or literally just “deep” and serious
idk how i manage to write this stuff as such a pinkie pieWhat makes something tragic? · 2:54am Mar 31st, 2022
I’ve been on a journey for… let’s say, a month? And somehow, I can’t figure it out.
I’ve always been the type of person to cry after a movie, maybe show- even if the ending wasn’t necessarily heartbreaking, or even tragic. It’s not like I’ll cry after everything I watch, but if it’s sad and gets you hooked, or if it’s that dear to me, I would cry. The past year or so, no reaction hits me any longer. Except one thing: a silly show about horses, and friendship. I’ve been watching the show since I was little, and I basically grew up with it. When it ended, I guess it hurt me. I cried, I don’t know why.
I’d been thinking about it after reading a couple of tragedies on here, and obviously outside of MLP. Why don’t these make me upset? And… what makes a story truly sad?
How does one hook the reader, and then cause them that emotion? I’ve yet to find a novel that has struck me like that. So with my mediocre writing skills and my pretty neat idea, I’ve tried writing a few. I’ve published like, 2. The others were too crappy to even let others see, they weren’t close to sad.
Yet- it seems like nothing reaches the impact.
Do you know what makes a story truly sad?
Every story has to be told differently, as is the nature of stories. However, to elicit emotion, I believe that the story must get the audience invested. Especially when trying to evoke sadness, or depression. The best way I believe there is to get an audience's investment is to make the characters in your story feel like real people with actual, probably reasonable problems. Relatability, understandability, possibly even an air of mystery can get an audience hooked. When the audience is invested, then one can really play with heart strings. The trick, I think, is to have the character go through trials and tribulations, to let them struggle and sometimes succeed. But when everything is on the line, when the story reaches its peak, the character fails. You could frame this in an adventure setting, a nostalgia driven reminiscing sort of story, war stories, and many others. One fic that I think did this to near if not absolute perfection is Prey and a Lamb
I think you are right, I’ll try to check the story out. Thank you so much for the advice!
np
fair warning, its a lonnngg fic and the pay off is p far down the road