G is for Grief
Feb. 23rd, 2013 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snowynightGrief is a powerful primal emotion. Hardly anyone hasn't experienced grief in that we all faced some kind of loss. However, writing about grief can be one of the hardest things to do because it is so easy to slip away and use convenient cliche instead of facing the grief. This's my attempt to discuss how to write about grief in fan fiction..
First, you have to make the pain unique and personal. Different characters face a loss in their lives differently, from the archetypical stiff-lipped stoic military officer who plainly soldiers on and hide all emotion behind his facade to a mother who 's crushed by the fact of losing her only son to the war effort and bends in pain. The famous five stage of grief can be used as a guideline. They may lash out at the world, shut down their emotion, collapse in tears, are in full denial or try to bargain with the loss. Grief is messy and never timely, and you can show that in your work. The pain should provide an unique insight into the characters' psyche.
Secondly, you need to be honest. Even writing about the grief of a fictional character can be hard and it's easy to resort to sentimentality. However, if you want the readers to care, you have to let the characters in grief off the pedestal you build for them. They are still people who are prone to mistake and don't get a free pass just because they are grieving. Don't let your grieving characters be the only centre of the world: See - manpain: the excess, self-centred narrative device as a free pass as a counter-example.
Thirdly, remember that your grievous characters can be unreliable narrators. Characters in grief are usually, though not always more self-centred than usual in their limited point of view. While a lot of them will long for others to reach out to them, they may not perceive that 's actually being offered. Grief can bring people close, tying them together as a community, or tear one apart. How to convey this through your grieving characters' eyes when you're doing this says a lot about the characters concerned.
At the end writing about grief in our characters can be a powerful act, to let them resolve the pain and hurt in their lives, (which can be many because our canons are often sadistic toward the characters), and to renew and grow from the process, or in a more cynical world, how a character can't deal. How it leads to a spiral of depression. But I prefer the hope here because such stories said about the inevitable limitation of humanity and how we can go on, learn to laugh again. It can be a hard challenge, but a worthwhile one.
Question: How do you deal with grief in writing or reading? Do you have any good examples to share with us how to do it well? Or do you have any cautionary tales on that?
Fic rec:
The Grissom Effect (CSI: Original, Grissom/Nick, PG) - Because that's just what Nick Stokes does. That's how he deals.
Long Road Home (Stargate: Atlantis, gen, PG) - You can run to the ends of the Earth, but you can't escape from yourself. The story of an illegal immigrant, an emotionally and physically damaged veteran trying to shut out the world, and a border patrol agent who hates his job. Maybe they were destined to be friends in any universe.
First, you have to make the pain unique and personal. Different characters face a loss in their lives differently, from the archetypical stiff-lipped stoic military officer who plainly soldiers on and hide all emotion behind his facade to a mother who 's crushed by the fact of losing her only son to the war effort and bends in pain. The famous five stage of grief can be used as a guideline. They may lash out at the world, shut down their emotion, collapse in tears, are in full denial or try to bargain with the loss. Grief is messy and never timely, and you can show that in your work. The pain should provide an unique insight into the characters' psyche.
Secondly, you need to be honest. Even writing about the grief of a fictional character can be hard and it's easy to resort to sentimentality. However, if you want the readers to care, you have to let the characters in grief off the pedestal you build for them. They are still people who are prone to mistake and don't get a free pass just because they are grieving. Don't let your grieving characters be the only centre of the world: See - manpain: the excess, self-centred narrative device as a free pass as a counter-example.
Thirdly, remember that your grievous characters can be unreliable narrators. Characters in grief are usually, though not always more self-centred than usual in their limited point of view. While a lot of them will long for others to reach out to them, they may not perceive that 's actually being offered. Grief can bring people close, tying them together as a community, or tear one apart. How to convey this through your grieving characters' eyes when you're doing this says a lot about the characters concerned.
At the end writing about grief in our characters can be a powerful act, to let them resolve the pain and hurt in their lives, (which can be many because our canons are often sadistic toward the characters), and to renew and grow from the process, or in a more cynical world, how a character can't deal. How it leads to a spiral of depression. But I prefer the hope here because such stories said about the inevitable limitation of humanity and how we can go on, learn to laugh again. It can be a hard challenge, but a worthwhile one.
Question: How do you deal with grief in writing or reading? Do you have any good examples to share with us how to do it well? Or do you have any cautionary tales on that?
Fic rec:
The Grissom Effect (CSI: Original, Grissom/Nick, PG) - Because that's just what Nick Stokes does. That's how he deals.
Long Road Home (Stargate: Atlantis, gen, PG) - You can run to the ends of the Earth, but you can't escape from yourself. The story of an illegal immigrant, an emotionally and physically damaged veteran trying to shut out the world, and a border patrol agent who hates his job. Maybe they were destined to be friends in any universe.
