Another new experience

This writing is a strange thing.  I get very attached to my characters.  There is a character I am developing right now, and just like all my characters, I am growing more and more fond of him as he participates in the story.

In order for me to create a character, I have to slip into their skin.  I have to think about what motivates them, what makes them happy, what makes them sad.  I have to think about why they make the choices they make, and why they do the things they do.

I have had characters before in my stories that I talked about after they had already died, so there was never the same emotional connection to a living character.  I already know that many of my characters will die in a future story, but so far, all of them will have lived full and long lives.

Not this character.  He will live a very happy and fulfilling life, but it will be a short one.  And the character that is falling in love with him right now will be a heartbroken widow as a young woman.

I never realized how hard it would be to write a character like this, and how hard it would be to write a love story that will end in an untimely death.

I keep getting overwhelmed by sadness as I watch them fall in love.  In order for fiction to work, it has to be believable.  In the mid nineteenth century, many women were widowed young.  To never have that happen in my story is to distort reality, and I don't want to do that.

But I underestimated how much I would fall in love with him at the same time as the character in the story does.  And I already know how much I will grieve with her when he dies.