How do you write the grieving process of a close friend or family member? I am having difficulty trying to show that my character is grieving the lost of his brother without being either too distracting or too corny. Although a death of a brother is a major motivation for my character because he is trying to solve and avenge the death of his brother throughout the story.
Thank you for your question, love! I am a huge angst writer, so excuse me if this gets a bit rambly…
How (and How Not) to Write Grief
Grief is one of the most powerful emotions and narratives I’ve ever seen in fiction, so I understand your concern about it. There are a lot of ways to go about writing grief, especially since your character’s personality shouldn’t fit just any grieving arc. Everyone mourns differently, so you’ll have to look at who you’re writing and decide what suits them best.
That aside, I do have some general tips that should help.
Shock is a valuable tool. Many people do not experience grief as soon as a loved one passes. Some people go through a brief or extended period of shock, which basically preserves them emotionally. Shock helps to push us through bad times until we find a better, safer time to grieve – while funeral preparations are being made, or work is being done. A person in shock may seem normal or cold in nature, and they may be more irritable or obsessive. Some people stave off grieving longer than is healthy, especially by throwing themselves into work or indulging in drugs or alcohol. But everyone faces grief at one point or another – and when this moment comes, it can serve as a climactic point in your character’s development.
Grief comes in waves, not rivers. You don’t think about it once, and you don’t think about it all the time. You don’t think, “I miss them,” a few times a day until it passes. You see something they bought you for your birthday and you feel a rush of heaviness, and you try to remember if you thanked them enough. You listen to a song with headphones and you think you hear them calling you from another room, and you take off the headphones and shoot up in your seat, until you remember. Maybe you forget for a few days, as time passes, but someone sharing the weather on the radio will sound like their voice, or you’ll pass the place you used to get coffee together, or someone will tell a joke they used to tell, and it’ll ram you like a truck. Your character may find comfort or pain in these reminders. You lean into their memory or you throw out their things, or you stumble somewhere in between.
With grief comes guilt. Whether or not your character was related to the death at all, guilt is usually a side effect of outliving a loved one. If your character was related to the death, they’ll replay it in their head a thousand times; they’ll wonder how they could have prevented it, or if they should have seen it coming. (There’s a great example of this in a short PC game called “The Last Day of June.) Your character may feel a twinge of guilt sometimes, when they laugh or have a good time with someone else; when they do something to remind them that they’re alive, and their loved one isn’t, for some reason. Maybe they feel bad for expressing sadness. Maybe they’re scared to take other people for granted. Maybe they feel selfish for taking any focus off the person who died. Think about this as you’re moving your character forward with their own life and their own goals.
Grief affects the day-to-day. Losing someone takes it out of you; right away, even during shock, a grieving person’s general mood will take a hit. Nothing feels too good when you’ve just lost someone – not eating, drinking, sleeping, talking to loved ones, or indulging in hobbies. Slacking on these things can cause you to develop depression, anxiety, sleeping or eating disorders, and generally bad physical and mental health. This is especially worse if the passed loved one was a comforting or joyful figure for your character, or someone they typically lean on/confide in. Decreased health can lead to irritability, instability, and regression into bad habits or coping mechanisms.
They have to move on. At some point, once the shock, the waves, the highs, the lows, and the day-to-day slump have come and gone, your character has to find a new normal. Grief never goes away 100% – but you do go from always thinking about it to sometimes thinking about it; crying every night to crying once a month, to crying on their birthday and maybe on holidays; to being able to talk about them without crying at all; to be able to pick apart the good and the bad of their passing. Once your character has reached acceptance, they’ve reached some sort of peace over the loss. Some people talk or pray to their loved ones; some people lock their things away and view them once a year. Some people believe in ghosts or heaven; some people believe in reincarnation or becoming part of the earth; some people don’t really believe in anything or don’t know what they believe. Decide what your character believes, and how it hurts them, and how it helps them. What is their final conclusion?
Melodrama. As much as it sells soap operas, it doesn’t work well for fiction – no one wants to sit through pages of characters screaming, sobbing, and falling to their knees. Strong emotional moments should be used sparingly, and with the proper buildup beforehand. Try not to overwhelm the reader. While a real person’s mind may be very scattered during such a time, try to make your character’s development realistic but linear. Forward and backward, not left to right – getting better or worse, not going through a tasting platter of emotional outbursts. If your character does something particularly dramatic (I’m talking committing a crime, not crying into a pillow), make sure it makes sense for their character and adds to the story.
Drowning out the plot. In real life, grieving can become a full-time job; some people spend days in bed just thinking about it, or thinking about nothing, or crying, or compulsively playing a video game or binge-watching a show to distract themselves. But there’s no time for this in a novel. Try to incorporate grieving into your main plot (in your case, solving the brother’s murder). If you feel the need to dedicate a section to the dead character – e.g. a flashback, a funeral scene, a cemetery visit – tie it into the main plot’s progression. For example, while your character is experiencing the flashback/funeral/scene, let something in that moment become a clue to the murder case.
Losing track of the arc. While you’re writing the rest of your plot, don’t forget about your character’s grieving. They shouldn’t always be actively mourning, as other things will preoccupy them from time to time; but keep track of their arc through the stages of grief, and try to keep their actions appropriate. If they’ve lost their loved one in the past week, they probably won’t be jumping for joy about anything. If it’s been years, they probably won’t sob at the mention of their name. This can all be affected by shock, of course, but you’ll know where your character is relatively.
I hope some of this helps you to write your story as accurately and engagingly as possible, for your character. If you have any further questions, feel free to send them in. Until then, I hope you have a wonderful weekend :)
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