The cycle of grieving is pretty much a human constant. It has many shades and variations, of course, but it has cross – cultural applicability. Grief isn’t only about a death. It can be any loss or disruption, which is something that happens a lot in practically every literary genre.
Literarily speaking, if a character dies and the other members of the cast just carry on without breaking step, it’s not very realistic. It also misses a chance for growth on the part of the rest of the characters. The same applies for other serious losses.
In any endeavour, if someone died getting it done, that raises the stakes quite a bit. There are a number of avenues to be explored. Was it worth it? Make sure the sacrifice wasn’t in vain. There’s always a price. Payback is a bitch.
Loss isn’t always death, either. The love of your life might marry someone else or emigrate to Mars. The company your family has built over generations might go broke. All of this is very genre dependent.
The – almost always – first phase of grieving is denial. “This is not happening!” This phase can be long or short, maybe even as short as recognizing the need to dive for cover or take a weapon off safety. This, by the way, pretty much defines the difference between someone who is a civilian and someone who isn’t.
In one bestselling series of forensic mysteries, I noticed a pattern. At the climax of the book, the heroine found herself running for her life from a homicidal sadistic psychotic. I asked my wife (it was an audiobook), “Does this happen in every book?” She replied, “Pretty much, yes.”
In order to set up this situation, the author had her brilliant heroine, who worked in law enforcement and knew a lot about serial killers, spend a lot of time in denial, ignoring some obvious clues that there is something really off here. After the third or fourth time this happens, realistically denial should be down in seconds.
Denial shades into anger. My own personal rule, literarily and in life, is Angry = Stupid. Your characters can plausibly do something in anger they wouldn’t do normally, that makes things worse and/or that they will regret. Character growth, again, and the possibility of long term consequences. Or, a slide into villainy if the story demands it.
Bargaining is the stage where the person experiences a resurgence of hope, that perhaps after all the cause of the grief can be avoided. Perhaps the person can be rescued or cured, the company can be salvaged, the lost love reclaimed. Literarily, characters can spend significant word count chasing such hopes, and there can be the suspense of seeing whether they succeed or not.
Despair, the dark night of the soul, comes at some point in almost every genre of writing, when the character(s) have to summon up the will to go on. It’s a key part of the grieving process, as well.
Finally, there is Acceptance, where the person moves on, accepting the loss. Healing is a part of this, though scars remain. These stages dovetail rather well with the Save The Cat Beat Sheet structure, of which I am an unabashed fan.
Acceptance is basically the third part of the Save the Cat structure, where the characters move past their loss to victory in their conflict, whatever it may be.
Where someone has been wronged by another person, say by being the victim of a crime, there is the oft-given advice to forgive that person, not for their benefit but for one’s own. Some people do, and if that’s the road to acceptance for them, fine.
I draw a line between acceptance and forgiveness. It’s quite possible, in my humble opinion, to accept that something bad happened by the hand of a bad person, put aside revenge and obsession, and move on with my life. “The best vengeance is to live well.”
That does not entail changing my opinion that such a person is the detestable scum of the Earth.
I served in Afghanistan, and like many other veterans I was very displeased when the Taliban returned to power on the heels of the withdrawal of the US forces. I essentially went through the DABDA process, and I have now accepted that this is the reality, and it isn’t going to change, except possibly for the worse. The withdrawal of the Soviet forces in the 80’s was followed by a civil war. That pattern could very well repeat itself. None of this is in my control. So be it.
None of the foregoing changes my opinion that the Taliban are a despicable collection of murdering fanatics, and if they all died one cold night the world would be a better place.
One point to note is that not everyone moves through these stages at the same rate, or even at all. There are people who get stuck in anger or despair, with destructive effects on their lives and relationships.
This can mark a turning point in a character’s arc, where they turn from good to evil or vice versa. The quest for revenge or atonement for wrongs committed are powerful motives for change. Bargaining can lead to a descent into addiction, or unwise decisions made while chasing false hopes.
One literary dodge which is often used is the false death, where the character who was thought dead turns up alive again. There are all sorts of devices by which writers do this, depending on the genre. Powerful magic, divine intervention, or simply a death where the characters don’t actually see the body.
A famous example is Sherlock Holmes returning from his presumed death at the Reichenbach Falls. No one actually saw him go. Years later, he returns to find Watson still grieving, unable to move past despair.
I don’t like this device, either as a reader or a writer. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not playing fair with the reader. I never use it. If someone is dead, they stay dead and the other characters have to deal with it.
That’s my approach to dealing with grief and loss in my books.
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