Latest / Story Lovers: Books, Movies, Culture & Great Stories / Why I Write Obituaries for Characters I Invented Decade Ago | Story Lovers
Transcript
- I just wrote a eulogy for a woman who doesn’t exist, and I cried harder than I have in years. It’s strange how real the ghosts of our imagination can feel when we finally let them go. Grab your bookmark, we’re going deep. There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with being a storyteller, or at least, someone who treats stories like living things. For me, it started ten years ago. I was working in my little bookstore, the one with the creaky floorboards and the smell of vanilla and old paper that still haunts my dreams. I had created a character named Elara. She wasn’t in any book yet. She was just a sketch in the margins of a notebook, a girl with too much hair and not enough hope. I gave her a job as a florist in a town that didn’t have a name. I gave her a favorite tea—chamomile with a twist of lemon. I gave her a fear of thunderstorms because she thought they sounded like angry gods. And then, life happened. The bookstore closed. The notebook got buried under boxes of moving supplies. Elara faded into the background noise of my twenties, a quiet companion in the periphery of my mind. Last week, I was cleaning out my attic, digging through those same boxes, trying to decide what to keep and what to toss. You know that feeling? When you hold an object and suddenly the air changes? I found the notebook. It was yellowed, the spine cracked, the pages soft as fabric. I opened it, expecting to see something silly, something naive from a younger version of myself. But there she was. Elara. Her words were still there, scribbled in blue ink. And I realized I hadn’t just written a character; I had raised her. I had watched her grow up in my head through a dozen different scenarios. I had seen her fall in love, lose her job, move across the country. I had given her a decade of life, even if no one else ever read it. And now, holding that notebook, I felt a sudden, sharp pang of grief. Not because she died, but because she was forgotten. By me. By the world. Just… gone. So, I did something I’ve never done before. I sat down at my desk, poured a glass of wine, and I wrote an obituary for Elara. Not a summary of her plot points, but a true farewell. I wrote about the way she would hum while arranging flowers, how she always bought the wilting ones because she believed she could save them. I wrote about her last day, which I imagined to be quiet, sitting on a porch watching the rain stop. I described the emptiness of a room where she used to be. I tried to capture the essence of who she was, not just what she did. It was strange. My hands shook. I felt like I was saying goodbye to a sister, a friend, a part of myself I had outsourced to fiction. It was messy. It was unpolished. It was perfect. Let’s turn the page on this one, because I want to ask you something. How many characters do you carry with you that no one else knows? Maybe you have a sidekick from a story you started in college and never finished. Maybe you have a villain who has haunted your nightmares for years, waiting for their moment to speak. We all have these ghosts. We give them names, faces, histories. We invest our empathy in them, our hopes, our fears. And then, life gets in the way. We get busy. We get tired. We move on. But they stay. They sit in the corners of our minds, waiting. And sometimes, when we least expect it, they knock on the door. Last night, I didn’t just write an obituary. I wrote a letter. I told Elara that I was sorry I forgot her. I told her that she was beautiful, even in my imperfect sketches. I told her that her story mattered, even if it was only ever meant for my eyes. And I think, just for a moment, she heard me. This hit me right in the feels, deeply. Because it made me realize that writing isn’t just about creation. It’s also about mourning. Every story we start is a birth. Every story we abandon is a death. We don’t talk about that enough. We celebrate the bestsellers, the awards, the adaptations. But what about the ones that fade? The ones that live only in the private chambers of our imaginations? There is a sacredness in that. A tenderness. To care for a fictional character so deeply that their absence leaves a void—that is a testament to the power of narrative. It proves that stories are not just entertainment. They are relationships. They are mirrors. They are the places where we practice loving people who aren’t real, so that we can love the ones who are, better. When I wrote that obituary, I wasn’t just closing a chapter. I was honoring a connection. I was acknowledging that Elara was real to me, in every way that matters. So, here is my challenge to you, my dear listener. Go find your ghost. Dig through the drawers, the hard drives, the dusty notebooks. Find the character you invented ten, twenty, thirty years ago. The one you loved and left behind. And write their obituary. Don’t worry about grammar. Don’t worry about plot holes. Just write. Tell them what they meant to you. Tell them what you remember. Tell them goodbye, or hello, or thank you. Let them rest, or let them rise again. But acknowledge them. Acknowledge the love you put into them. Because those characters are not nothing. They are pieces of your heart, scattered across time. And they deserve to be remembered. Even if only by you. Especially by you. That is the magic of being a storyteller. We create worlds, yes. But more importantly, we create feelings. And those feelings are real. Always real. Thank you for letting me share this with you. It means more than I can say. Until next time, keep your bookmarks close and your hearts open. Goodnight, friends.