Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I just wrote the ending of my WIP. I'm not done yet, but I wrote the last bit.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to make people cry. I'm also pretty sure that I'm a horrible person for wanting to make people cry. I want to finish it now ASAP so I can test it out!

Do you crave making your audience cry?

CV

There isn't any part of my book where I want the readers to be driven to tears....there's death, but the plot and pace of the book aren't written to "mourn" a character. The end is one of those WTF?!?!?! cliff hangers that I always hated in books. Now that it's my book I'm all wahahaha!

Do I want to make my readers cry? Yes.

Yes. Oh my heavens, yes.
It means you've connected on a very emotional, very human level. Love that.

I usually don't mind taking people along on a sad journey, though I hate to end on one. There will definitely be a place in my story for people going "WHY?" and crying. I do tend to try and bring things up a bit before the last page.

I ran the ending by my mom today. And she was like "THAT'S THE ENDING???" (In a good way)

CV

I would love to make people cry (how awful does that sound?) It shows the reader cares about your characters/ storyline. I've cried because of sad endings before (but they had to be done REALLY well.) The right sad ending kind of haunted me for a while. The wrong one makes me go

Not cry, no, but if I can make their guts twist up so they can't swallow their dinners, I'll be a happy camper.

Evoking emotional responses, that's what literature is, at least the underlying purposes of plot and rhetoric. The more emotional response, the more readers are immersed in the participation mystique spell. My best recieved work has secondary characters that made readers angry about how unfairly they treated the protagonist. Name that emotion: anger, fear, joy, sorrow, disgust, surprise; primal emotions, and a cornucopia of progressively more abstract emotions: love, that's elusive. Is it lust? Or what?

I don't really write anything with the intent to make anyone cry. My stuff tends to lean to scary, horrifying, and excitement. If I can make people feel super creeped out and unable to sleep at night, I'd consider that a big win.

Although I do enjoy books that make me cry. When I finished The Book Thief I was inconsolable for days. DAYS. I don't think I've ever cried so much because of that book and it was one of the most cathartic emotional responses to something I've ever felt.

I don't try to make people cry, mostly because I don't like sad stories so I don't write them. But I do try for those moments that are so touching they'll choke you up, maybe a tear or two, but I don't go for an all-out bawling session.

Though I've also been known to cry at happy endings. I cried and cried at the sad ending of the first DemonWars trilogy by R.A. Salvatore, but I sobbed like a baby at the happy ending of the second trilogy. So if someone felt so strongly for my characters that they were compelled to cry that things finally worked out (or whatnot), I wouldn't have a problem with that.

I ugly cried through the last half of The Fault in Our Stars. SO many tears. I'm not sure I want to make people cry like THAT, but still tears.

CV

I don't aim to make people cry, but my ending tend to go somewhere between Happy and Bittersweet. Like, heroes win the day, but not without some rather tangible loss (there tends to be a character who dies or suffers other life-altering ailments). I think I like my sacrifices to be both emotional and physical. I don't expect people to cry all over it, though.

Sommer, The Book Thief made me cry a whole lot too, and not just at the end.

And Brenda, I was just wondering the other day if you'd read those! They're my favourites from Salvatore, although I don't think I've read the entire second trilogy? I have 4 here. Anyway, I think part of my love for those books is the very nifty map. Having your province turned into fantasy-land for one wild ride is awesome.

Okay, The Book Thief and The Fault in Our Stars are both on my TBR list but y'all are really making me scared to read them!! I'm gonna cry?? Really? I hate to cry!

Claudie wrote:And Brenda, I was just wondering the other day if you'd read those! They're my favourites from Salvatore, although I don't think I've read the entire second trilogy? I have 4 here. Anyway, I think part of my love for those books is the very nifty map. Having your province turned into fantasy-land for one wild ride is awesome.

Ooooh, those are some of my all-time favorite books ever! They're the ones that really got me into the genre. So, if you have four, you have the three The Demon <fill-in-the-blank> and Mortalis, right? You're missing Ascendence, Transcendence, and Immortalis then? Those ones are really good. Not quite as good as the first three, but the ending of Immortalis is utterly beautiful. Like I said, I sobbed unashamedly for a good hour. And I can't imagine how awesome it would be for that to be MY province. So, where do you live in the world of Corona, then??

dios4vida wrote:Okay, The Book Thief and The Fault in Our Stars are both on my TBR list but y'all are really making me scared to read them!! I'm gonna cry?? Really? I hate to cry!

Yes, you'll cry, but what do you expect from one of the greatest books to ever have been written? Not to mention that it's about WWII?