![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jul. 6th, 2008
How Not to Write Angst
Jul. 6th, 2008 09:36 pmThere was this LotR fic I once peered at entitled "Recaptured." In it, Merry and Pippin are recaptured after they escape from the orcs. After that, it's just like a conglomeration of every single form of torture the author can think of. Merry is raped by Saruman, Pippin is struck deaf and dumb and Merry is struck blind, one of them is put in a circus (and it has nothing to do with Saruman), Pippin gets captured by Mordor orcs and raped, etc. It goes on for well over a hundred chapters. It's about the worst fic in the universe. Why? Because the author is so addicted to angst, she drowns herself, her characters, her readers, and everyone else in the world with it. The sheer level of angst has an impact on parts of the world that don't even know about the fic. It's that crazy.
Let me show you an example.
Let's say Don, the current Angstbunny of the fandom (unless it's Leo again...hrm, or Mike, not sure) is captured by an enemy, like Hun. Now, just being a prisoner is stressful and terrifying and grounds for some solid angst, especially if Hun is making threats. People who are kidnapped are often traumatized even when nothing else happens to them. Now, if Hun keeps threatening to, say, break Don's arm, the anticipation of excruciating pain and recovery will be bad enough to raise Don's stress levels like crazy. If Hun actually breaks Don's arm? That's even worse, and it adds even MORE stress because now Don knows Hun will carry out his threats. If Don were to get rescued at this point, he'd spend some days in shaky recovery. His imagination could make things worse, even, although I see this being more of a problem for someone like Mike. But if his capture continues? Hun could start making worse threats, creating more anticipation and stress because Don KNOWS they will be carried out. Say Hun threatens to cut off his hand. That's a life-changing event right there. If that kind of maiming happened, Don would have nightmares and flashbacks indefinitely, even go into depression of a decent severity. What about the current favorite: rape? It's one of the most traumatizing, evil things that can happen to a person. The threat would be traumatizing in and of itself. The act? Another life-changing event. Multiple rapes? Go read testimonies about prison rape--it's UGLY. Gang rape over a period of minutes is bad enough. Hours? Crippling. Days? Weeks? That could cause someone to go catatonic.
Once angst gets to the point where the characters aren't reacting realistically to it, it's absolutely ridiculous. Once it's piled up so much that a reader can no longer believe in it, it's overdose. If a character suffers more than one life-changing trauma in a fic, it's probably too much. Remember, angst is not a natural state for a person. People don't want to be miserable. They find a way to cope, or try to, at least. They shouldn't just sit there full of their own woes. There's denial, anger, and all that.
There's the opposite, too, where a character OVER-reacts to a trauma. If Mike gets his hand broken, he's not going to wake up screaming and crying from nightmares about it--he'll move on, being relieved that nothing worse happened, and probably use the injury to get himself out of responsibilities. Mike especially isn't easily traumatized, just easily scared. He doesn't have nightmares or flashbacks about Raph almost braining him in a fit of rage; in fact, things are back to normal between the two of them very quickly, and Raph is more hung up about it than Mike is. Sometimes, when this happens, I want to scream out to the wangsting character, "Oh, get OVER it!"
Trauma done right and used sparingly is VERY effective. Showing some light in with the dark shows how dark the dark is, and overusing angst just makes everything uniform, until you don't know exactly what else is in the story BESIDES the angst. One trauma is enough. Adding trauma upon trauma isn't going to increase my pathos for your favorite character a mite more. In fact, it'll just get annoying.
Let me show you an example.
Let's say Don, the current Angstbunny of the fandom (unless it's Leo again...hrm, or Mike, not sure) is captured by an enemy, like Hun. Now, just being a prisoner is stressful and terrifying and grounds for some solid angst, especially if Hun is making threats. People who are kidnapped are often traumatized even when nothing else happens to them. Now, if Hun keeps threatening to, say, break Don's arm, the anticipation of excruciating pain and recovery will be bad enough to raise Don's stress levels like crazy. If Hun actually breaks Don's arm? That's even worse, and it adds even MORE stress because now Don knows Hun will carry out his threats. If Don were to get rescued at this point, he'd spend some days in shaky recovery. His imagination could make things worse, even, although I see this being more of a problem for someone like Mike. But if his capture continues? Hun could start making worse threats, creating more anticipation and stress because Don KNOWS they will be carried out. Say Hun threatens to cut off his hand. That's a life-changing event right there. If that kind of maiming happened, Don would have nightmares and flashbacks indefinitely, even go into depression of a decent severity. What about the current favorite: rape? It's one of the most traumatizing, evil things that can happen to a person. The threat would be traumatizing in and of itself. The act? Another life-changing event. Multiple rapes? Go read testimonies about prison rape--it's UGLY. Gang rape over a period of minutes is bad enough. Hours? Crippling. Days? Weeks? That could cause someone to go catatonic.
Once angst gets to the point where the characters aren't reacting realistically to it, it's absolutely ridiculous. Once it's piled up so much that a reader can no longer believe in it, it's overdose. If a character suffers more than one life-changing trauma in a fic, it's probably too much. Remember, angst is not a natural state for a person. People don't want to be miserable. They find a way to cope, or try to, at least. They shouldn't just sit there full of their own woes. There's denial, anger, and all that.
There's the opposite, too, where a character OVER-reacts to a trauma. If Mike gets his hand broken, he's not going to wake up screaming and crying from nightmares about it--he'll move on, being relieved that nothing worse happened, and probably use the injury to get himself out of responsibilities. Mike especially isn't easily traumatized, just easily scared. He doesn't have nightmares or flashbacks about Raph almost braining him in a fit of rage; in fact, things are back to normal between the two of them very quickly, and Raph is more hung up about it than Mike is. Sometimes, when this happens, I want to scream out to the wangsting character, "Oh, get OVER it!"
Trauma done right and used sparingly is VERY effective. Showing some light in with the dark shows how dark the dark is, and overusing angst just makes everything uniform, until you don't know exactly what else is in the story BESIDES the angst. One trauma is enough. Adding trauma upon trauma isn't going to increase my pathos for your favorite character a mite more. In fact, it'll just get annoying.