Have a special technique? Do you work your insanity into your stories? Do you frequently have characters who should be locked up in white rooms with padded walls?
Just a general discussion, folks. Have at it.
How do you write?
6 posts in this topic.
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I have characters that are in padded rooms. I also have characters that should be. I have some that are serial killers, paranoid, believe they are immortal or a vampire (when they're not). I model some of my characters from horror movies and TV shows, like American Horror Story. If you've ever watched that, you know what kind of crazy I'm talking about.
I like to make my characters like this because it lets out all my anger. I can do whatever I want on the page and no one gets hurt. -
I like writing characters who can do whatever they want, and not care or know right from wrong. Sociopaths are a favorite, because they can be manipulative and not care who gets in the way.
This helps me get my anger out too, because I often wish I could do things without the trouble of my conscience. -
I tend to harness both the power of form and content to depict insanity at its worse. Basically, there's a lot of disruption in the form and content.
For example, in terms of form, it won't be a straight narrative, but there will be character thoughts, emotions and jitters dispersed throughout the narrative, and may not be written conventionally. The form will be disrupted, as will sentence structure, punctuation, all the rules on the grammar book.
In terms of content, everything becomes questionable, as in whether they really happened or not, and yes, the character behaves erratically, differently than normal, and sometimes dangerously. Hallucinations, dreams and nightmares can be a bit common. -
I forgot to add. So in consequence, characters become unreliable, and if they're narrating, they become unreliable narrators. To further enhance the erratic and unconventional ways of a character, information could be controlled, and it could be controlled by a number of ways - either the insane character who's a unreliable narrator could control the flow of information, or other narrators could, and these could easily be attributed to character flaw, bias, or just them being human (or insane). Omission of info is not the only way. Character misinterpretation, or even intentional misdirection and trickery could be other ways.
Hmm... What else? Ah yes, there's always the old fashioned methods. Changing diction (vocabulary), tone, speech patterns, to reflect a change in the character, or their insanity always works. -
I actually find most insane characters to be dull and annoying. most of them seem like they're just trying too hard to be dark or morbid or wacky. when a character shows up who is supposed to be crazy they often end up sucking the life out of whatever story they happen to be in like the world's most boring vampire. all of the scenery and secondary characters are merely cardboard props meant to reflect their craziness.
if you ask me the characters who are very familiar to us, the ones you talk to on your way to class, or the stock characters in old-timey comic-books, are the most interesting. they are the ones most recognizable, the ones with hobbies, fears, prejudices and perversions which the reader can relate to.
so when I think of incorporating insanity into my work I start by taking one of these everyday characters and putting them in a world in which insanity is the norm. I'll take a day-laborer with two kids and a divorce and put him to work in a port where the shipping containers are lifted onto cargo-ships by giant hovering starfish. I'll take a grade-school bully and leave him in an abandoned city on a planet that's slowly being consumed by its own sun.
in the reader's mind a character who says "That's impossible!" when she sees a winged man fall from the sky is predictable. but a character who sees that same winged man plunging to the earth and says, "Is it Tuesday, already?" is intriguing. insanity shouldn't be locked up inside the hero's head. it should be out in the atmosphere. the characters shouldn't run in fear from craziness. they should greet it with a handshake and an espresso
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