One of my favored things to write about is Insanity, Madness, Crooked endeavors, Equicidal (Homicidal) acts. One might ask... How would one write Insanity (roughly speaking)? The answer is dependent on what effect you want. Some people want to drag the reader into the mindset of insanity, a good example of this is Edgar Alan Poe's Tall Tale Heart. While others want to just give a phage (not sure if that is the right word or not...) description just to throw the reader into a WTF loop. Then there is the subtle approach, which would include a continuous plot following the narrative. This could include constant 4th wall breakage and other illegal literature moves. These are just some of my more favored styles but there are many more. So the question is, how long does Physical therapy take when one gets surgery for an ACL replacement?.... sorry wrong question.

How would you write Insanity from any realm, to portray the proper response from the reader?
~Make life an Adventure~
Mr. Flare.......

2051730
You, sir, have piqued my interest. We shall now do mental battle-- er, I mean, we shall now discuss the subject of sadis-- I mean I shall now give my thoughts on insanity, and the means through which I prefer to describe it in stories and like to see it described by others. Yeah, let's go with that last one.

So, insanity. The one thing that is likely the hardest to make seem legitimate in writing without an outright copy/paste of the insanity we've observed off of others without the writer him/herself being insane. I heard I did well on it in the first bits of one of my stories, but it took a while to hear what on. Quite apparently my approach went well. Mine was as follows:

The insane character is not always outright noticeable as bat-sh*t crazy, or, you know, only vaguely coherent, blathering on about this or that for no particular reason, the dead giveaways. In my case, she was insane in that she simply had a distorted view of reality: she had fault-line ideas of killing, self-manipulative memory(meaning her memory wasn't ideal and her less-than-civil mental aspects happily took advantage of it), and she thought that a few less-than-nice ponies(or so they were in years past) would want to taste her blood and even found her not immediately offering to let them when she remembered a self-inflicted wound to be rude on her end.

She also had a delusion of rudeness, one that seemed to shake her to her very core at the mere mention of them. Now, I wouldn't suggest actually reading the story, not yet at least, as it's lacking a lot of elements I can't fit into it without taking away from the focus, but that are required for an overall world I'm building once I get through with an expletive prequel.

My point, in case you missed it through all my rambling(ugh, I hate when I ramble), is that I like when it's subtle things. Like simple distortions in a characters mindset, tiny ticks to separate their minds from the "accepted norm". Of course, it's not a good tale of insanity unless it spirals and dives down the rabbit hole somewhere, so that's always good to include later, but I think the description and action should always begin subtly.

~CC

2052265
Nice! Well put point. I always find it more fun when it is a spiral into a major bang... or a twist that makes the reader feel mad in his own mind. Bringing in subtle points and allowing the reader to see into the mind with out him even realizing it. (I have no idea what I just said...., ok I do, I just wanted to say that.)

2052291
Thanks, mate. Always glad to throw my six bits around the forum.

2052298I want to weigh in here with every molecule of my being, but that would mean subjecting myself to the torture of typing my extensive thoughts into these tiny little digital keys in the middle of my school's nurse station!
Promise to save this thread from sinking until I have my dear keyboard beneath me again?

Yours in madness,
David Brony

2051730 I think there are two ways to write insanity.

One way is to make the character truly crazy. The writing in American Psycho characterizes this. You "Shandify" the character, just writing whatever comes into his mind, near-minimal coherence and barely too much awareness of what is around him.

Then you can write reasonable crazy: the character starts off from a crazy assumption, but then slowly builds up his rationality, his way of viewing the world through that one insane assumption. So really, he acts just another person: he can plan, can use logic, etc. etc, and you wouldn't know from a glance that he is insane at all. This kind of character wouldn't be able to recognize that he is insane at all; usually he sees himself as more of a prophet or misunderstood genius. Hitler might have been one of these people - Haffner's The Meaning of Hitler is a very good deconstruction of his mindset.

Wacky characters tend to fall into the first one (e.g. Pinkie Pie). Evil characters tend to fall into the second category (Cupcakes Pinkie, though barely).