“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.” -Flannery O'Conner
Flannery O'Connor's point works because fiction only earns its keep when it costs the writer something real. If a scene isn't unsettling you, testing what you actually believe about people, it's decoration, not truth-telling. Escape writing skims the surface; real writing makes you sit with a character's cruelty or grief until you understand it from the inside, which is uncomfortable by design.
Say you're writing a dishonest character. The temptation is to keep them safely villainous. Applying O'Connor's advice means finding the moment their lie feels justified to them, even reasonable, and staying there until it unsettles you too.
The caution: this isn't permission to wallow in misery for its own sake, or to mistake exhaustion for depth. Shock without discipline just produces chaos on the page. The plunge into reality still needs a writer steering the boat.
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