R.I.P: Get Griefed

Requiescat in Pace

Part of what turns a piece of writing from good to great is to capitalize on the emotion of a scene.

Anger, love, fear, all are potent. Grief, however, is all too regularly eschewed.

Sure, it’s an uncomfortable emotion that no one likes to feel but I’d argue that’s exactly why it’s important. When it is brought forth in stories it often comes across in extremes, either overly subdued or savage and, well, here’s the thing, dear reader: sometimes neither works.

There are many sources of grief, but today I’d like to address loss and, more specifically, the loss of a loved one.

I recently just finished a book I quite liked and is, let us say, rather well known on the interwebs (and those of you who’ve been reading here may even be able to discern which one). In said book a character dies towards the beginning and another character has to bring news of her death to her mother so the plot can happen. Ignoring how much I hated the plot contrivances to get us there, let’s talk about the mother’s reaction to this news.

The news is delivered and the mother (who is the living personification of stately grace) stomps her foot and accuses the character who delivered the news of lying before storming off to pout. End scene.

A little disappointing in the delivery, sure, but fine. You could say the mother reacted irrationally to the news given their emotional weight even if instead of the pained grief one would expect she elicited the same response a toddler might have to being denied another sweet. I’m willing to concede this could work.

What most certainly does not is having that same mother figure then be MIA for several chapters only to reappear and be fully reconciled to her daughters brutal fucking murder within a matter of in-universe days.

One does not have a mental break down at the death of their child and recover from it that quickly (and especially this character in this book FFS).

Now, here’s what REALLY grinds my gears. The daughter? Ohhhhh, yeah. She ain’t dead. Just magically reappears in an epilogue despite us as readers being shown her lifeless corpse and a dagger being shoved into her chest as a double tap.

That’s some Grade-A baby back bullshit, dear reader.

But I digress.

This particular author missed the mark, in my opinion, due to taking what should have been a series defining character death and central plot point and entirely neutering the reaction of every single character simply so the plot could to continue.

Just because you as the author know the death was fake doesn’t mean the characters do!

If I walked into a room full of someone’s family and had to describe watching their loved one get slaughtered before watching their corpse be condemned to a watery grave, I would fully expect a bigger reaction than “ah, damn, man, that sucks” before being offered a cold beer and a quick fuck is all I’m saying.

Unless your characters are sociopaths then denying them that critical moment of shock and horror denies their own humanity. This type of stuff isn’t fun in real life, and it shouldn’t be in your story.

Putting it lightly, grieving sucks. The carthasis (or lack thereof) we as humans experience as a result of the healing process can make for engaging reading and hit a little too close to home while you’re at it.

Things need to develop, evolve, breathe. You as a writer need to know when to let things settle, when to be subtle, and when to rip a characters heart out- not to be a dick, mind you, but because its the only believable reaction to your world’s events.

The aforementioned immediate kneejerk lukewarm response followed by a nearly immediate full recovery? Yeah, that sucked. No one likes that.

Don’t play it cheap like the author mentioned above. Make it hurt. Give your characters the chance to be broken and allow them (and your readers!) the chance to put themselves back together again, to heal.

You’d be surprised at how doing so will allow your story and those within it to grow for the better.