You know what I like about this book I'm
writing? The main character has an anxiety disorder that keeps him from
doing a significant number of things (mainly going to college without
stressing out about the whole thing). Throughout the story, he
continually tells himself things like "I should work through my
meaningless panic" or "This is silly, I'm ridiculous and inferior" or
"Why can't I be better than this and be
like people who aren't as stupid as me?" and general self-defeating
things that would also be said by society at large.
And your
average reader who's part of society at large would nevertheless
probably be feeling sorry for this character throughout the whole story
(because fiction has this way of getting you to look inside a
character's mind and make you relate to them or at least think
positively of them in ways you might not have if you knew them in real
life). And at some point, this hypothetical person will be reading the
book and yell at the character, "Stop saying such negative things about
yourself!"
And then the average reader will realize, with a
sense of rising horror and shame, that the kinds of things the character
is saying to himself are the kinds of things they would say to someone
with similar problems if they met them in real life.
(I love writing things that make people feel horrible for very valid reasons.)
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