Before I start the post, in case anyone will be near Pawling, New York, this Saturday, I’m signing and talking. Details are on my website.
In August, Alexbella Sara wrote, How does one get across that a character is, to put it quite bluntly, going insane? I have one who is going insane and I don’t know how to show it.
And Lexi commented, I wrote a story where my MC temporarily lost his mind. Now I’m not saying that this is the best way to do it or anything, but when I did it, I gradually began interrupting his normal thoughts with less logical thoughts until he wasn’t thinking or saying anything sensible. I made him wonder every now and then in the beginning why he head felt so foggy, but soon he stopped wondering. And since I was writing in third person, I was able to make other characters reflect on how strange he was acting until they all knew that he was completely insane. Of course, I’m just a beginner and may not know what I’m talking about, and it may not work with your story, but just thought I’d let you know what worked for me. Hope that helps!
Lexi’s advice sounds good. Here are some more thoughts:
I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure there are lots of ways to be crazy; schizophrenia, manic depression, multiple personality leap to mind. And every crazy person is nuts in his own unique fashion. A schizophrenic may hear voices, but Vera’s voices will say different things from Victor’s. So you may want to consider what Vera is like before she disappears around the bend. If she’s just a tad jealous, for example, and begins to hear voices, they may tell her that her best friend Zinnia has been spending an awful lot of time with their classmate Caroline. If Vera is boring, her voices may instruct her to memorize home appliance owner’s manuals.
Madness is fun! (Fun for the writer, not for a real person.) You can be inventive. You can be wild. You can design your own kind of madness. Victor can suddenly start making animal noises. Or he can spend hours licking the china in his great-grandmother’s tea set. So here’s an early prompt: List seven unheard-of symptoms of madness, symptoms you’ve made up.
Detail is crucial in establishing balminess, as in every other sort of writing. Suppose we were trying to develop me as a character going bonkers. Every morning, in actual fact, I pour my high fiber cereal into my beautiful pottery bowl made by my sister-in-law Betsy Levine (www.prescotthillpottery.com – just a little family product placement!). Suppose on the first day of the rest of my nutty life I start pouring and pouring and pouring. Cereal spills onto the counter, onto the floor, mounds around my feet because I started with a full cereal box. Reggie trots into the kitchen and scarfs up cereal, which could be bad for his stomach, but I don’t notice because I’m so involved in staring at the design on the counter top. I’m wondering why I never noticed before how the colors bleed into each other, like drops in an ocean, like souls in love, like blood in war. Reggie, sensing something amiss, barks, and I snap out of it and am surprised to see cereal everywhere.
So we can start with some little thing, pouring cereal or anything else, and make it grow. It can be a tiny comment in a conversation, a momentary thought. But it needs to be specific and in some way off.
Lana’s lunacy can be concealed. Her inner life may be crazy as a bedbug’s, but she can be entirely aware of how she’s perceived and she can keep a tight lid on herself, at least in the early stages. We often see this in crazy villains. The reader witnesses the madness in Lena’s thoughts and actions when she’s alone, but when other characters are present she’s as ordinary as green peas.
If Kevin starts out sympathetic before he falls off his rocker, the reader will suffer, maybe more than he does. He may not be aware of what he does, but we are and we squirm. Say he has a crush on Jane. Yesterday, their romance was showing promise, but today he’s wrapped his muffler around his head and is pretending to be an injured Civil War veteran, which Jane doesn’t know how to deal with.
Or, and this is exceedingly painful, if Harriet is aware of her transformation from sane to wacko and is tormented by the change, we’ll writhe with her.
You also don’t have to take the sad, sympathetic route. In my short novel, The Princess Test, the maid Trudy slowly goes berserk. The book is funny, and her descent into madness is too. So your handling of psychosis depends on the genre you’re writing in. Humorous book: humorous treatment. In fantasy, you can make up your own version of crazy. For a historical story you may need to do some research. In the Romantic-period novel Jane Eyre, Rochester’s wife is mostly heard and is glimpsed only fleetingly, but we never doubt that she’s loony. You may need research as well for a contemporary tale if you want the insanity to be realistic.
