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This week: Feel the Fear... Edited by: Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline  
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Fear is a powerful emotion. It can affect our day-to-day lives. As writers, we can use this, even in extraordinary settings.
This week's Action/Adventure Newsletter, then, is all about facing fears.
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline |
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As I write this, I have been living with a bad toothache for about two weeks. It hasn’t been fun. Tomorrow morning I’ll be seeing my dentist and it’s likely that I’m facing a tooth extraction. That’s not going to be fun, either.
Going to the dentist, for me, is one of the scariest things in my life. My fear is such that it can be defined as a phobia. On top of that, I have a phobia of sharp objects, and especially needles. If that tooth’s going to come out, I will have to deal with both. Needless to say, I am not looking forward to it, but I don’t exactly have a choice.
That’s the case with many of the fears we have to face, I guess. We can avoid them as much as possible but there comes a time when the circumstances are such that we have to deal with them. It’s not a comfortable feeling. It can lead to sleepless nights, anxiety, possibly even tears.
As writers, we place our characters in circumstances that may well be uncomfortable. In the action/adventure genre, these may be circumstances that are far removed from our day-to-day lives and, indeed, the lives of our readers. Action/adventure tends lead us to new, exciting worlds, or scenarios that we would never ever want to face, but we love reading about them in the comforting knowledge that whatever the characters are going through, it’s never, ever going to happen to us.
That is obviously not the case with going to the dentist. Most, if not all of us, will have to go there, whether we like it or not. I know that I am far from the only person who doesn’t like getting dental treatment. Maybe not everyone who doesn’t like to go has a full-on phobia, but many people do experience some level of anxiety. And that’s not just the case with dental treatment. The same goes for going to the hospital, or sitting an exam, or having to hold a public speech, or stepping onto an airplane.
Even if the action/adventure genre tends to be removed from reality to a greater or lesser extent, we can use these common fears in our writing. For example, a character may have to fly on a dragon and experience anxiety. A character may have to motivate a crowd into taking action, or to stop said crowd from taking an ill-advised action, and they’re not the most confident of public speakers. A character may have suffered injuries and feel as frightened of the treatment as of the injuries themselves. Perhaps they have had bad experiences. Perhaps they suffer from a phobia.
From our own experiences we can describe how it feels to experience fear and anxiety. Maybe your own anxieties are different from those I experience, and from those described above. You can use your own experiences and weave them into your work.
I quite like to fly. Once I’m above the clouds, I think it’s a pretty amazing experience. I can understand, however, why others won’t find it as enjoyable. You’re in a vulnerable position. You’re not in control. Whilst the risk is low that anything bad will happen, it can, and it has in the past.
Likewise, I don’t feel any fear around mice. I think they’re cute. I remember, however, when I was young and a mouse had found its way into my grandmother’s house. She jumped onto the table and refused to come down until someone had captured the mouse. I can understand how she felt because I have a fear of spiders and wasps. When I was a child, I was stung by a wasp and it really hurt. As far as I know, I have never been bitten by a spider, but they still frighten me, and here in the UK we get some big ones. People tend to be able to relate to other people’s fears even if they have never experienced those fears themselves.
This can even be the case with unusual fears. A character may have a fear of flowers. That may seem silly at first, but if you do a good enough job showing the reader that fear, and the effects of that fear, it will feel less and less silly and more and more relatable.
There is the saying that the only thing to fear is fear itself, and whilst I do not fully agree with that – there are dangers out there that it’s rational and perhaps even essential to feel the emotion of fear about – it does illustrate its power. Fear can hold us back in life. Fear can also drive us in a direction that isn’t the best option. As writers we can use this and, as has been my personal experience, sometimes learn from it as well.
Happy writing!
Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline
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Action/Adventure: December 13, 2017 Issue [#8651]
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