The Fashionable Understatement, And Why You Should Make It When Writing The Angst
Because I felt like being a smart ass and giving sage advise about writing. I warn thee, here be examples of suicidal thoughts and freaky parents, as well as implications on how everybody should stop taking themselves seriously on general principle. Including myself.
When I was sixteen, my mom caught me self-harming (I think. My memory is a little fuzzy on the details). She freaked. During a nice little psychotic break that apparently runs in the family, she screamed at me I was no daughter of hers, I was a freak and a monster.
The next morning, I got up and had some toast, which my mother used to prepare for me because she thought I was too skinny and should have proper breakfast. She acted like nothing had ever happened. We never talked about it again. If I asked her about it today, I have no doubt she wouldn't be able to recall the event. My family's collective false memory syndrome is a remarkable thing. You might have noticed how I don't recall it that well, either.
When I was nineteen, I took a two-hours train ride to the university of my choice and signed up to get a degree in literature, planning on spending the next six years in that place, making a permanent choice about my future career. I stood in a line for three hours. Once it was my turn, I was done within ten minutes, relieved that I hadn't forgotten to bring any important paperwork. I was starving, bored, and not looking forward to the train ride back.
Some years ago, I read a short fic, which was a Harry Potter fic. It was a very good fic - sound characterizations, great execution, beautiful language. It was about James Potter signing up to be an Auror. The tone of the fic was full of pathos, in the original sense of the word. It was all very grand. Young man making a decision that would influence all his life. Just to confirm and to feel good about being clever, I asked the writer about her age. She was sixteen. She still thought the day you she'd make her college major official would be accompanied by a score with trumpets in it.
I find that this is a classical writing trap, not just for young writers. There are some typical overestimations often made in fics by young writers predominantly, of course, such as the wrong assumption that a big moment in your life is going to feel like a big moment in your life. Similarly, dealing with the death of a loved one or with being left by your lover: As everybody figures out at some point in their lives, for everybody who dies, there's somebody to organize the funeral. Being collected and competent about it. If the love of your life leaves you, you still have to go to work the next morning. You just breathe on. There are no big emotional breakdowns. At least not where everybody can see, and certainly not when it's most convenient.
I've read a great many scenes in fanfics in which people were told they were freaks and monsters by their parents. It happens in X-Men fic sometimes, and Sirius Black running away from home is a really typical one as well, of course. Naturally, these things can get big and life-changing - I know of a woman who was attacked by her mother with a knife when she came out to her as gay. But the thing is, they usually don't feel like that. No big speeches are made. People do not explode into many words in which they explain to other people how horrible these experiences were.
It took me many years to even tell somebody, anybody, about these things my mother said to me. In the end, doing so was anti-climatic. Nobody I told ever acted like it was a big deal. Of the five or so people I've told, a majority jumped in to defend my mother, telling me surely she hadn't meant it like that or that she was just scared (not that I don't know all these things, or I wouldn't still be in such close contact with my parents). People don't want the big emotional drama. They'll do everything in their power to come up with qualifiers that tone down the emo. People want to maintain an emotional average in every situation that isn't about them. It's just how people work. A little excitement is okay - it's why people get emotional about pieces of gossip in the office - but they don't want the heavy stuff anywhere near them.
Very many fanfics that I've read could have profited from a little fashionable understatement in the emotional department. No matter how terrible a personal situation gets for a character - it rarely ever feels that terrible while it's happening, and an ideal situation to tell another character about the event, in which the other person would get a chance to react in an appropriate way, rarely ever comes up afterwards.
There's a scene in my fic "How to live and love as an amputee" in which Felix plans on offing himself, hording painkillers:
It only took a week until Costanza found the stash in a drawer in his head. It hadn’t been hidden very well.
When the pilot gave him an unusually long look upon leaving the head that evening, Felix didn’t think much of it.
“How’s it going with readjustment?” Costanza asked casually while picking up the Triad deck to return it to whomever he’d borrowed it from.
“Fine,” Felix said, surprised by the question. “It’s going just fine.”
“I see,” Costanza said and grew silent for a while. Then he struck up a conversation about how Helo said Figurski said that Tattoo was frakking a deckhand, all in a very casual voice.
