How To Portray Grief in Writing

Today's blog post is going to be about a tricky concept to write. Grief, the thing we inflict on our characters. Or in some cases, we procrastinate killing off that one guy so we don't crush the main character. But I'm not doing that at all, this is just an example, really! (is avoiding Eroendia)
So how do you portray this, and make it realistic? What are some things to do, or to avoid? In this post, I hope to tackle some of these questions.

Note that everyone grieves differently, reacts to situations in different ways. No one's life and personality is exactly the same as another's.
For more information about the grieving process, also consult my earlier posts, 'Stages of Grief' and 'Reality of Grief'.

Stages of Grief

During the grieving process, you may go through phases of feeling unmotivated, frustrated, or other such emotions and feelings. Because the whole grief-comes-in-waves thing wasn't enough. This list doesn't exactly follow the five stages of grief, or even the seven stages; it's somewhat of a modified version. 

Now, everyone grieves differently, so the process will vary. A person won't necessarily go through these in the order I've written them, or do them one at a time. They can hit multiple things at once, and wield the negativity with great... uh, disaster.

Reality of Grief

There are things you don't realize about grief until you're actually going through it. Some people might imagine grief solely on what they see in things like TV shows, movies, and novels. In some of these stories, the characters completely falls apart. In others, the loss doesn't get focused on as much, perhaps in fear of distracting from the main plot.

Today, however, we're not going to focus on the portrayal of grief; rather, we're going to discuss some of the realities, the grim facts of the grieving process.

Second-Hand Stores

We went to Goodwill a while ago, and I saw some curious things for sale. It got me thinking, what other interesting or crazy things have people found at second-hand stores? So I began my research.

Signs You Should Do Laundry

There are two kinds of people in this world when it comes to doing chores: those who get it done, and those who avoid it as long as possible. For the second group, it begs the question: when should you finally start? Or rather, what are signs that you absolutely have to? For today's post, we'll be discussing when you need to deal with the dirty laundry.

'Zits' comic strip