Am I the only one who used to believe being an introvert meant that you hated people? (Please tell me I wasn’tđŸ˜…)
Because the internet was still emerging when I was growing up and I just had the voices and adults around me tell me what they thought it meant.
What I eventually learned was that introvert was talking about the way I process the world. It meant that my own inner world and ideas were more real to me than the external, physical world. It meant that socializing with other people was draining because I had to “emerge” from my inner world to engage with them — I had to travel farther and show up.
When you’re an introvert, reading and writing naturally seem to be something we’re drawn to. We get to visit the inner worlds of others, to quietly explore their thoughts. And when we write, we are allowed to go at our own pace and say precisely what we want. We can invite others to see, for a moment, what our world looks like to us.
When we write fiction and create characters, we are better able to illustrate their emotions and thoughts. We get to explore the depth of them. It can, in a way, be therapeutic to write these characters. When we connect to the emotion of a scene —which is when a story is really made, in the moments of emotional resonance— we genuinely feel it.
For a moment, the story becomes real to us. Since our minds connect so deeply to story, and can’t differ between a true or false one on its own, it might as well be real. This is why we get so connected to characters in media — tv, movies, plays, books. To us, they’re real.
Who is one of your favorite characters? If you take some time to examine it, you might find interesting reasons as to why you connect with them. Join the Introverted Writers Club and share who they are.
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