| Frustration is a common emotion these days. It is a sense of insecurity or dissatisfaction, either short term or long term, or an expression of unmet needs. It can arise from many roots: when your mouth says "yes" and the rest of you is shouting "no!" when you are trying to do something you don't feel qualified for; when there are too many demands on your time; when things out of your control prevent you from getting something done, or performing well; when you are in a situation where you can't succeed no matter how hard you try; when you have done one wrong thing and no one will ever let you forget it; and on and on.
Frustration is halfway between anger and discouragement. It is different than anger by most often being mental, and internal--when you feel the fault is either in yourself or that expressing anger will not do any good. It is different than discouragement because you are still trying. Though you may suspect your situation is hopeless, you haven't yet admitted that to yourself. |
Feeling Frustration |
| "Your characters may feel frustrated too." | Frustration can leave you feeling helpless and impotent. Some ways it might be expressed are: "Bother!" "I don't have time for this!" "I don't know what else to do/say/try." "Why won't they listen?" "Can't I ever catch a break around here?" Or almost anything else bitter, harsh or cynical.
When your brain is tied up in knots, when you are spinning your wheels, or you find yourself talking to inanimate objects, you are probably frustrated. Your characters may feel frustrated too. How can you use their senses to describe that emotion? Here are a few suggestions. |
| Feeling (Touch) Frustration often expresses itself with the hands. Your character may bunch her hands into fists, feeling the fingernails bite into her palm. She may snap a pencil, or punch whatever is in front of her--hopefully a table or punching bag. In extreme cases, she may slap her antagonist, usually followed by remorse, because this is frustration, not anger. Inside, he is feeling his heart beating more quickly, breath coming more quickly, hands shaking, all of which he will try to hide. It may come out by tapping a pencil on the table, or drumming his fingers, or biting the lip. |
Feeling (Touch) |
| Hearing | Hearing What your character will be hearing when frustrated are words that tell her how bad she is. No matter what other characters are saying, she will be hearing the worst. If someone says, "Well, I don't understand, that's not like Jane at all," What your character will hear is "The blow up must have been your fault. Jane is not like that, so it must be you." When someone says, "This is a great report. If you could just rewrite the second paragraph to emphasize the new features," what your frustrated character will hear is, "Why can't you ever do anything right the first time?" If someone says, "I'm sure Fred didn't mean anything by that," what she will hear is "The misunderstanding is all your fault." What she will not hear is someone offering help or encouragement. As someone said, "I'm not listening when I'm frustrated. I can't. I block it all out." |
| Sight What your character will be seeing when frustrated is what he expects to see. When two co-workers stop to talk, he will believe it is about him. He will see all the problems in front of him, and they will seem overwhelming. Everything will look worse than it is. A messy desk will make it too hard to think, and since he thinks it will take hours to get it cleaned up, he may just not do anything. He will see all the areas where he is failing, and none of the ones where he is making a contribution, or doing well. He will see a jumble of things rather than discrete areas that can be easily taken care of one by one. |
Sight |
| Taste | Taste Taste won't work right for a frustrated person either. Her mouth may feel dry or full of cotton. Food may lose its taste too. Two of the common tastes for a frustrated person are Alka Seltzer and chocolate, trying to feel better in one way or another. A frustrated character may eat too much because she is thinking about her problems, and not tasting her food. Or she may eat or drink too much to try to drown the memories of the day. |
| Smell Smell is a powerful sense. Your character should react to the smell of the place where most of, or a powerful contributor to, his frustration took place. If he is frustrated by a jerk of a boss, he may always associate a certain after shave or perfume with those helpless feelings. If he has an overbearing mother, the smell of certain foods may trigger the frustration. If he is a failed carpenter, the smell of sawdust may always have unpleasant associations with it. In fact, this is a great way to indicate some past frustration in your character's life. When he and a friend pass by someplace and he has a reaction to a smell all out of proportion to normal, it will serve as a notice to his friend and your readers that something in his past is about to impact his present. |
Smell |
| Use your character's senses | Giving your characters emotions, gives them depth, and being able to describe those emotions through the senses adds mastery to your writing. Add information from your character's senses to describe how he or she is feeling without naming the emotion, and watch your scenes come alive. |
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