Have a good day, fellas.

Here’s Bob’s insta account: instagram.com/bbandbob?igshi…