Fiction Writers, Do You Love Tragic Stories?
There’s more to tragic fiction than you think.
Have you written a tragedy before?
I’ve always been a softhearted writer who clung to happy endings. I didn’t want my characters to suffer.
But lately, I had a 180 degree change. Not only did I toss my character into hellhole after hellhole, I even gave them a sad ending!
It wasn’t a perfect story. Some of my plot turning points were hard to believe, even given the genre – historical fantasy.
I could also make the character arc clearer in some spots. This way, my readers can see why my character did certain things, and why they should care.
But these are all general story writing tactics.
What about writing tips specific to tragedies?
Aristotle’s Fatal Flaw
For fun, I googled, “How to write a good tragedy.”
Not surprisingly, I saw people refer to Aristotle for his treatise on tragedies. But there’s a problem with using his method.
While I respect the philosopher, he was from a particular cultural era. And of course, he was influenced by Greek tragedies, since that was what he watched.
The ancient Greeks weren’t the only ones who wrote tragedies, though.
One thing Aristotle insisted on was that your hero needs to have a fatal flaw, which leads them to fall from greatness to a dark fate.
When I analyze the tragic fiction I’ve enjoyed over the years, not all of them follow this pattern. But that didn’t make them any less popular.
Plus, the “fatal flaw” idea implies that it was ultimately the hero’s fault. They may have been unlucky, but if they didn’t have certain traits, or made certain decisions, they would have been okay.
For many of the tragedies I loved, the author showed that it was not the hero’s fault at all. Instead, it was due to forces outside of their control.
Cruel Winds of Fate
A modern popular tragedy, is They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera.
I won’t spoil how exactly they died, but they were unfortunate, trivial events. Yes, the characters might have avoided their deaths if they had made some different choices.
But these choices were on everyday, mundane things that could happen to anyone. Adam Silvera’s point is that you could die a meaningless death due to misfortune. But you can still live a purposeful, even wholesome life.
For a book about death, it had a wholesome story.
One of my favorite novels is George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. The grim ending had nothing to do with the heroine’s traits or actions.
Things were actually getting better for her, when suddenly, a flood came out of nowhere, and she drowned.
I didn’t like how random the ending felt. But it’s notable that this book is still one of my all-time favorites!
A Society Without Mercy
Another famous tragedy is Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx.
The fatal conclusion wasn’t Jack Twist’s or Ennis Del Mar’s fault, either. It was the fault of the homophobic society they lived in.
This isn’t the only tragedy I’ve read that happened because of societal or cultural ills.
In a Chinese literary classic, Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, almost all the characters died or had a fate worse than death.
The blame was also not on the heroes’ personalities or actions, but rather on their oppressive, merciless society.
Do you see a great lack of agency for the characters here? Perhaps they reflect the author’s worldview.
The author might be criticizing the society or culture that the characters reside in. Or the writer may simply believe that life is unfair, and bad things happen to good people for no reason.
For my own story, the tragedy happened both because of the hero’s character flaw, and because of the hostile environment they were in.
Regardless of whether the heroic downfall happened because of society, simple fate, or the character’s own fault (or all three), what makes a tragedy satisfying for you to read?
The Subtle Art of Tragedy Writing
Your answer may be different from mine, but first of all, I want the main character to be likable and relatable.
Full disclosure: I did not like or relate to Macbeth. As harsh as it sounds, I wasn’t even sad when he was killed, because I thought he was a terrible person who deserved to die.
I still liked the play, but less for the story, and more for the poetic language.
For the books I named earlier, I did like or relate to the protagonists in some way. So I thought their fate was unfair, and I experienced a huge catharsis in the final scene.
As much as I love happy endings, I admit that it’s the sad ones that make me think. It hurts so badly, so I keep wondering about the “what ifs” and the “why”s. This pushes me to question or feel things more deeply.
Thus, that’s another trait I see in a good tragedy. Not only do I want to like and relate to the hero, I also want their tragic ending to reveal some great, philosophical, or social truths that linger long in my mind.
I don’t want a sad ending just for the sake of it, with no larger significance.
An Emotional Obsession
The third thing that makes a tragedy satisfying for me, is when it’s totally, emotionally absorbing.
If I barely care about the character or events at all, then it wouldn’t affect me that much.
Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther was one such example. I respect Goethe as an author, but this book just didn’t do it for me. I thought Young Werther was a silly, foolish boy, pining pathetically over a married woman.
When he shot himself in the end, it didn’t make me sad. I feel guilty admitting this out loud, as I probably sound like an awful person.
But I just couldn’t connect with either the plot or the character emotionally, and therefore even the ending didn’t strike me.
It doesn’t mean that all readers will feel the same way, of course. It was still a famous classic that many readers loved, but it didn’t jive with me, unfortunately.
In contrast, for Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, I was thoroughly gripped by the plot and characters. That last scene devastated me.
While I wish Margaret Mitchell had given Scarlett O’Hara a kinder ending, I still loved the book very much. The tale had a lasting impact on my mind.
A Dark Mirror
With my current story, I do like and relate well to the protagonist.
In fact, she reflects one of my worst traits, but I know many people have this personality flaw, too.
I would have to do more to show her likeability, though. Just because I like her, doesn’t mean most readers will.
As I mentioned above, my story does have some cultural critique, though it’s also a critique of a common human condition.
This story is a dramatization of this character flaw, to show you the worst places that this trait could take you.
I was pulled into the story emotionally, but it’s my own story, so I would have to ask other people for feedback. But still, I can see things I can do to heighten the emotional power of the book.
Yet all in all, I found the tragic ending a good one, because it made psychological sense. And I enjoyed how much it magnified one of my fatal flaws.
Huh. Without realizing it, I was influenced by Aristotle’s “fatal flaw” idea of tragedy. However, unlike with Greek tragedies, my hero isn’t some high and noble person.
She’s just an average human being like most of us. She’s sweet and kind, but still ordinary.
How about you? What do you find satisfying when you read a tragedy? Or, what things would make a tragedy less compelling to you?
