Writing What Disturbs You

As a writer, you could spend your whole life writing things that are fun and happy. You may find, though, that they are rather inconsequential. They're skin-deep. They're throwaway stories. If you're writing hollow stories, you may find yourself feeling unfulfilled.

Regardless of your genre, if you want your writing to be truly powerful, it will need to disturb you at some point. If you are writing a horror story, you need to create scenes where innocent people have terrifying and violent things happen to them. If you want to create a scene of intense joy, it can only come from somebody feeling intense pain or loss. Even in comedy, the funniest jokes are the ones that make you feel uncomfortable either while you listen to them or while you laugh at them.

In general, we are afraid of the things that disturb us, especially when they come from within our own minds. Why should we confront them when we can safely bottle them up and pretend they aren't there? Well, for one thing, it's pretty unhealthy to do. For another thing, your best writing will come from those stories that scare you. Think about it. If you can write a story that is so powerful that it makes you uncomfortable to write it, it will have the same power to those who read it.

You need to make people feel something. That is why we write. Even being detested means something. The worst thing you can do is write something that garners no reaction. If you want that power, then write something that disturbs you.