Sad scenes give an emotional impact to your story that adds flavor to the plot. To some authors, overly emotional scenes should be avoided. The writing should be direct and the characters should not be too emotional. However, other well-known authors argue for the inclusion of emotional scenes and characters. Even though different writers have contradicting opinions regarding how a sad scene should be written and whether it is even necessary in the first place, there are a few guiding questions that can help a writer when writing sorrowful scenes.

Is the character sentimental?

One easy guideline is determining how sentimental you want your character to be and therefore creating scenes that portray their soft-heartedness. The character should appear vulnerable from the beginning. Creating a macho persona then in the middle, changing their character to be melodramatic and sentimental, will just confuse the reader. Including painful scenes from the past that left the character sensitive in an area of their lives will more likely explain their temperamental nature. Even so, the character should not remain helpless and in that state for too long. Along the way, they should be able to work on their feelings regarding this part of their lives or there should be some evidence of them moving forward. The character should not remain stuck in one place.

Is the reason for the emotions justifiable?

Think of what makes you sad and try to incorporate this into the sad parts of your story. If the scene does not make you sad and does not constitute events that could arouse feelings of sorrow from you, probably it will also not make another person sad too. The scene and the expected feelings should not be forced onto a reader. Readers are real people with real experiences and hence the scene should feel real enough to arouse feelings of sadness. One way to ensure that the scene feels authentic is to hold off on the tears until the character appears to be unable to control themselves any longer.

Does the sad scene push the story forward?

As explained earlier, sad scenes should have their purpose in the story. They should fit into the storyline and the goal of writing the book. Random sad scenes will just leave a story hanging. These should also be intermingled with some happy scenes.

How can you avoid clichés?

Clichés such as “tears rolled down” or “let out a wail” just makes writing uncreative and dull. The choice of words when describing a sad scene is really crucial so as to make the story unique. Think of different ways you can express common emotional outbursts. The language should be surprising enough to prompt the reader to stop and think about what the character may be going through. The worst thing about clichés is that they restrict the effect you intended the scene to have on the reader.

Ultimately, writing a sad scene depends a lot on how experiences feel like in real life and creating a scene that mimics the features of a real sad event.