Ever heard of the grief cycle? Most of us have, and all of us have experienced it.
According to Kubler-Ross, there are five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Formerly, the thought was that we cycle through these feelings one after the other, blending or fading into each other.
As people who have experienced grief, we know better. Sometimes these feelings are out of order or happen simultaneously. We can accept the loss and then be angry about it. Or we can be depressed and then bargain. A lot of times, we’re angry and depressed at the same time.
Grief or loss isn’t just about losing a person because of death; it also applies to the loss or change of expectations or wants. Anyone with children can see the grief emotions pass over their kids’ faces when told ‘no’ about something.
A real-life example
My son and I were signed up for a mountain bike race and were pretty excited about it. I’d been training hard for months, and he looked forward to riding bikes with kids his age. We were set to leave Friday morning first thing.
Thursday afternoon we had the camper packed, the fridge full, bikes on the rack. All we were waiting for was dawn to break.
During dinner that night, my boy was cranky, had bags under his eyes, and complained about being tired.
Without asking, I knew he wasn’t feeling well. And as soon as I figured that out, the grief cycle settled on my shoulders.
I started bargaining (mostly in my head), “Maybe if he doesn’t feel too bad, we can still go.” “If I get him in bed early, he’ll feel fine in the morning.”
My husband and I discussed it while experiencing denial. “He’s just tired.” “He did play hard today.” “He’s excited and nervous, he’s not sick.”
Yes, we went through the entire cycle, including anger and depression. We even briefly touched on acceptance before going back to denial and bargaining.
Friday morning, when he felt like complete crap, we finally accepted the fact that there was no way we were racing.
Was it a bummer? Of course!
Was it the end of the world? Hardly. Yet we went through each of those emotions as we would have if there were a true tragedy, albeit not as strongly.
The grief cycle and storytelling
So, why am I telling you all of this, and what does it have to do with storytelling?
Our characters need to go through this cycle as well.
If we go back to the inciting incident, a requirement of story, we’ll see that this event causes an unmet expectation; the character is forced to do something. Now the character can’t do what they wanted to, namely, stay the same.
This means they shouldn’t just accept. They should go through a few of the grief emotions for the most tension, conflict, and realism.
I encourage you to use the grief cycle for significant turning points or disappointments your character experiences. Try to overlap, blend, and let your character be confused. We all get confused when experiencing several emotions at once, so it’s realistic to have them do the same.
We want to impact our readers emotionally, so our characters should have similar experiences. The best way to do that is to give them emotions; nothing is more universal than grief.
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