How do I portray irrational anger in first person?
Characters (and people) get angry at all sorts of things that might not make sense to the outside observer: Marty McFly and the word "chicken," words that are terrible slurs to one population but totally normal to others, overreactions due to mental illnesses, etc.
I feel like I have a relatively good grasp of how to portray anger in third person, rational or irrational. Readers are used to other people reacting differently than they would, as long as the character is consistent. However, if the writing is in first-person it seems that I need to take the reader.on the same journey of becoming angry.
How do I show the internal monologue of a character becoming angry? How completely do I need to evoke the same anger in the reader that the character feels?
Edit: @Rand Al'Thor, @Galastel, and @wordsworth all have excellent answers, but I chose @Stilez 's answer because the examples made everything more clear to me. Even though the trigger is irrational, the narrator's justification sounds like something a character would say for rational anger as well.
One of the other answers mentions "Uncontrollable bad thoughts about the object of anger, particularly ones that are not …
5y ago
I think the answer actually depends on the nature of the first-person narrative. Is the narrator looking back on these e …
5y ago
None of the other answers really acknowledge this, but several can work alongside it: Sometimes irrational anger does n …
5y ago
Ask yourself (or inquire) what such a person is experiencing. - It could be "I remember shaking, and then the next thin …
5y ago
There are several options. Others have hit on some really good ones, but here's a few more: One, use short, emotionally …
5y ago
To the person experiencing anger, it won't appear irrational. To them, there's a very good reason why they're angry, wh …
5y ago
Personally, I don't think there IS an internal monologue; irrational anger is all feeling and emotion, perhaps single wo …
5y ago
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Personally, I don't think there IS an internal monologue; irrational anger is all feeling and emotion, perhaps single words, and I would describe those, not try to transcribe those thoughts. The dialogue that goes with these feelings is primitive at best, and cannot capture the depth of feeling associated.
I've seen that tried, and it comes off flat to me. Describe the feelings, in first person describe the feelings you are having at that time. The irrationally angry person wants to break something, hurt someone, force the world into compliance, their imaginings are about doing something, beating somebody to a pulp.
Internal dialogue of actual thoughts cannot capture the rage they are feeling. I'd just go with "I felt like xxx" and "I wanted to xxxx" etc.
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I think the answer actually depends on the nature of the first-person narrative. Is the narrator looking back on these events in a self-aware fashion? That is, is this person now aware that they were irrational? Or do they still think their anger was reasonable, even though it wasn't? Or are they intentionally avoiding comment, just describing the events and the emotions they felt in that moment?
Or, alternatively, is it written in the present tense, as is sometimes done? That allows the narrator to feel the emotions while describing them.
I think having a handle on which of these options is in play will help you decide what to do.
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Ask yourself (or inquire) what such a person is experiencing.
It could be "I remember shaking, and then the next thing I knew was...", and they know how they felt (hot, exhausted?) and are told by others what they did.
Could be they had thoughts that they ended up accepting. ("I just had to win. To prove to him that the only sensible way to.drink coffee was by holding the cup not the handle. To smash that stupid coffee drinking look off his face. To rip his Starbucks coffee from his Starbucks face. To smash until he'd never drink coffee the wrong way again. I heard a yell. My own roar of rage. His face. His broken cup, flying midair.")
Could be in retrospect, what they learn afterwards.
Could be what its associated with, a bad memory. ("That laugh. Same laugh as Simon. Bully. Abuser. Hate him. Kill him. Make him bleed for all his did to me. Sister. All of us. Voices. Cacophony. Crescendo. Eyes. Narrow. Pounding.")
But mainly, using words that show sharp extreme emotion, show what they experience. Not always necessary to explain. Irrational rage might have reasons, but the big part is the experience.
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One of the other answers mentions "Uncontrollable bad thoughts about the object of anger, particularly ones that are not rational". I'd expand on this to put in the suggestion of simple, unreasoning repetition. (E.g. "Damn him. He's wrong. He's wrong. He'd wrong. He's wrong.") It would signify the weakness of a character's reasoning that they can't expand a thought with logical justification, and just have to loop back on the assertion as if to establish their correctness by simple insistence.
You could also vary the wording without real expansion ("What does he know? He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's an ignoramous. He has no clue." etc.); the shallowness of the variation would make it clear to the reader that that the character is unwilling to plumb the source of their contempt or hatred to any real depth. In my examples I deliberately left out exclamation points, in order to hint at a certain fearful self-doubt, but it could possibly build up to exclamation point punctuation. This repetition could be sprinkled through multiple paragraphs, maybe even as awkward self-interruptions of other thoughts.
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There are several options. Others have hit on some really good ones, but here's a few more:
One, use short, emotionally-heavy words with (im)proper inflection.
Two, you could break the scene down into connected vignettes or a montage, as the adrenaline surge of strong emotion can distort our perception of time.
Three, as an extreme, you could even break into first person describing third person, as people in stressful or violent situations sometimes feel 'disconnected' and as if they're watching themself act.
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None of the other answers really acknowledge this, but several can work alongside it:
Sometimes irrational anger does not have a target. The person is angry without reason, and is seeking something to blame for their anger.
You could even write this experience in a similar way to rational anger... except that the target is constantly changing, unknown, elusive.
There will also probably be a good deal of frustration to go along with this: frustration at not being able to find the source of the anger, frustration at others for not also being angry (because if they were angry too, it surely would be at the thing making you angry), and even frustration at oneself for being angry in the first place.
On another note, from personal experience (other emotions too, not necessarily anger), I am sometimes aware that my emotions are irrational, but that knowledge does not help me change how I feel, at least in the short term, and in some cases may even exacerbate the situation.
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To the person experiencing anger, it won't appear irrational. To them, there's a very good reason why they're angry, why they're infuriated. What you need is to show the reason.
Now, the reason might not be what's right in front of them right now, causing the anger to appear irrational to the outsider. It might be that this last event is just the last straw, it might be that for whatever reason your character sees an event as bigger than it really is, it might be that the reason resonates with some inner fear or insecurity the character carries. But whatever it is, the reason exists.
It might be that later the character might consent they've overreacted, or vented their anger at the messenger rather than the person they were truly angry with, or something similar. But they would never say there was no reason for them to get angry in the first place. (Unless it was all over a misunderstanding, in which case it's still not irrational.)
So, if you're portraying anger in first person, it's not irrational anymore.
As for internal monologue, once the anger is not irrational, but understandable, @Amadeus is right, anger is an emotion - not a thought. You don't need much by way of internal monologue. And you don't need to evoke the same anger in the reader. The reader needs to understand it, but not necessarily feel it.
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