It was only later that Felix found the relevant drawer to be empty. He looked down at it for a minute, no reaction coming to mind whatsoever. Without having to look he knew he’d find his service pistol gone, too.
None of them ever mentioned it. Felix did however restart taking the pills as prescribed.
As a funny cultural anecdote, this scene prompted very different reactions in my English and German audience. English People who commented on this said things about how calm and determined Brendan seemed here, and how self-assured he was in steering Felix away from suicide. The three Germans who read this fic all reacted by, "Holy hell, he totally freaked, didn't he?" Hee, and he did, too. It's understood to a German audience that he must have been panicking within, and having no idea whatsoever how to react - retreating immediately when Felix refused to engage in a conversation, probably kinda relieved that he had. (Incidentally, there were no pills and no sharp objects at all to be found in the house I grew up in. This, too, was something that was never addressed by anybody. I've always found this kind of behavior greatly annoying, but I acknowledged that Felix is not me when writing this fic)
There's a similar theme in my Dee/Narcho fic "Keeping Count," in which there are three scenes of Dee trying to tell her respective lover that she considers suicide: Billy, Lee, Narcho. Unfortunately, Billy freaks, keeping her busy with calming him down, while Lee makes it all about him. In my fic, she encounters Narcho, who enables her to act the way she wants to act because she doesn't give a damn about him. This leads to great sex. Also, to this conversation:
“Have you ever thought about killing yourself?”
She's too lazy to move, lying in a sea of crimson satin sheets, so she only turns her head until Noel Allison comes into view. He's naked and smoking, flicking off his cigarette into the same coffee cup that he used to dispose of the condom.
“In your viper,” she presses when he doesn't immediately answer. “Have you ever thought about just... not getting out of the way in time when they’re shooting at you?”
Allison rearranges his head on the pillow. A thoughtful line crosses his forehead when he exhales a puffy cloud of smoke, apparently considering the question from all angles.
“No,” he says. “We fight death every time we're out there. You can't become what you fight.” He smirks. “No matter some people on this ship think otherwise.” He’s talking of Tigh, of course, the Cylon Tigh.
The pilot gives her a long and measured look. “Have you?”
There's so much in that look.
Dee stares at the smoke gathering under the ceiling.
“Yes,” she says. “All the time.”
Speaking from my POV, the reason why this conversation works for Dee (not going down the canon route and not blowing her brains out in this fic) is because she isn't expecting anything from Narcho. When talking to Billy and Lee, she had certain expectations about how they should be reacting. In talking to Narcho, she has stopped giving a shit. He can't possibly let her down. As it turns out, he does give a useful answer, engaging in the kind of conversation she wants to have, but it's just a conversation. Again, no score with trumpets in it. The narration thus remains calm and unexcited. This is not a big thing. It couldn't have been a big thing, because that isn't how it works: It works for Dee because she has learned to be okay with that (she also survives because Narcho knows to get the hint, but that's another part of the story entirely).
This is a matter of tone of voice, of outlining and arranging your scenes, and of narration style. It's about keeping the epic out of the parts of your fic where you don't want them, although on first sight, you might think they're warranted. Big events don't feel like big events, and conversations that are supposed to be a big personal deal commonly turn out to be sort of random. It's not a matter of changing your characterizations. Some people just are emotional, and there's nothing wrong with that. Brendan could have broken into tears upon finding the painkillers, and Narcho could have broken into an epic rant about the unfairness of life - though chances that that would have been what Felix and Dee needed are slim. Because those are the POV characters, and they experience it as not that big a deal. Hence, they'd probably both have been kind of mystified. The only people for whom this is not true are generally teens, and people who suffer from serious cases of certain mental disorders.
I really think people should work on this when writing fic. They should remember that almost every situation they write about has become true to thousands, if not millions of people out there in real life. People you run into on the street fíve minutes later, people who'll tell you about it when drunk while you really don't feel like listening and being impressed. Most supposed big events are not big events. In writing personal situations of any kind, you're almost always better off with a fashionable understatement. Here's a fact of life that I know to be true: Baring the really ugly such as child abuse, there really are very few events in the personal history of people about which they can say, "This changed my life forever," without somebody being ready to snort a laugh and say, "Oh come on." Imagine me, if it helps. I've both had the mother screaming at me, and been the one to snort the laugh. ;)
When I was sixteen, my mom caught me self-harming (I think. My memory is a little fuzzy on the details). She freaked. During a nice little psychotic break that apparently runs in the family, she screamed at me I was no daughter of hers, I was a freak and a monster.
