Emotional Scenes Slay Me

I've just completed an emotional scene.
Yes, I've done them before, actually last year when I was in the initial throes of the writing process for Tempted I wrote a scene that had me in tears, sobbing like my cat had died (I don't have a cat--was the closest example I could come up with).
I do a lot of scenes with emotion in them, you know...anger, lust, pain, hatred, passion...it's easy to feel what characters feel, see what they see and almost be there with them in the moment. Like a ghostly bystander where you just want to shake some sense into the character or punch them in the face.

But really emotional scenes where the characters have to make a life-changing decision, or face death...now that's just different for me.
The first time I did that it truly devastated me. 
You suffer real loss. Especially when you made the character. He, or she, or even it is a part of you, almost like your child. So naturally their death means a part of you is now dead with it. Empty and alone. It can be hard to accept a new character in its place. But that's life, right? 

I hate emotional scenes, when the lives of my characters are in danger, or facing some heartache, or betrayal. But I'm grateful for them too. Scenes like that evoke emotion within the reader, it often presents them with something they can relate to or understand.
In order to gear myself up for an emotional scene/chapter I have to mentally repeat the event in my head and tell myself that this is what is going to happen and I can do nothing about it. Otherwise I'd be making life just a little bit too easy, and possibly boring, for my characters if I allowed life to be all rainbows, unicorns and sex, right?
I have to go through the acceptance stage first, convince myself that it'll work out, that my characters will become stronger. I need to have just as much faith in them as I would in a real human being.

Once the scene is done...well I take a timeout, make an earl grey tea, sigh sadly while holding Mr Julian Leopold (my leopard) next to me and stuff my face with cake. Life isn't easy for a writer...you have to make tough choices. Sacrifices.
But I'll talk more about the sacrifices in my next post.

Point is, when you read a book and you come across a scene that is heart wrenching and you start cursing the author, just know that they went through the pain long before you did and had to deal with it a lot faster! 

With love guys,
S.R
X