...Something I find extremely hard to do.

I'm talking of both physical and mental anguish.

I tend to detach myself and get artsy instead of letting emotion get to the reader the way it's supposed to.

Anyone got any experiences to share? I'm interested how others go about this.

Onions, this is really hard, isn't it? Physical anguish seems easier to me. Like if a character gets their nose broken, everytime they sniff, bump their nose, look in the mirror, they're reminded of it. Mental anguish is much more difficult, because I think the principles are the same, you still have to show, not tell.

The last story I wrote, several characters felt responsible for another character's death. Killing the character off went fine, but the after-effects of it were more difficult. It was really hard not to go on and on about it, and just show their hearts breaking instead. Just seeing things that reminded them of the character who died helped.

(Hmmmm, maybe I should look at the ending again...)

Also, to really know if it works, have someone you trust as a reader/I think reading it aloud to a writer's group is very helpful, because you can really gauge how the audience responds.

I tend to write it so that it's the small things that show.

Like their actions towards another, or the things they think etc....

I've tried writing it when they just say how they actually feel, and it always reads as lame preaching to me.

For example, in something i'd written a while back (and have yet to finish!) a boy is reunited with his family, in a way. (He find a big room filled with dusty statues of his family)

In reality, all his feelings about being abandoned, never knowing about his past etc.... build up and at last he finds out about his family and who they were and what they look like.

So I wrote it that he walked around the room with the statues, saying nothing. Then finds a relative he recognises the most, and kicks it down (it was falling down anyway) then just leaves. I found that was better at portraying how he felt, then having him relay how he was feeling.


Physical anguish, i've had trouble with. I tend to have the charactor black out, or think back to some cheesy soft focus scene in their childhood.

The only example that i might use in the future, is when my dad had a heart attack and was in hospital. He was under, what you call it, nil by mouth. He couldn't drink. He was extreamly uncomfortable, in pain etc..... and very very grouchy because he really needed some water, and to top it all off he couldn't comunicate his discomfort so well (though we could all guess) because he had tubes stuck down his mouth. His mouth was so dry. He said later that all he was thinking about and dreaming about was water! I might use that one day.

Have tried some googling for symptoms post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

Thanks. That does help.

And parrotslave, it's not so much that i don't know the symptoms or can't look them up - more that I feel blocked when writing about things like that.

I understand what you mean now.

That is one thing I've been surprised by since I've started writing. How much you have to let down your personal defenses so you can access those areas of emotion and pain. It is as much as, or even more than, actors have to.

Maybe some acting exercises would help you get past the block?

I read an article by an author (95% sure it was Peter David) about this.

He wrote that a particular jarring scene about a character was the hardest he ever had to write. He was asked why he didn't just write the passage differently. His answer has fascinated me every time I thought about it.

He said, "because that's what happened."

if you are writing i'd be flowery and detached, then break it up by 'talking to the camera'.

do one sentence paragraphs...

'i am afraid'.

sometimes a simple blank statement, said in dull tone, can be all you need...

I'm starting something, and I know that it's going to end badly for most of the characters, if not all of them. They're all going to suffer horrible curses, and then many of them are going to die. I'm trying to limit the difficulty by making them all pretty flawed, but I'm worried that they won't be likeable. I'm going to be working on other stuff when it gets too difficult.