Timeline for How do you make a story as sad as possible?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
26 events
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| Jan 5, 2023 at 7:24 | comment | added | A.bakker | @Ben Agreed, i guess that's why American History X works due to the main char, even after his loss turning his own life around and in Pay It Forward that the legacy of the main character is continued by the people he helped. | |
| Jan 5, 2023 at 2:08 | comment | added | Ben | This is a good principle, but you have to be very careful not to make the whole story just feel pointless, rather than sad. Unfortunately it is in my experience very subjective where the "line" is. T. Sar's to The Mist reaction vs A.bakker's reaction is a good example! But you definitely need to give the readers reasons to care about the characters (that aren't just "all the sad things are happening to them"), or it won't hit home. So, perhaps ironically, you need some non-sad content to tell "the saddest story ever written". | |
| Jan 4, 2023 at 21:59 | comment | added | LorenzoDonati4Ukraine-OnStrike | @GregMartin Depicting a trope-subverting female heroine that saves a man in peril could make a good original story for sure, but it won't be a trope. | |
| Jan 4, 2023 at 21:57 | comment | added | LorenzoDonati4Ukraine-OnStrike | @GregMartin It's not the trope that is sexist, it's the world it reflects that is sexist. Even today most people that could be statistically be "saviors" in certain contexts (cops, firepersons, soldiers, just to name a few) are male, so it is statistically more probable that a woman (or a man) could be saved by a man when kidnapped or trapped somewhere. | |
| Jan 4, 2023 at 21:30 | comment | added | A.bakker | @GregMartin because "Prince saving princes' is a trope i used it as an easy to understand generic example :| | |
| Jan 4, 2023 at 21:19 | comment | added | Greg Martin | –1 for perpetuating the tired sexist trope of a woman needing a man to save her. Especially on a writing site, it should be very possible to come up with better examples. | |
| S Jan 4, 2023 at 7:14 | history | suggested | Rand al'Thor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
improved grammar and punctuation
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| Jan 4, 2023 at 7:08 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jan 4, 2023 at 7:14 | |||||
| Jan 4, 2023 at 1:12 | comment | added | Carey Gregory |
"In my opinion the saddest stories are where the characters do everything right and still lose." -- I upvoted for this as a concept, but I think your examples could be improved.
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| Jan 3, 2023 at 21:39 | comment | added | A.bakker | @nasch spoiler tags were added by somebody else but eddited it. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 21:39 | history | edited | A.bakker | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 3, 2023 at 21:33 | comment | added | nasch | If you're going to block out spoilers, you might as well hide all of the spoilers for The Mist. Your last sentence has it out in the open. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 18:52 | comment | added | A.bakker | @T.Sar in defense of the movie, the book Author preferred the movie ending over his own. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 18:45 | comment | added | T. Sar | @A.bakker The book ends with a glimmer of hope. The movie ends with a joke - "everything was solved, the US saved everyone, except you, david. Fuck you and you family". His kid didn't even die on the book. The director of that movie made a father killing his son in an act of mercy an extremelly poor-taste "haha" moment. Yeah, the tone that the music and cinematography are trying to do is sad and all, but I can't shake how jarring and needlessy cruel the ending was. If you like it, more power to you, but that movie is solidly on my "never watch again" bin. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 18:39 | comment | added | A.bakker | @T.Sar it wasn't a "America, Fuck Yeah" moment, but more a moment of utter destruction. At the end when the two soldiers are standing behind him wondering what is wrong, the slow depressing music as it zooms out how it was ending nonchalantly while the bad people from the store just sit and watch, even the woman at the start who "went to her death" to save her kids and was begging for help... if they had helped her they would have gotten out. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 18:29 | comment | added | T. Sar | @A.bakker To me it was a cheap ending. It's just as cheap as "it was just a dream", or "they were in a simulation all along", just with the added pain of being horrible to watch. The movie could have ended on people diying, in a silent, somber note, and that was it. But it went all "America, Fuck Yeah", and cheapened all the emotional impact it had built. Of course, this is just my opinion. I have a profound distaste that movie. The movie managed to be more cruel than King's original book, which is saying something. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 18:26 | comment | added | A.bakker | @T.Sar It's subverting the expectations done right... because this was the most surprising, yet still logical ending to a single movie i have ever seen. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 18:22 | comment | added | T. Sar | The Mist is an horrible piece of writing that makes the pain of a father the butt of a terrible joke. It's not sad, it is psychotic. Pay it forward is legit sad, tho. | |
| S Jan 3, 2023 at 18:17 | history | suggested | Glorfindel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
spoilers added
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| Jan 3, 2023 at 18:10 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Jan 3, 2023 at 9:48 | comment | added | A.bakker | @justhalf personally i find it both sad and hilarious. | |
| Jan 3, 2023 at 9:37 | comment | added | justhalf | Good examples, but for The Mist, when I watched it many years ago I didn't feel sad at all, I felt mad at the director of the movie to make such tragedies via suicide. | |
| Jan 2, 2023 at 16:10 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | moved from User.Id=36239 by developer User.Id=55239 | |
| Jan 2, 2023 at 14:43 | history | edited | A.bakker | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 2, 2023 at 12:40 | history | edited | A.bakker | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 2, 2023 at 8:03 | history | answered | A.bakker | CC BY-SA 4.0 |