The next morning, I got up and had some toast, which my mother used to prepare for me because she thought I was too skinny and should have proper breakfast. She acted like nothing had ever happened. We never talked about it again. If I asked her about it today, I have no doubt she wouldn't be able to recall the event. My family's collective false memory syndrome is a remarkable thing. You might have noticed how I don't recall it that well, either.
When I was nineteen, I took a two-hours train ride to the university of my choice and signed up to get a degree in literature, planning on spending the next six years in that place, making a permanent choice about my future career. I stood in a line for three hours. Once it was my turn, I was done within ten minutes, relieved that I hadn't forgotten to bring any important paperwork. I was starving, bored, and not looking forward to the train ride back.
Some years ago, I read a short fic, which was a Harry Potter fic. It was a very good fic - sound characterizations, great execution, beautiful language. It was about James Potter signing up to be an Auror. The tone of the fic was full of pathos, in the original sense of the word. It was all very grand. Young man making a decision that would influence all his life. Just to confirm and to feel good about being clever, I asked the writer about her age. She was sixteen. She still thought the day you she'd make her college major official would be accompanied by a score with trumpets in it.
I find that this is a classical writing trap, not just for young writers. There are some typical overestimations often made in fics by young writers predominantly, of course, such as the wrong assumption that a big moment in your life is going to feel like a big moment in your life. Similarly, dealing with the death of a loved one or with being left by your lover: As everybody figures out at some point in their lives, for everybody who dies, there's somebody to organize the funeral. Being collected and competent about it. If the love of your life leaves you, you still have to go to work the next morning. You just breathe on. There are no big emotional breakdowns. At least not where everybody can see, and certainly not when it's most convenient.
I've read a great many scenes in fanfics in which people were told they were freaks and monsters by their parents. It happens in X-Men fic sometimes, and Sirius Black running away from home is a really typical one as well, of course. Naturally, these things can get big and life-changing - I know of a woman who was attacked by her mother with a knife when she came out to her as gay. But the thing is, they usually don't feel like that. No big speeches are made. People do not explode into many words in which they explain to other people how horrible these experiences were.
It took me many years to even tell somebody, anybody, about these things my mother said to me. In the end, doing so was anti-climatic. Nobody I told ever acted like it was a big deal. Of the five or so people I've told, a majority jumped in to defend my mother, telling me surely she hadn't meant it like that or that she was just scared (not that I don't know all these things, or I wouldn't still be in such close contact with my parents). People don't want the big emotional drama. They'll do everything in their power to come up with qualifiers that tone down the emo. People want to maintain an emotional average in every situation that isn't about them. It's just how people work. A little excitement is okay - it's why people get emotional about pieces of gossip in the office - but they don't want the heavy stuff anywhere near them.
Very many fanfics that I've read could have profited from a little fashionable understatement in the emotional department. No matter how terrible a personal situation gets for a character - it rarely ever feels that terrible while it's happening, and an ideal situation to tell another character about the event, in which the other person would get a chance to react in an appropriate way, rarely ever comes up afterwards.
There's a scene in my fic "How to live and love as an amputee" in which Felix plans on offing himself, hording painkillers:
It only took a week until Costanza found the stash in a drawer in his head. It hadn’t been hidden very well.
When the pilot gave him an unusually long look upon leaving the head that evening, Felix didn’t think much of it.
“How’s it going with readjustment?” Costanza asked casually while picking up the Triad deck to return it to whomever he’d borrowed it from.
“Fine,” Felix said, surprised by the question. “It’s going just fine.”
“I see,” Costanza said and grew silent for a while. Then he struck up a conversation about how Helo said Figurski said that Tattoo was frakking a deckhand, all in a very casual voice.
It was only later that Felix found the relevant drawer to be empty. He looked down at it for a minute, no reaction coming to mind whatsoever. Without having to look he knew he’d find his service pistol gone, too.
