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How do I write a grieving scene?



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Wed Aug 17, 2016 2:28 am
felistia says...



My main characters close friend's brother has died. I don't know how to get across my main character's and friends feelings. I've written the basics of the chapter, but I just don't feel like there's enough emotion in it. I want readers to cry. Please help.

Here's the chapter so far.

Spoiler! :
The great wave of hissing fire swept across the prairie, eating everything in its path. In its wake was nothing, but smoking black waste. Red hot flames bounded through the prairie, snapping hungrily at the dragon’s wings as they sped towards the mountains. If only they could reach the rocks, then they’d be safe. With Shriken’s weight dragging them down, they were going much slower and lower than normal. They were in danger of the flames catching up with them as the fire whipped through the dry grass.

Zoltar’s wings ached from the extra weight and the flames behind him were molten hot.
The smoke and heat were starting to cloud his senses and the remains of the Fangtar’s sleep gas wasn’t helping. Beside him, Felistia with panting. Blood streaked her silver scales and deep gashes covered her whole body.

One of the fingers of flame brushed against Zoltar’s pounding wings and he roared in pain as fierce heat surged up his shoulder. Clinching his talons, he beat his wings faster, gasping from the effort. The lacerations along his scales burned like acid with ever stroke.

Finally after what seemed like hours of flying flat out, they reached the safety of the mountain slopes. Zoltar immediately landed, his body thudding against the bare rock. The release of Shriken’s weight was blissful and he sighed with relief. Felistia sank to the ground, breathing heavily. The flames crackled angrily behind them, but he knew that they couldn’t reach them.

After taking a few minutes to catch his breath, Zoltar remembered Shriken. The young Ice Talon was lying still as stone beside him. Felistia seemed to have fallen asleep with exhaustion and hadn’t remembered her brother yet. Now in the light of the new dawn, Zoltar could see the extent of the damage across Shriken’s scales. He no longer was the silvery white of an Ice Talon, but was a deep crimson red, streaked with black soot marks.

Zoltar checked for signs of breathing, but to his alarm, he could find none. Shriken lay unmoving, a pool of blood starting to form around him and Zoltar realized that he was dead. Mixed emotions started to swirl through his head and he didn’t quite know how to feel. He had known that Shriken would most likely die after his rescue from the Fangtar, but he’d never really accepted it. He’d always hoped against hopes as he’d flown over the prairie fire that the young dragon would survive. Now with the Ice Talon dead at his feet, he felt strangely ashamed. If only he’d pushed him to fly a bit longer yesterday, then Shriken would still be alive.

He looked over at Felistia, who was still oblivious to the tragic happening. How was she going to react? Would she blame him and attack him? Zoltar didn’t know. His stomach was in knots and cold chills run down his back spines. His mind kept playing over what he could have done differently to prevent this from happening. He eventually came to the conclusion that Shriken had just been too young for the quest and had just gotten life’s bad draw. At least he’d died fighting and with honour. Now he could ascend to the stars where all dragons went when they died.

He felt Felistia stir beside him and braced himself for what he knew was coming. Her golden eyes flickered open and she groaned. The lashes along her body were crusted in dry blood and the rips in her wings were savage. She lay still for another minute or two as she coxed herself to move her burning limbs. Finally with a roar of pain she got to her paws. A flash of realization crossed he face and she looked back in the direction of Shriken. The young Ice Talon was a pitiful sight and just a glance would have shown anyone that he was gone. A choking sob escaped her throat. Zoltar remained silent as she ran over to her brother. She ignored the pool of blood around him and threw her wings over him. Tears streamed down her snout in steady rivers. Her great sides heaved with heart wrenching howls.

Zoltar’s heart ached to see her, but there wasn’t anything he could do. Silent tears burned his eyes as he watch Felistia’s pain.

“No Shriken no,” she cried over and over again, her breathing ragged. Lifting her blood streaked face, she roared her pain to the rising sun long and hard for her heart was broken.

At last, after half an hour of sobbing, Felistia reluctantly lifted her head from her brother’s back. Her once glowing yellow eyes were blood shot with the tears. She stumbled over Zoltar and without a word, curled under his wing like a small dragonet and burst into a fresh stream of cries. He wrapped his obsidian wings around her, holding her tight as her heart wept. They remained that way for the rest of the day.

After many long hours the cold evening drew near and the fierce sun started to set. Vivid rivers of crimson red and violet whipped across the darkening sky. Like a great ball of fire the sun disappeared below the blackened plains and the first of the stars started to shine in the night. The two moons where full, casting their cool light across Shriken scales so that he once again look silver.

Both Zoltar and Felistia stood with their wings spread over him. At the stroke of midnight when the last of the stars shimmered into view, they began the ancient dragon dance of ascent. Waving their wings back and forth in a wave like motion, the moon light rippling off their scales, they swept up the dust. It swirled through the air in a delicate cloud as the dragons below twirled, sweeping their wings towards the heavens. Silver talons flashed as they swayed their arms in rhythm to the stars’ song.

