EXERCISE: That's Upsetting

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 10 Oct 2009

Fair warning. I picked up a copy of Learned Optimism by Martin E. P. Seligman that I have had sitting on my shelf for a while and started reading it. I'll probably summarize some of the odds and ends from there, but in the meantime, pick a number from 1 to 6.

Got it? Okay, what you have selected is:

1. A brother or sister leaves home for college or work.
2. A pet dies -- this may seem trivial, but it is devastating.
3. A grandparent whom the child knows well dies.
4. The child moves to a new school -- loss of friends can be very disruptive.
5. You and your spouse are fighting.
6. You and your spouse divorce or separate -- along with parents' fights, this is the number one problem.

This is a list of events that cause children to go into depression, from page 145. Obviously, you are a parent of the child as the statements are phrased. But since we're interested in writing stories, consider taking that event as the initiating incident of a story. What does the child want to have happen, what do the parents want to have happen? Go ahead, imagine that happening in a family. Pick a point of view -- a protagonist who is experiencing this event. And then tell us what happened. You can make it realistic, you can make it fantastic. Given that we're in the middle of a Halloween horror contest, you could even make it horrible! After all, sometimes bad things get worse...

Anyway, have fun with it. These are very real bad events, but your story doesn't have to be a tragedy. In fact, starting with this, taking it into real horror, and then having the protagonist win despite everything can be very uplifting.