Jul 10 2009
Writing Tip of the Day: Be Careful With Crying Characters
This is our inaugural guest post. Thanks, Marissa! If you’d like to provide writing advice, please send me a sample post of up to 500 words at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com. — B. Mac
Just recently, I tripped over a very interesting fact of writing: “If your character cries, your reader doesn’t have to.”
Think about it. Which would you rather read: A character bawling her eyes out? Or a character shivering, her eyes squeezed shut and her breathing labored, trying to deal with grief without bursting into tears?
This is probably a painfully obvious statement, but usually, crying is meant to convey sadness. Grief. Loss. That’s not it’s only purpose, however. Most of the time, the author brings their character to tears to garner some sort of reader-character sympathy. The reader sees that Character A is so sad that they’re crying, and so the reader feels sad as well.
Look at movies, though. The saddest parts are never when the character is sitting there bawling, are they? I bet you can’t name one time when the memorably poignant moment is when the character is doing nothing but crying. That’s just it: Crying loses the reader’s sympathy.
Having a character cry is usually the cheap way out. There are so many thoughts, feelings, actions associated with grief that plopping your character into the sobbing stereotype would cheat both the character and the reader. If you want your reader to feel something too, I’d recommend either removing the crying altogether and focusing on other symptoms of sadness, or easing up to the crying stage and not giving it much focus.
Now think about this: How does your character respond to sadness, grief, or loss? It depends on their personality, so it’s really up to you as the author to figure it out. Do they shiver for a while, until it all builds up, then explosively punch an inanimate object? Do they try to take deep breaths, calm themself down? Etc. Just don’t go straight from zero to sobbing. (After all, you wouldn’t have an angry character suddenly punch someone in the face without showing his anger building up, right?
The Emotional Thesaurus does a great job listing symptoms of sadness to help you start small and gradually escalate.
Sorry about the massive delay in fixing it up, I couldn’t figure out how to work the controls. (A good reason you should never put me at the wheel of a plane.)
I think this is a great first-article. And you do have a point. (I’m not biased because you’re my friend, am I?)
Maybe a little, but I appreciate the sentiment either way. Glad to know it was useful.
You already know that I think this is awesome:) Great job, and I really liked that link to the Emotion Thesaurus.
Interesting article, it had a lot of good points and that thesaurus link was particularly handy, so very nicely done.
Something I’ve always found to be powerful and moving when handled correctly is crying in situations that don’t call for it or expectedly, especially when it is used as a cliffhanger for a short period, such as a chapter in a novel or at the end of a monthly comic book. This power hinges on the reader not possessing exacting knowledge of what caused the outburst, so I’d strongly advise against having the narrator or lead POV as the emotive one, unless your skills have been proven to such a degree that you and your thousands or millions of faithful readers can trust you to properly handle an unreliable narrator.
If you lack that many fans, do not attempt an unreliable narrator, because as this web site has stated strongly dozens of times, it isn’t coy, it isn’t smart, it’s just frustrating if you aren’t a strong enough writer to handle it.
Again, I thought this article was great, as it pointed out the various hazards, offered solutions and didn’t rule out usage entirely.
Yeah, D and Lightning Man, the Emotion Thesaurus is very very handy.
Thank you, Lightning Man, for your support.
The crying you’re describing might work, yeah, as long as there is a reason, even if it isn’t known. But you did well in advising people to be careful. What may seem like a good reason to them might seem stupid to the reader (“BUT HER FATHER DIED TEN YEARS AGO AND SHE JUST NOW THOUGHT ABOUT IT AGAIN,” in an otherwise happy scene, for example).
What I was referring to is when a character would naturally be sad. If the author heads straight to crying, that glosses over the whole emotional process, and the reader feels gypped.
I have to agree–actual crying is often a one way ticket to skim reading or cliches. Or both. Much better to accurately describe what is causing the intense desire to cry so the reader feels the same ache and can empathize, and of course, the MC’s struggle to keep from giving in and dissolving into tears.
Thanks for mentioning my Emotion Thesaurus!