None of them ever mentioned it. Felix did however restart taking the pills as prescribed.
As a funny cultural anecdote, this scene prompted very different reactions in my English and German audience. English People who commented on this said things about how calm and determined Brendan seemed here, and how self-assured he was in steering Felix away from suicide. The three Germans who read this fic all reacted by, "Holy hell, he totally freaked, didn't he?" Hee, and he did, too. It's understood to a German audience that he must have been panicking within, and having no idea whatsoever how to react - retreating immediately when Felix refused to engage in a conversation, probably kinda relieved that he had. (Incidentally, there were no pills and no sharp objects at all to be found in the house I grew up in. This, too, was something that was never addressed by anybody. I've always found this kind of behavior greatly annoying, but I acknowledged that Felix is not me when writing this fic)
There's a similar theme in my Dee/Narcho fic "Keeping Count," in which there are three scenes of Dee trying to tell her respective lover that she considers suicide: Billy, Lee, Narcho. Unfortunately, Billy freaks, keeping her busy with calming him down, while Lee makes it all about him. In my fic, she encounters Narcho, who enables her to act the way she wants to act because she doesn't give a damn about him. This leads to great sex. Also, to this conversation:
“Have you ever thought about killing yourself?”
She's too lazy to move, lying in a sea of crimson satin sheets, so she only turns her head until Noel Allison comes into view. He's naked and smoking, flicking off his cigarette into the same coffee cup that he used to dispose of the condom.
“In your viper,” she presses when he doesn't immediately answer. “Have you ever thought about just... not getting out of the way in time when they’re shooting at you?”
Allison rearranges his head on the pillow. A thoughtful line crosses his forehead when he exhales a puffy cloud of smoke, apparently considering the question from all angles.
“No,” he says. “We fight death every time we're out there. You can't become what you fight.” He smirks. “No matter some people on this ship think otherwise.” He’s talking of Tigh, of course, the Cylon Tigh.
The pilot gives her a long and measured look. “Have you?”
There's so much in that look.
Dee stares at the smoke gathering under the ceiling.
“Yes,” she says. “All the time.”
Speaking from my POV, the reason why this conversation works for Dee (not going down the canon route and not blowing her brains out in this fic) is because she isn't expecting anything from Narcho. When talking to Billy and Lee, she had certain expectations about how they should be reacting. In talking to Narcho, she has stopped giving a shit. He can't possibly let her down. As it turns out, he does give a useful answer, engaging in the kind of conversation she wants to have, but it's just a conversation. Again, no score with trumpets in it. The narration thus remains calm and unexcited. This is not a big thing. It couldn't have been a big thing, because that isn't how it works: It works for Dee because she has learned to be okay with that (she also survives because Narcho knows to get the hint, but that's another part of the story entirely).
This is a matter of tone of voice, of outlining and arranging your scenes, and of narration style. It's about keeping the epic out of the parts of your fic where you don't want them, although on first sight, you might think they're warranted. Big events don't feel like big events, and conversations that are supposed to be a big personal deal commonly turn out to be sort of random. It's not a matter of changing your characterizations. Some people just are emotional, and there's nothing wrong with that. Brendan could have broken into tears upon finding the painkillers, and Narcho could have broken into an epic rant about the unfairness of life - though chances that that would have been what Felix and Dee needed are slim. Because those are the POV characters, and they experience it as not that big a deal. Hence, they'd probably both have been kind of mystified. The only people for whom this is not true are generally teens, and people who suffer from serious cases of certain mental disorders.
I really think people should work on this when writing fic. They should remember that almost every situation they write about has become true to thousands, if not millions of people out there in real life. People you run into on the street fíve minutes later, people who'll tell you about it when drunk while you really don't feel like listening and being impressed. Most supposed big events are not big events. In writing personal situations of any kind, you're almost always better off with a fashionable understatement. Here's a fact of life that I know to be true: Baring the really ugly such as child abuse, there really are very few events in the personal history of people about which they can say, "This changed my life forever," without somebody being ready to snort a laugh and say, "Oh come on." Imagine me, if it helps. I've both had the mother screaming at me, and been the one to snort the laugh. ;)