In my Story Twilight War I'm trying to show that a Character is being stripped to their base animal instincts by degrading the narrative in their sections of the narrative. I want their to be at least ten different states before she reaches the final dredges of humanity. Does anyone have any experience or tips they can give my about this technique? ANy help appreciated
Scion
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I have seen this done only once before, so I wish you luck. But dont let that discourage you!
I don't know how this would be done, but ten may be too much. First you may focus a LOT on descriptions, and then when the change starts to happen, those descriptions get shorter and simpler, until they only focus on those things that are strictly necessary (food, water, shelter etc.). Then he could stop referring to his companions as friends (because at a base level, you cant afford to have friends), until he only calls them people, and doesn't bother to distinguish between them. Then his emotions would start to fade, going from the complex emotions of the human body to happy, sad, angry, sleepy, pain, etc. The writing itself shouldn't change much but the way you represent his thoughts, descriptions and relations with other people should.
Try checking out Maslo's Hierarchy of needs. Its basically a triangle of the things a person needs. At the bottom are those basic things for survival, and at teh top, self actualization. It might help a little bit.
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
Narration degredation! This is fun! I actually just wrote a chapter in which the narration deteriorates this past NaNoWriMo (link in case the example might help you). I'll lend what help I can.
First. Decide HOW you want it to deteriorate. Is the language going to get simpler? Are you going to pull in more animalistic phrases and tendencies? Are the words going to get smaller? Is your narrator going to start misspelling things? Is your narrator going to pull out of the caps lock on you? Is the way your narrator perceives people going to change? From the way you make your story sound, I would predict the language might get simpler, you might focus more on what the base instincts bring out, the vocabulary may narrow, the sentence structure start being shorter. Maybe your narrator starts breaking out into inappropriate emotions and reactions. It's really up to you how you decide to convey it, so think about those things ahead of time.
Then, think about pacing and pattern. Do you want the deterioration to be steady? Will each chapter be a little more incoherent or debased? Do you want the deterioration to accelerate? Slowly getting out onto thin ice at first and then spiraling rapidly in chaos? Just remember that, when it comes to deterioration, you cannot forget pattern. The place where people who write this kind of thing get into trouble is when the deterioration is inconsistent, when the narrator is mispelling things at random places with absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. It might be helpful to map out what techniques you are going to use and what the pacing is going to look like.
Of course, I'm not telling you to overthink it. A lot of the magic happens when you put the pen to the paper and write it out. These are just things to keep in mind and things to look back on when you edit. Like riders, I urge you to look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. That will help. If you do your research, you should be able to figure out what is going to change about the narration, but just don't forget that pattern.
If you have any questions or just want to run something by me, feel free to throw me a PM! Hope that helped!
Thank you for the replies, the story section proved helpful. I'm not going to misspell words (deliberately), merely going to revert from stunning metaphor to short two-three word sentences giving very little detail, merely tactical information (the character is a soldier (soldieress?)). She also forgets her name. Every section is interspersed with things she does remember, but has no control over. These get steadily shorter but more useful to the reader as time goes on. I've decided to shorten the amount to five. What do you think?
GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
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