A wonderful novel about insanity is I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg, which was popular when I was a young adult. (I’d guess it’s appropriate for age twelve and up, but check with a librarian.) For high school and up there’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. I’ve never watched this horror movie or read the book because I’m a wimp, but I believe The Shining by Stephen King is an amazing portrait of someone going crazy. And an old horror movie I did see and would never ever see again (definitely on an adult level) is Repulsion. The audience gets to understand the main character’s madness from the inside out, because some of the movie is shown through her eyes. It is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. And one of the most tragic.
As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve been aware of the multitude of synonyms for madness. I’ve used many of them, but here are some more: ape, bizarro, cracked, daft, deranged, dingy, dippy, flaky, flipped out, fruity, moonstruck, unsound, out to lunch, potty, screwy, touched, unbalanced, unhinged, unglued, wigged out. You may know additional terms. Please post any colorful ones. Why do you think we can say crazy so many ways? A little psychosis in our forebears? A little obsessiveness? Mnah hah hah!
Here are three prompts:
∙ Use yourself as an example. As you go through your day, jot down little things you could do that would show your mental deterioration. Make your mad self the main character in a short story. If you have an understanding family, try something out. Startle someone and see if it works. Then, hasten to explain.
∙ Gina, an investigative reporter, checks herself into a lunatic asylum to expose administrative abuses, but being in this environment begins to change her. She wonders why she volunteered for this particular assignment. Write how she gradually goes mental.
∙ Invent a secret government (any government) project to induce insanity in captured spies. Write how the scientists accomplish their goals. Write the effects on the prisoners. Pick a hero or heroine and write the story.
Have fun and save what you write!
Mirka Breen says:
Insanity in literature is effective when it is not the disjointed kind, but has logic of its own, even if that logic is not in conformity with others’.
You are a lot braver than I am, Gail. I’m not afraid to delve into alternative or mistaken perception. But I’m too chicken (or maybe not skilled enough, like you) to go the whole hog.
Thank you for a rich and illuminating post.
gailcarsonlevine says:
From the website:
Excellent advice Gail! And thank you so much for putting my comment on your post! I feel so honored!!!:-D Wait until my friends hear that I was on the blog of the famous author Gail Carson Levine!!!:-D Sorry, aside from that, your advice is very good and I'm sure it will be helpful in future stories if I decide to make anyone else go insane (it's kind of fun!)
Lexi
maybeawriter says:
Hi this is Conily6, (Maybeawriter's little sister) I finished my first book in my new series, and I think it's great, but now that I am drafting and making it better, I am describing the objects alot, but I am not sure if it's too much detail. Like I add huge details to something like this.
………………………………….
It was brown and white, the white was like snow, and had gold rings around it, and the brown had a black ring around it and had copper writing on it.
……………………………………..
And what if that isn't important to the story and people think it is since I put so much afford into describing it?
Please help!
carpelibris says:
I loved I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. The psychiatric treatment is a bit outdated now, but it's still a great book.
If you want to write about real-life mental illness, this is what psychiatrists, etc, use to classify conditions: http://allpsych.com/disorders/dsm.html
marveloustales says:
Another good movie to watch is Gaslights, an old Hitchcock-style movie. The villain is trying to drive his wife crazy, mostly by making her think that she's losing her mind. He convinces her that she's forgetting things, doing bizarre things, hearing strange sounds… It's clear to the viewer from the beginning that she's not crazy and he's manipulating her, but it could still give some good ideas on what a character could be doing or feeling as they're going crazy, or thinking that they are.
writeforfun says:
Gail – great post! I wrote a story with someone that went temporarily crazy. Making people lose their marbles is fun and challenging at the same time, but this post will definitely help if I ever do it again.
Conily6 – That sounds like a pretty important object to me. I think it depends on what you're describing as to how much detail you should include. I get the impression that the object you described is some sort of magic wand, but if it's just a fancy door knob and you really don't want your reader to get distracted paying attention to it, don't include it. Of course, if it's something that isn't real, you're going to have to give the reader an idea of what it looks like, but you might want to be careful of adding too much detail to ordinary things, if it's distracting. You should also read Gail's post "Description Galore" from Oct. 19-11.
gailcarsonlevine says:
writeforfun–Losing one's marbles! Another great synonym.
