John Louis
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Monthly Ramblings 1: “Writing the Unhinged”
🕑 Added 2025-08-20 00:40:26 +0000 UTCAugust 19, 2025: “Writing the Unhinged”
One of my inexplicably favorite things to write–and maybe this an indictment against my character–is the internal dialogue of a deeply unwell character. Not in a depressing or realistic fashion, but rather the paranoid thoughts of the villainous or the tyrannical or the obsessed.
There is no better way to unsettle someone than to repeatedly, and without prompting, insist that everything is fine. Insist that you’re sane. Insist your mind is sound and that the reader has no reason at all to distrust what you have to say. It does not even need to be done directly: a character who thinks the most heinous action contained in otherwise mundane prose communicates the same effect.
“He thought idly of ripping out her throat with his teeth, but ultimately decided against it, as his raging headache made even the slightest motion unpleasant.”
Word choice is always significant. Notice the final phrase: “even the slightest motion unpleasant.” It’s unnaturally posh. Too refined and snooty. The thoughts of an aristocrat juxtaposed with his appetite for human flesh.
I am a big fan of the word “idly”. So much can be revealed about a character through what they do idly, what is normal and mundane for them. Have the dictator sit at his window and idly watch his supporters kill the innocent. Describe the weather and the taste of his whiskey.
In I, the Unbroken One, there is a scene unique to the usurper route, where the newly ascended Bastard King/Queen of Kanton sits in their room and wonders what to do “with these meddlesome courtiers?” And, as terrible as it sounds, I absolutely loved writing this scene and the subsequent purge.
“But what of the minstrels? Poets? Entertainers? Masters of swans and harts and hunts and feasts? Cup-bearers and shield-bearers and ass-kissers?”
If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m also a major fan of the word “and,” and specifically, its use in long and winding run-on sentences. It creates this sense of franticness, of bouncing thoughts and a sense of mania. The effect is only amplified if followed by a short and quick sentence–and especially several in a row.
The unhinged overemphasize the unimportant, and downplay the heinous. Focus on the insult to the tyrant’s pride while he orders the death of thousands. Let the quiet speak for itself. For example: this particular version of Mira’s death in I, the Unbroken One.
“Like many nights before, Mira struggled to sleep sober.
The empty tankards around her bed paint a very clear picture of last evening's activities.
But it would be the last time she ever drank.
Mira died screaming in her bed. But before she did, the band of soldiers in her room pinned her arms to the nightstand and hacked off her fingers--one by one.
She knew then just who ordered her execution. And she regretted it, then--her mutilation of the marshal as a child. She regretted it with every fiber of her being.
But one by one, the fingers came off.
Slowly.
One by one.”
Even separated from the unhinged character’s point of view, this being the tyrannical Marshal, the very matter-of-fact prose emphasizes the horror of the action and the detachment of the protagonist from what they just ordered.
I believe the most powerful tool in characterization is not dialogue or actions, but rather in prose. How you form your sentences–their length, structure, word choice–can create a sense of mania that is entertaining to write and disturbing to read. Let the noble speak politely to his guests; let the prose insist on his sanity and good nature. And let him then sneak to their bedchambers at night and wax philosophical about the morality of eating their flesh.
