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Writing a feelingless character?



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Mon May 30, 2016 7:04 am
TheCrimsonLady says...



One of my characters (my MC, to be exact), sort of... turns off her emotions- or, rather, blocks them out. Most of the time, she's calculating and cold, and determining how to act around various people. Even when she's worried, she never dwells on it, or thinks about it any further than she has to (for her country, of course). She's made herself very sociopathic (even though she's not, really, she's not).

My problem is that when I write her, she seems like a) she has no emotions, b) she's selfish, heartless, and cruel, or if I write her with lots of feelings, soft, pitiable, and overly worried.

Describing her thought structure- how she calculates her every move and expression- gets really boring really fast.

Any help on how to write her better would be much appreciated!

HRM
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Mon May 30, 2016 3:08 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Just a note, sociopathy =/= devoid of feelings. If you want to look up the often-called-sociopathy personality disorder for some ideas on what said disorder is actually like, just to get some idea maybe how the thought process works, take a look at antisocial personality disorder (and be very cautious of media portrayals, even the diagnostic manual— I know a few individuals with antisocial personality disorder and they're wonderful people who really try to take care of others. Blogs are your friend to get accurate descriptions. Here is a firsthand account that covers the base points).

It sounds like you're having a problem with making readers care about a character, because the primary way writing advice deals with making readers care about characters is through emotions. Which is a perfectly understandable frustration, considering there isn't really any writing advice for people who have atypical ways of feeling emotions or don't feel them much at all.

A few considerations, all of which I've used myself:

She still has feelings, but atypically expressed

In most situations, my character has some sort of emotions, but they're not expressed in ways you'd expect and she is often accused of never feeling anything. When faced with grief she gets cold and distant, when faced with happiness she'll only have the smallest reaction— maybe a smile, or she'll bounce. This allows me to explore the emotional tapestry inside while still creating a sense she's different from other people.

Remember the motive

Sometimes my character locks down 100% and there are no feelings. In which case, focus on the purpose and overreaching drive for why she's doing what she's doing. While things like "loyalty" and "protectiveness" aren't exactly emotions in the traditional sense, they provide a reason for existing and can establish stakes, which is what readers are looking for when they're reading.

Make it a maladaptive coping mechanism

Aka, she can't hold it up forever. This is something that happens very frequently with people who block out emotions (not exclusively— some people genuinely do not have lingering emotions and their blocking outs are an effective way of making them not feel the emotion with no adverse effects), but if her feelings blocking is something with the potential for adverse effects, then explore those adverse effects and have her break.

For example, one symptom of PTSD is dissociation. When a person is in a situation that reminds them of their trauma/in a traumatizing situation, they will often "click out" and not feel emotions while they are/feel like they are in danger. Once either the traumatizing situation has lasted too long and/or they're safe, they will shatter and feel everything very intensely.

Remember feelings are only one part of a character

There are the actions to consider, as well. You can still comfort somebody you don't feel any empathy for, you can still be upbeat because it makes others happy even if you're not feeling upbeat yourself, you can still pause to let others regroup and get over shock even if you're ready to keep going. Doing kindness is not always from feelings of kindness or compassion, and instead come from a motive more akin to "I want others to be comfortable, even if I don't understand why they're like this."

This is why I left a note about antisocial personality disorder— it's the main thought pattern my friends with ASPD have. They don't understand why I'm reacting emotionally, because they themselves wouldn't/can't, but they're still kind because they know kindness wins them friends and believe it's better to have friends than enemies.

Hope this helps!
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Mon May 30, 2016 3:39 pm
Dreamy says...



when I write her, she seems like a) she has no emotions,


Job done?

b) she's selfish, heartless, and cruel,


Look nowhere, the job is done.

Describing characters that are emotionally impotent are everything you have pointed out. They might genuinely be selfish, they might be heartless, and of course they are cruel-- these are all the side effects of turning off one's emotions. (Refer to Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory TV Show, but he's funny, nothing too serious and I'm pretty sure that you are not going for funny so.)

If you want your readers to sympathies with her decision of turning off her emotion, you'd either have to provide the back story that lead to this decision before hand, or make the characters surrounding her a bit irrational, so the readers wouldn't judge your MC. So, it'd be like, "Hey, you know what, she's gone through a lot, she's allowed to be like that. She can say that."

If you don't want to tell her back story before hand, it's alright, the readers will feel bad for her when they come across the story. For eg, Every apocalyptic movie ever made. You know how the movie would have a character who appears to have not heard of the word "care" ever in their life, the other characters judge them so hard, and then they all get drunk and they'll tell them their story, and boom! They're everyone's favourite. Apparently, it also works for YA fiction.(Refer to Alaska from Looking for Alaska by John Green)

To write her character, her thought process better, I think you just have to write them and not worry about how boring they are. If it's boring, fine, that's who she is. She's a boring a boring person with no emotional regard.

