I’m a single mom, of course I binge watch Grey’s Anatomy. Let me tell you, have I been checking off every cliche on the list with the last few episodes I have watched. I mean sobbing, laughing, eating chocolate ice cream: the whole deal. Y'all know what I mean.
During my current binge session, I messaged the group chat with the girls. I said, “Shonda Rhimes is visceral evil in the way she traumatizes characters. And that’s probably the best compliment you can give a writer.” Truly, an author has succeeded the most when they can illicit a strong, visceral emotional reactions from its readers or viewers. I yearn for the day I hear someone has had that response from a piece of my own writing. But nonetheless, that woman is evil.
Which really got me thinking. If the best authors are the ones that are capable of ripping out such emotions from us, then the best characters are the ones that absolutely wreck you in the same respect. The ones that start off sunshine and get hit by every awful imaginable. The ones whose stories have us sobbing into ice cream with the things they go through.
As the sarcastic individual that I am, I also habitually make comments along the lines of, “Whoever is writing my screenplay, must REALLY hate me at this moment. Or see a lot of cosmic irony at the very least.”
Maybe the moments that absolutely suck, the curveballs, the “Oh my goodness WHYs.” Maybe those moments are just writing out a better character. The best writers, and how they sometimes come across as visceral evil in the terrible things they write for their characters, are spelling out the best stories.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” (Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.) I am so grateful, that throughout all of the ‘scripted curveballs’ my personal screenplay writer has put into my story, that have me screaming at the sky questioning, “why?” I can use to tell a better story. One which I have the great joy of sharing with all of you. I hope to catch you during the next chapter.
Be Safe,
Claira
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