5 Tips for Writing About Grief Without Bogging Down Your Reader

Grief—one of the deepest and most vulnerable human emotions—is an experience that is ripe for exploration in fiction. When our characters are grieving, they’re in a state of internal conflict as they process a profound loss. The very core of their being is thrown off balance; this state of interior struggle can be bountiful territory for a story to grow. 

(Writing Through Grief in a Rom-Com.)

But how do we tackle writing about grief without pulling our readers down too far into Debbie Downer (womp womp) territory? How do we navigate the complex, deeply personal experience of grieving without slipping into the quicksand of melodrama? How do we craft a story with genuine sentiment that avoids derivative sentimentality?

While these questions did occur to me as I was drafting my novel, The Saddest Girl on the Beach, which spans the grieving process of my narrator as she abandons college and her life plans and moves to an inn on the Outer Banks owned by the parents of her newly-pregnant best friend, I didn’t stop to consider them too in-depth, preferring to hurtle myself headlong into my character’s grieving head space. But you better believe I considered the heck out of these craft issues as I was revising. 

Here’s what I eventually hammered out as the guardrails of rules that kept me balancing that tightrope of writing about grief without bogging my reader down.

1.) Go There, Viscerally

Embrace your inner Debbie Downer. Grief is a universal human experience, and readers aren’t always searching for escapism—sometimes reading is about connection and vulnerability and taking the risk to go deeply into a difficult experience so we feel less alone when we emerge. 

If grief is where you’re centering your character, go for it. But go for it in a way that is visceral. Go for it in a way that’s unique. Go for it in a way that messes up your character’s head in deep and satisfying ways that she’ll then have to sort out. Let her be a hot mess. 

When I started writing Saddest Girl, I wanted Charlotte, my protagonist, to exist in a fog, to have to think about what her personality should be like and what it means to find something funny. Focusing on specific, sensory details went a long way in centering the emotion. With Charlotte, my goal was to write a grieving character without saying she was very sad and sat on the dock crying—instead, I wanted readers to feel the sharp pierce of a splinter slicing into her hand, to notice how the wind bites and the water furiously splashes, all details that speak to Charlotte’s mindset without explicitly saying “she was very sad.” 

Think of ways we register emotion physically, sensorially, and use that as a guidepost for how to show grief rather than just talk about it.

2.) Let Your Character’s Grief Evolve

The stages of grief can be a handy structuring device. Our grieving characters aren’t static—they’ll move through numbness and denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventually into acceptance. Remember that, like life, no character will move through these phases in a precise straight line, so mixing up the different grief reactions will keep things interesting and not just gloomy and morbid. 

What is your character going to do when they shift from denial to anger? Charlotte, for example, finds herself unexpectedly, vividly angry when attending church with her friends and then must figure out how to process this shift in emotion. How will that play out in a scene with another character? What’s going to trigger your character’s shift from depression to acceptance? And to return to the first tip, how are you going to describe these emotions viscerally?

3.) Remember the Rest of the Story

My grandpa used to listen to a radio program called “The Rest of the Story” with Paul Harvey, which has nothing to do with grief writing except that I remember that show fondly. The rest of the story in your grief novel is what other plot points are going on independent of your characters’ mindset. 

Interior conflict is great; it’s vital and sets the stage for lots of interesting problems, but it can’t be the only thing going on. A good story needs conflict, and exterior entanglements will highlight your character’s inner struggles. For Charlotte, the external conflict is her shifting friendship with her best friend that happens in conjunction with a love triangle. These outside pressures put more force on Charlotte’s internal conflict. 

As you’re writing, you may find that your character’s grief can fizzle in and out unexpectedly, can rear its head when she least expects it, can pop up at the most inconvenient moments as she’s working to resolve an outside issue. This dance of plot and character will keep your reader moving and not allow them to sit and wallow in sadness.

Check out Heather Frese’s The Saddest Girl on the Beach here:

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4.) Let the Setting Do the Work

Have you ever noticed that your setting tends to look different based on how you’re feeling? The cute, cozy coffee shop with the artsy chipped tables when you’re in a sunny mood can transform into a dark, claustrophobic cavern with wobbly table legs that let your macchiato spill when your soul is feeling down. 

The details of setting your character notices may zoom in on specific details that highlight their mindset without you ever having to mention how they’re feeling. Setting can handle a lot, from metaphorical heft to mood-setting to plot complications, so choose a place you’re both comfortable with and enchanted by, because you’ll be spending a lot of time there in your head and on the page. 

For me, the Outer Banks of North Carolina fits the bill with its stunning natural beauty, intriguing history, and tight-knit community, not to mention its quite literal shifting sands that echo the ebb and flow of my character’s grief. Your setting can be anything from serenely pastoral to the most bustling of urban centers as long as you deeply engage with the intricacies of the place and let it do all the emotional and metaphorical work its capable of.

5.) Humor and Despair are Innately Tied

When writing about grief, consider the times you’ve gotten the giggles at a funeral, or how, in the depths of a wrenching situation, some small fleck of humor cracked you up until you were on the floor in near-hysterics. Laughter, like sadness, is a heightened emotion, and giving your grieving character the full range of intense emotions will prevent a bogged-down sense of gloom. 

First of all, including humor in a grief story can pertain to characters who are “comic relief” (while still being engaging as whole and developed characters). Eccentric Aunt Fay accomplished this for me—whenever I started to write a scene with Aunt Fay and her series of naughty Yorkshire Terriers I made myself smile. 

Secondly, grieving has its ups and downs, especially as your character moves through the stages; your character shouldn’t be one-dimensionally sad. Let them be funny, or try to remember how to be funny, or be surprised that they can still be funny. Humor can be used to cope and can be a magnet for human connection, all of which can complicate your grieving character. By hanging on to (or rediscovering) laughter, your character hangs on to (or rediscovers) their full, complicated, weird, interesting humanity. Let the funny fly and the core of your character’s loss will shine with even more luminosity.

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Writing about grief can feel delicate, difficult, and overwhelming. As we consider how to move our characters through the grieving process, we need to keep in mind various strategies to prevent our readers from falling into a quagmire of melancholy or cliché. But the value of grief writing prevails, innate and appealing. 

This heightened human experience, this deep and startling exile of the self into the hollowness of profound loss, can shake a character to their core, forcing them to reemerge into the world forever changed—a hallmark of the very best fiction. By placing your character carefully in a state of grief, you’re opening the door for the most honest and vulnerable of human connections with your reader.