Conily6–Good advice from writeforfun. As you keep revising you may know better what needs more emphasis and what needs less.
maybeawriter says:
Conily6 again.
writeforfun- thanks for the great advice!
maybeawriter says:
this is conily6 again.
I have a new problem, as well as my writing I am also making a screenplay for perhaps a movie, tv show, or just a screenplay form of a book. %hat seems simple enough, but my sister and I had done it before playing with toys and stuff, and whenever I begin to write my screenplay the words just don't pop in my head, I think it's because I am now bored of the story line or something. Any advice?
maybeawriter says:
oops, I mean't, that seems simple enough. NOT
%hat. Using new keyboard sorry.
Moisoha says:
Gail- Great post! I may need this in the near future. Inspired a great short story.
conily6 – I get this a LOT, and so I've had to find many different creative ways to deal with it. This is a problem that can adapt and change too, so keep in mind that you may have to try different things to get past it. Most of the time I've found that it's not that I've really lost interest in the plot, but I don't care about the part that I'm writing. Sometimes this means starting over and sticking to writing the things only I care about (most of the time that's the action)and sometimes even just writing "and important stuff happens here" or something like that just to get to what I want to talk about. You can't leave it like that, so you will have to go back and fix those, but it helps you to get past the first draft. Another source I would use is Script Frenzy (I think that's what it's called) in April. If you can't finish it yourself go to nanowrimo.org and join in on one of their April Script-Writing Frenzies. I've found that if you really get involved and talk with other people about you script and theirs they tend to provide great support, just like you will support them. Does that help?
maybeawriter says:
(Conily6)
moisoha- thanks
welliewalks says:
Conily6- I agree with Moisoha's advice. Also, you say you played with toys with your sister (like us all), right? Did the words come easy then? Okay, so if they DID, what if you took toys/stuffed animals to represent your characters? Then just play like you used to! You should get some ideas, no matter how old you are. If you're afraid you'll forget everything, use a voice recorder (but I warn you some things will SEEM dumb when you listen to your voice, but remember, they're not.). Hope this helps!
April says:
I agree with welliewalks. Play-acting your stories is really good for your writing—script or novel. It puts you inside your character's head easier, so their dialogue and actions sound more natural in your writing.
As for synonyms for crazy, I looked them up. Pretty funny!
Mad as a hatter, nutty as a fruitcake, not right in the head, batty, cuckoo, loopy, bananas, loco, with a screw loose, gaga (so, Lady Gaga is Lady Crazy? That's pretty accurate, lol), not all there, crackers, nutso, quack, out of one's tree, wacko, gonzo.
April says:
By the way, the pottery is beautiful. Wish I lived nearby so I could look at them in person!
maybeawriter says:
(Conily6)
Welliewalks-I will try using a sound recorder, then maybe it will flow better. Thanks!
gailcarsonlevine says:
Thanks, April!
From the website:
Hi Mrs. Levine! I'm working on a story, and for once I'm actualy staying focused on it! I'm trying to write a battle scene, but I CAN'T figure out how to write it! I've read your September 15, 2010 post and Writting Magic, but I'm STILL stuck! Could you please help me? If it helps, the scene takes place between two characters in a small room with lots of shelves. The two characters are fighting with swords. I would appricate any help VERY much!!! Thanks a ton! 🙂
Maddie
gailcarsonlevine says:
Maddie–Their swords may not do much good in a small space, so they may have to drop them or get out of there. But the shelves have potential. Whatever's on them can be useful as weapons. A shelf can collapse on one of the fighters.
Other thoughts?
writeforfun says:
Maddie – have you ever read the Princess Bride? It has a couple excellent sword fighting scenes in it that are very well-written. Of course, like Gail said, it will be hard to make your characters fight in a small space with swords, but you may be able to pull it off. Good luck!