If You're Trying To Get Into The Head Of Your Story's Antagonist, Try Writing An "Am I The Asshole" Reddit

Writing Grief Without Romanticizing It

Grief is raw, messy, and deeply personal. It doesn’t follow a neat arc or fit into tidy narrative beats. While stories often use grief as a dramatic device, romanticizing it can cheapen the emotional reality. Writing grief authentically means embracing its discomfort and unpredictability, not sanitizing or idealizing it. 

What Romanticizing Grief Looks Like

Characters who seem emotionally wrecked but always manage to look graceful in their suffering.

Overly articulate monologues that sound more like a eulogy than a real moment of loss.

Depictions of grief as a singular, cathartic event instead of a long, jagged process.

Romanticized Grief:

“Every day without you is like a piece of me fading away into a tragic, beautiful void. I’ll carry this pain forever, for it’s all I have left of you.”

This might be poetic, but it lacks the authenticity of how most people actually process grief.

Realistic Grief:

“I forgot your birthday. I didn’t mean to, but when I remembered, it was already too late. And then I hated myself because forgetting felt like erasing you.”

Writing Grief Authentically

1. Show the Physical Toll

Grief isn’t just emotional—it’s physical. Insomnia, headaches, exhaustion, or even the inability to move can be part of the experience.

“She woke up in the middle of the night again, choking on the air. Her chest felt like a cinderblock had been wedged inside, heavy and unmoving. It was three days since the funeral, and she still hadn’t slept longer than an hour.”

2. Let Grief Be Messy

Grief isn’t a perfectly linear journey. There’s no logical progression from denial to acceptance—there are setbacks, breakdowns, and even moments of denial long after healing has started.

“He yelled at his mother for throwing out the cereal box. ‘It was his favorite,’ he said. She didn’t remind him that it had been expired for months. She just handed him the trash bag and walked away.”

3. Avoid Glossy Sentimentality

Sometimes grief isn’t poetic; it’s ugly, blunt, and devoid of grandeur. Characters might lash out, shut down, or isolate themselves.

Romanticized: “I’ll cry every day, but I’ll keep going because you’d want me to.”

Realistic: “They said time would heal it. But it didn’t. Time just put more space between me and the life I knew before.”

4. Let Grief Manifest in Small, Unexpected Ways

Grief isn’t always about sobbing—it can show up in mundane moments: hesitating to delete a voicemail, holding onto an old sweater, or instinctively setting the table for someone who’s gone.

“She turned to tell him the joke, the one about the broken lamp, and stopped halfway through. The silence hit harder than the punchline ever would.”

5. Highlight the Absurdity of It

Grief can be absurd and disorienting. Characters might laugh inappropriately, obsess over trivial details, or feel disconnected from reality.

“At the funeral, all she could focus on was how crooked the flowers were arranged. She kept wanting to fix them. If she didn’t, she thought, none of this would feel real.”

6. Explore How Grief Changes Relationships

Grief doesn’t happen in isolation—it affects relationships, often in unexpected ways. Some people pull closer, others drift apart.

“Her friends stopped asking how she was doing after the first few weeks. She didn’t blame them; she didn’t have an answer. ‘Fine’ wasn’t a lie—it was just easier than saying, ‘I still can’t breathe when I see his empty chair.’”

7. Show the Longevity of Grief

Grief doesn’t end when the funeral does. Let it linger in your story, showing how it ebbs and flows over time.

“It had been five years, but she still called his number when something exciting happened. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was just habit. Or maybe it was hope.”

8. Allow for Moments of Respite

Grief isn’t constant agony. People still laugh, find joy, and go about their lives—sometimes feeling guilty for it.

“She smiled for the first time in weeks, and then immediately hated herself for it. It felt like betrayal, like forgetting.”

Writers on a random Tuesday: Sits down, locks in, giggles, writes 10k, does not sleep

Also writers on a random Tuesday: writes one sentence and then stares into the abyss for five fours

And you know what, we’re just not gonna talk about how many wips I’ve started lately. We’re just not gonna do it. And I’m definitely not coming up with world building for another one based on a tiktok.

shipping isn’t about what the writers or actors say is or isn’t romantic. shipping isn’t even about romance a good percentage of the time. shipping is about seeing The Dynamic and going absolutely hog wild in your mind and your friends dms about it.

i think a lot of people (even other autistic people) forget that special interests are listed in the diagnostic criteria as restrictive interests (“Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus”) that are often very disabling.

for many autistic people, special interests aren’t some fun thing; it’s having no impulse control and spending too much money on things related to our special interest (if we even have control over our own money at all), it’s struggling with or being unable to hold conversations that aren’t related to our special interest, its being unable to do daily activities such as eat or sleep or work because our special interests take up all our time.

idk. i don’t want to come off as gatekeep-y because that’s not my intention but i just think it’s important to make the distinction between a restrictive interest in autistic people vs just being really interested in something.

i think it is a very powerful thing when the story inside you is so loud that you are forced to relearn how to draw, write, and talk to people to get it made into a real thing

"I want to be a dragon."

Screw it , I'm going to write this book.

Writers, I need your opinions:

My story is like focused on two characters, and I have this scene where we switch between their perspectives. They are texting each other throughout an evening essentially, and we switch each time someone reads a text.

I don’t know if I should keep it or not. I love it, but I don’t know if it’s confusing or not. The overlapping scenes are very important for the development of both plot and story.

Also, I do have a beta reader but I lowkey have a crush on them so I’m too embarrassed to send the fic to them until I’ve done a couple rounds of self edits, and I don’t wanna get too far in just to realize it doesn’t work

Unrelated to writing:

I relate to this so much. I know what most common injuries feel like. Often times, the pain the person is feeling is the same or less than my normal levels.

It’s hard to not seem like an asshole sometimes, because the same person who thinks I’m being mean will literally leave me behind or make my life harder and say it’s no big deal.

And of course none of this is helped by me being black fem presenting. It’s like some people still believe those old studies that we don’t feel as much pain as other people. The second I let my face show how I feel, or heaven forbid I don’t sound pleasant and polite, I have too much attitude or I’m too angry. I’ve literally had people think I was trying to fight them when I was just gritting my teeth through pain they probably couldn’t handle.

Thanks for letting a bitter black bitch rant.

people assume that being physically disabled makes you more empathetic to the pain of others, but that’s not always the case.

for me, it feels unfair when others are in pain and don’t feel the need to hide that fact, because i have internalized the idea that i’m not allowed to talk about my own. it annoys me that, while most are typically understanding if a non disabled person doesn’t operate at their full capacity due to sickness or injury, disabled people are expected to function normally as if that isn’t our every day. as much as i want to feel solidarity towards a suffering person, it feels impossible not to be envious when their illness or ailment is temporary, but i will never, ever get a break from mine.

for obvious reasons i would never say any of directly to someone, because my pain doesn’t make theirs any less valid or real. still, i can’t help but feel that my disability has made me bitter and unkind, because i can’t help but compare my own experiences with theirs.

this is the reality of disability- it does not create perfect people. many of us are broken and struggle to connect with others because of our conditions, and that does not mean we are evil people