Suffering

Suffering

If you suffer quietly, no one will understand its magnitude.

If you so much as mention your suffering, you are complaining and nobody wants to hear it.

What door leads to someone appreciating the amount of suffering you are in, while also thinking that you are strong for dealing with it?

everyone be quiet she has something to say 😺🐈

uwaaaaah *biting and gnawing and biting and chewing and chomping gnomnomnomgrrrrr*

I had heard of the "say everything except what they mean" and I've used it for convos that I've loved how they turned out, but using it for internal musings as well is brilliant!! Connecting with some physical action is great, using the physical aspects of things like the texture and the motion to keep the POV centered while also not stalling the action.

I'll try to put it into practice, thank you!!

Hey! I have a question for you about your writing, in regards to writing my own stuff. How do you balance sharing the thoughts and feelings of a character without getting bogged down in the internal ruminating? Do you have rules or guidelines you keep in mind, or is it just something that comes naturally?

(I really like how yours comes out but I'm struggling to balance mine)

Thank you!

Hello! This is a fantastic question! It’s a great question cause there really isn’t a singular answer and I certainly don’t have the answer, it is something that I think about and struggle with every chapter (you're not alone!). 

So, keep in mind that my reflections on this aren’t the end all be all and above everything follow your instincts and what feels right for you. However, I will happily share some of my reflections and things that work for me. 

First of all, take into account who your character is and where they are in their current development. There is a practice/warmup for dialogue where you write the scene in a way in which the characters speaking can under no circumstances say what they need to communicate and they must speak around it. 

I think this is something that can absolutely be applied to internal dialogue/monologue as well— our characters have to ruminate and dance around their internal conclusions before they reach them. 

Another dialogue piece of dialogue advice that I think applies well is making sure your characters aren’t speaking like they are trying to get a good grade in therapy. Internally, our characters are allowed to be spiteful, to lie to themselves, to grovel, to be in denial, and dance around impending development without reaching it yet. 

A piece of more concrete advice I have is to intersperse the ruminating with action— have your character doing something while they are thinking. That way you can balance out the emotional monologuing with physical descriptions of what they are doing, and better yet have the actions be a kind of metaphorical assistant to whatever your character is working through (this is something that I want to personally get better at and I want to thank for the ask because it reminded me I wanted to get better at it). 

For example— if your character is going over something again and again and thinking in circles, maybe they can be folding laundry, which is a kind of autopilot repetitive task which is nicely paired with circle-like thinking. 

You can intersperse the thinking with description of the feeling and texture of the laundry on their hands, the smell of the clothing/sheets/whatever, is it a fresh smell, have they soured from being left out too long, you could take a break in the thinking to focus on the shirt in their hands, maybe they hate it, maybe it's an favorite, maybe a gift, something left by an ex, or belonging to dead friend. 

As another example— in Meadow Sweet Fennel chapter 3, Edmund does a bit of thinking while painting. He’s dancing around thoughts about gender, but because he hasn’t had some experiences as of yet that will supply him with the more concrete conclusions— I paired this with painting because it felt right and also because gender can often be something ‘painted’ on to someone, in Edmund’s case he’s copying a description of a painting, just like he’s trying to copy a description of masculinity. He ends up not liking the painting and pawning it off (he’s still cooking). 

This could be anything, dealers choice: cooking, cleaning, painting, boxing, playing cards, sword fighting, rowing, anything at all. 

I certainly find it helps the balance. 

Also! Sometimes you don’t need a balance! For example from the same story, MSF, Ethel’s perspective section is just thinking and reflection, however, it is one of the shortest sections. It could have certainly gone on much longer, but I tried to identify both the things that were important to communicate: Ethel’s relationship with Edmund as well as her thoughts on his recent behavior. I tried to balance out that with some more info about Peter, Susan, and Lucy for both comparison and contrast, but also because Ethel loves all of them and reflects on all of them, Edmund still taking some precedent. 

When it comes to internal monologue paired with dialogue, I try to keep it to a couple of paragraphs at most. This is the only instance where I do have actual guidelines (mind you, I don’t always follow them, all writing rules and advice are meant to be broken, it’s art!). I find it a bit distracting when there is too much reflection on a character's part when dialogue is happening— when you pause the dialogue for emotional soliloquy, everything comes to a standstill as if the actors on the stage are frozen in time and the rhythm of the scene gets interrupted. I, personally, am only comfortable “pausing” the scene for a few moments, ie, sentences/paragraphs. 

I hope this helped and wasn’t too rambling! If I didn’t touch on exactly what you were asking or if you want clarification, please let me know, and you are always welcome to ask any and all writing questions— I love reflecting on writing and writing about writing, I find it helps me become a better writer myself so all is welcome!

"Woof!" by Trench

hehehehe yasssss thank you!!

A commission for @etolimama of their original species. This was fun!

I came out here to attack people and I’m honestly having such a good time right now