Young Writers Society

I enjoy writing dark comedies, and the protagonist is often a sarcastic kind of person. Even when they narrate, the tone is very snarky.

But one common complaint I get when people read my First person stories, is that the narrator is often emotionally detached from the situation he's talking about.

In order to solve that problem, I change the stories from having a sarcastic character narrating the story, to just having a sarcastic third person narrator. But I still feel I should try to improve on this. Any tips?

Firstly, you shouldn't try to force your protagonist to feel emotion when he truly doesn't. If reviewers are complaining about how emotionally detached he is, start looking at all angles of the delivery. It could be there isn't enough humour and sarcasm, or the protagonist truly feels detached with no reason given. I'd look at those much more in depth before starting to look at the surface issue— readers aren't connecting.

As for including emotions in my writing, I use the following:
1- Give us the results of emotions. Ie- instead of "she was sad" it's "she was sobbing."
2- Metaphors/similes that explain the emotion. An example:

There was hope burning within her, helping to muffle the cracked shock both of us felt

3- Give reasons for the emotions to be there in real time. Ie- don't just say parents/siblings/classmates are abusive and have the character all broken up about that when the parents/siblings/classmates aren't around. Show the abuse then give emotional results, while still applying the above two principles.

4- Transfer the feelings to scenery, to have the character's perception of the environment reflect their mood.

Hope that helps!

Hello, I'd really like to see if I can help with this because this is a very common issue. It's easy to lose oneself in developing one aspect of a characters personality. In your case, this is the sarcastic trait.

'The best thing you could do is to analyse the character's role in your story, their important relationships, their likes and dislikes...you get it. Look at the character from every angle and try to develop a deeper personality. Sarcasm is a very recognizable trait and many people can identify it within a person due to it's aggressiveness. However, what is not always seen is the reason for this person's sarcastic quality.

Your character can still possess this trait, but to really deepen your character and round it out, and thereby increasing the range of emotions your character can have, is to back up the trait with others. For example, is your character sarcastic because he's defensive, or insecure, or has a lack of confidence...even overconfidence or arrogance is fair game. Anything you can do to flesh out a character is beneficial.

By doing this, you can still achieve your bitingly sarcastic character, but this character will also possess deeper personality traits that help to define their emotions and create a deeper emotional attachment to the situations and their interactions in a story. This is a lot more subtle, and multidimensional than simply having a character who's sarcastic just for the humour.

So, as you can see, you don't have to completely switch your narrative to conform to a desired personality for your character, you just have to deepen the character's range of emotions.

Hope this helps you!
Threnody

I learned from Stanislavski (some teacher guy who wrote An Actor Prepares) a lot of great tips about how to become your character.

If you spend a few minutes before you start writing just to sink into your chair, put on their boots and imagine you are them, sitting in front of a computer screen trying to type out a story.

People who are sarcastic a lot frequently use it as a defence mechanism which forces them to distance themselves from their lives. Sometimes you have to put them in a situation were they're vulnerable, silence the thoughts in their head and take away that defence mechanism.

Also Rosie made a good point. Even from behind a thousand defences and facades, you can't modify the way you see the world. A subtle over-observancy to how fathers parent their children, more description than usual when trapped in small spaces, things like that will indicate depth and emotion even when spoken about with a sarcastic overtone.

Remember to be wary of mistaking sarcasm and anger. A sarcastic character doesn't have to be angry or bitter about everything.