All in all, don't forget to enjoy what you write! :D
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Mon May 30, 2016 4:06 pm
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Vervain says...



To play off what Rosey said, yeah, just because she doesn't display emotion or doesn't allow herself to feel emotion doesn't mean that she's inherently heartless or cruel.

I've read a bit of Thrallmagic, and I know what you're having trouble with when it comes to getting Ria's humanity across to the readers without boring them with the sheer calculations of her every movement. Something that might help is not outright stating in the narration that she's calculating all the time -- once or twice to get the point across is fine, but the reader doesn't need an explanation for every eyebrow twitch, you know?

It can be as simple as changing your syntax and word choice in the narration, or how you say things. For example:
I smile, because that's what's expected of me.

I smile, the perfect picture of politeness.

I know it's simple, but in the first, you're telling the reader that Ria is calculating. In the second, you'd be showing the reader that Ria is concerned with her outward appearance and uses her actions to influence how people view her. In short, cut out "because" phrases from why she's doing things, and emphasize the effect it has on other people instead.

Ria isn't calculating for the sake of being calculating; she's calculating to reach her goal, and keeping an eye on that goal might help you with figuring out her character.

To add, just because she's calculating doesn't mean she has to be completely emotionless all the time; in fact, playing with emotional responses can be a great benefit to her using others to her own ends. Maybe take a bit and try to figure out how Ria would go about using emotions to fiddle with people?

I wish I could be more help, but I'm kind of scatterbrained right now. Just know that it IS possible to write a calculating character who isn't boring, and it IS possible to write a character who uses emotions without necessarily feeling them deeply.

If you have any more questions, of course feel free to ask me! And have a great day, dear <3
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Sat Jun 04, 2016 2:23 am
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Holysocks says...



You might want to show her as having emotion for other things, and by this I mean she may have no feelings for one thing, but then lots for another. Katniss comes to mind because she seemed like a harder character in a lot of aspects, but had so much love for those she cared about. So maybe give your character something she loves, something she'd die for. This can work for other things as well; everyone has different degrees of what will make them happy, angry, upset, melancholy. For instance, I don't tend to get excited when people give me gifts- which causes people to think that I dislike the gift, when in actual fact I just don't react the way others do.

Also remember that there's no absolute "she's mean" or "he's an angel". Bad guys have soft spots, just as heros have dark sides, and Tis aplies to lots of things as well. I know you say your character does have feelings, but you don't really seem willing to show them(?)... a few instances where she lets her emotions show is not going to make everyone think she's a pansy all of a sudden, and I don't believe that would be going against your character. People are full of contradictions, and if I new the character you're describing, in real life, I'd probably suspect she was a very emotional person, which would be why she was trying to push them down, or tun them off as you say.

I hope this was of some use. O.O

edit: Rosey basically said all that so ignore me.
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Wed Jun 08, 2016 8:37 pm
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Holysocks says...



Oops, I have something more to say that I realized while... probably showering.

What the readers know, doesn't have to be what the characters know. Especially if you're using first person than I think this would work quite well because she'd be showing more of her emotions on the inside, trying to deal with them, working on pushing them down, and the readers would have an inside view of what she's really like- that she's not a heartless person, she just doesn't show her emotions as much. I think it would also built a lot of empathy for the character because that seems pretty lonely. And when reader's know something that no one else does, it makes them feel special.

Hopefully that made some sense.
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Sat Jun 25, 2016 3:30 pm
Tenyo says...



Hey Queenofhearts!

Being emotionless is haaard, if you want to do the character justice anyway. I think it's an interesting trait but you have to really explore it.

Depression
This is often described not as a feeling but as a lack of feeling, and depression is awful. It's a feeling that leaves you with little motive or motivation to do anything and for many people they'd rather feel pain. It would be interesting to see how your character manages to overcome the debilitating aspects of not feeling anything when she's in this state for a long period of time - and how the length of time affects how well she readjusts to normality.

Desensitization
Sometimes a lack of emotion can be caused by a desensitization to everything. In this case, you can have great fun playing with juxtapositions- like how she could describe the weird shape of a flower and briefly mention a body lying behind it.

Morality
Most people base their every day morality on their emotions- who they love, what makes them angry- and it helps them to justify those moral dilemmas. She doesn't have to feel grief to have issues with what she does. Even those who are blindly loyal will come across the every day issue of whether or not to stop a line of traffic to help an old lady across the road.

Robotics
When you're talking about someone who can switch emotions on and off with few negative consequences, you're talking about something mega scary. She's more of a machine than a human, and I think perhaps that might be a good thing to look into. Of course, keep her biological, but try researching robotic science fiction and take a look at how machines are portrayed as realistic when they have no physical emotions.

Hope this helps. Good luck!
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