Writing about Pain and Illness

Jun 22, 2009

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately: the pain we writers inflict upon our characters. They sometimes get shot, beaten up, maimed or sometimes suffer from physical or mental illness.

Since most of us don’t get shot or maimed, how do we write about it realistically? Each of us have likely rolled our eyes when watching a film in which an action hero gets shot fifteen times, but keeps up the chase scene just to clobber the villian in the nick of time (possibly by jumping off a three story building in the process). Sadly, I’ve seen novel authors do the very same thing.

And illness? How do we write about it without sounding like someone’s ancient granny whose constantly listing her ailments and surgeries from gallstones to lumbago?

Mental illness is tricky too, unless you count the fact that I think most authors are slightly off their rockers, which I suppose gives us an edge. But how do we write about these things without being dismal and yet taking care not to misrepresent something we haven’t experienced ourselves?

It’s a topic that’s been on my mind, but I surely don’t have the answers. Have you read great books that touch on these topics? I know there are memoirs for people recovering from cancer, etc… what I really mean is fiction where pain, death, or illness has been portrayed realistically but without being maudlin.

I’d love to hear your feedback!

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3 Comments

  1. Dan Powell
    22 June 2009

    Mark Haddon’s ‘A Spot of Bother’ is a touching look at the onset of dementia through the likeable character of George. Very unassuming, very funny in places, and believable. Well worth a read.

  2. Marsha
    22 June 2009

    Well, you know me — I love to torture my characters and I have no issue giving them physical ailments! I don’t have any technique whatsoever other than run them over and let them deal!

  3. Paige
    22 June 2009

    What a thinker kind of topic.

    Something I’ve realised in the last year is that there isn’t always a definitive line between realistic and melodramatic – because it’s all based on the reader’s perception. Let me use an example; before losing someone to cancer, I hadn’t ever experienced what (relatively) longtime illness was like for the survivors and I’d never actually lost anyone in my close family. Scenes in books or movies that involved these two experiences were sad, but didn’t affect me as much as they do now.

    Does this mean that you have to target only people who have been through the experiences you’re trying to portray? I don’t think that’s possible, but perhaps it means that you should think of readers who might not already understand or at least find a way that they can relate to it through something else. It’s something to ponder, I guess. :)

    I think that’s mostly dealing with illness – I’m not an action flick kind of fan, so I don’t really have much to say on action scenes, and I haven’t yet come to them in the book I’m writing! I’ll probably end up thinking about it later!

    But on that note, I like Marsha’s opinion – it’s fun to throw obstacles and watch characters either dodge or deal with it.