Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

by Charlie Jane Anders

Imagination is always a form of resistance to domination and oppression, and we’ve all been saved by other people’s stories one time or another.

There’s the you that’s standing outside the story and thinking of ways to make life miserable for these people, and then there’s the you that’s inhabiting them and going through their desperate struggle with them. These two parts of yourself aren’t really at odds, they’re both weaving a story together—and this actually makes you feel bigger, because you can contain them both. Bigger, and more alive, in a world that wants you to be small and half-dead.

When the whole world is on fire and the people you love are at risk, what should you write about? Whatever you feel able to write. Whatever will make you feel like you can keep living and fighting. Write the thing that you’re ready and excited to write—not the thing that you feel the moment calls for, or the story that you think will fix every broken thing in the world. Your job is to survive, and maybe to help others to survive. That’s it. That’s more than plenty.

People often talk about characters having an “arc,” which brings to mind the image of an arrow shot in the air, curving upward only to come down again. But another useful image is a piece of coal coming under immense pressure and becoming a diamond. People don’t change when life is easy and straightforward—they change when life is a bloody confusing nightmare.

Traumatized people tend to be more hyper-vigilant, and sometimes engage in more risk-taking behavior. (I learned a lot about this from talking to Sarah Gailey, while working on City.) A character could feel depressed and unable to concentrate, or could throw themself into work and push everything else to the side. How the character reacts to shitty experiences says something about who they are, and who they’re going to become.

Likewise, joy is an essential part of your emotional palette. People who feel bitterness and misery but not joy are dull, and unpleasant to spend time with. The worst emotions hit harder if we’ve seen these characters experiencing delight. Don’t forget: a roller coaster has to go up as well as down, or it’s just a road with a sharp gradient.

Writer’s block is a made-up thing that doesn’t exist, but there are all kinds of reasons why you might be feeling stuck or unhappy. This may sound counterintuitive in a chapter about how to keep the fun in writing—but if writing isn’t fun, or you’re feeling bad about it, you should interrogate why.