Shriken started to gleam and sparkle a brilliant gold and burst into a cloud of sparks. The shimmering mist climbed higher and higher into the night sky as the dance continued unbroken like the flow of the tides. Finally it seemed to dissolve into the very stars themselves and gave a final twinkle before disappearing. Zoltar and Felistia did on last graceful turn and ended the dance by bowing their wings over where Shriken had lain.
  





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Wed Aug 17, 2016 3:55 am
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Rosendorn says...



Move past it and rewrite later.

This question has been similarly answered here, and the advice I gave there is going to be much the same.

Grief is a hard emotion to write and is very frequently expressed after the fact. It's common go have tears rolling down cheeks at first, then throw yourself into work you can actually have control over, and only process it once you're "safe" and in a place where breaking down won't cause life to stop quite so utterly. Sometimes it expresses itself hot and loud and vicious, then simmers to a quiet rage that never cools and always looks for someone or something to blame the grief on.

You'll also not really know the full spectrum of grief until you've moved past the scene. Grief is non-linear, has 5 major stages, and one tends to be like a pinball in a particularly long running game where you bounce around everywhere along those stages. This sometimes lasts years, or even a full lifetime if the event was traumatic.

'Grief' isn't a single event, and by attempting to treat it as such, you flatten it. So write beyond what you're working on now, write well beyond what you're working on now, and fix it later. It changes you. There's a quote about how 'childhood is the magical place where nobody dies', which just underscores how grief is what makes people slightly older. It's what removes innocence.

I don't quite believe it's that stark, but it can be. It depends on the person in question. Sometimes people can experience grief and not be terribly effected, while others feel every loss deeply and change as a result.

So, in short, write all of grief and come back to the initial outpouring later. Once you have the spectrum of how it's impacted the characters, you'll know how to richen the initial event.
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Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:15 pm
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Tenyo says...



This is a hard question. Generally I would say find what makes you cry, and analyse it. Here are a few examples I can think of.

Breaking the resilient:
We all know someone who, no matter how hard they get knocked down, they always manage to get back up. Not only are they a rock to us but they're an example. We all know what it's like to try our hardest and still not be good enough. So when you have a character who falls and rises and falls and rises but each time takes longer and longer to get back up, and through this you can have the same effect of whittling away at your reader until they break.

The outcry of injustice:
Everybody, at some point in their lives, will swear at the six oclock news, or their blood will turn hot at some insult to a loved one. Everyone at some point will punch a wall or a pillow because something bad has happened and they can't do anything about it. The worst kind of injustice tends to need an age rating, but it's a great way to stir up your reader and engage them emotionally in the tragedy unfolding on the page.

The familiar companion:
To do this one you have to make sure you have a stereotype that is both accurate and amicable. Something that reminds them of someone important on whom they can attach a certain sentiment that they already have. It'll be easier to pull the rug from under them when you do.

The false ending:
This one gets me every time. It's when the battle is over and the underdog has finally stepped up to the plate and made their mark. It's finally okay to relax and breath, and then suddenly evil delivers its final sting and knocks them down for good. I think it works because there is that moment of disarmament of the reader, and also a hint of the first example in that the character has done everything they can and still fall.

Hope this helps!

Also, Sidenote; why do you want your readers to cry? It's an important question because you could be striving for an effect, one that may not fit the plot, and lose focus of the story itself. Even the most prolific writers, artists, directors, can slip into that trap. Sometimes it's best to concentrate on your characters and let the reader respond in their own way. That's for you to figure out personally though since you're the only one who knows your plot and your characters well enough to figure it out.
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Fri Sep 23, 2016 12:26 am
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Virgil says...



I think that you're asking the wrong question here. If you're only writing a scene of the main characters close friend's brother dying/having died only to try and make the readers feel emotion, you have the wrong idea. Instead of thinking it as an emotional scene, write it as it is. Don't be like, "This isn't sad enough." and then going to change it. If you're looking at it from that approach, you're bound to do it wrong.

Having a character die so early on most likely won't make a reader cry. If the character that's going to die is dying so early on in the story, it's nearly impossible to make a reader /cry/ because they're not attached enough to the character(s). Rather, if you want to try and capture a sort of emotion, you should try and write it as it would happen. I'd imagine the main character is more distant from the brother as it isn't his own?

I don't quite know if he knew the brother well or not, but if the main character didn't, you could definitely make them not /feel/ really anything about this event happening or not feeling anything major, and this being a conflicting trait with them wondering about their morality.

In fantasy stories, it definitely is harder to try and get emotions across due to everything else going on in the story shoving them out and there not being room. My suggestion is to treat your characters like real people who do things that aren't always good instead of your protagonist always having to be the hero or always having to feel grief for a lost life.

That's all I really had to contribute with, I hope I helped.

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