forum Best way to make a reader cry??

Started August 02, 2018 by @mozartsnumberonefan group

tune

Idk anything helps.

Spray them with pepper spray while they're reading.

Push on one ship really hard then go with the ship that makes no sense, that always gets me

Tears of frustration finger guns

Injustice is what typically makes readers cry. Give your characters what they definitely do not deserve.

Make them love a character for being one thing, but then reveal that the character was a spy all along, subverting the qualities the reader loves them for, and then have them murder an important character. Maybe even their love interest. IE treachery/betrayal

Give the MC a best friend with undying loyalty who is always there for them and then have that character get cancer and slowly die in front of the MC

Just reading all of these makes me want to cry

I actually wrote a short story about the MC's fren getting cancer and I made three of my frineds cry plus a mom it was glorious

^^That legit sounds like something my friend would say

I wrote a short story where the true love got hit by a bus and uhhhh
I made a lot people cry
and also they got really concerned bc I'm generally seen as v happy and positive and like… THE STORY IS ABOUT THE MC FINDING THEIR TRUE LOVE and they did, she just got hit by a bus. So.

That it was, Sly.
Also, an OC realizing things they did to others were wrong and breaking down because there's nothing they can do to change what's been done.

MC slowly losing all their friends to death or whatever, and nothing they try to stop it is working
Eventually the MC is left all alone, and broken and unsure and depressed and full of grief. They're wondering if they can actually defeat whatever evil they're facing, and the reader can't help but wonder the same.

Applauds Kat WOW

THANK YOU I'M SO GOOD AT ANGST
I DON'T WRITE A LOT OF IT
BUT I'M BUILDING UP TO IT IN MY TRILOGY I CAN'T WAIT FOR BOOK 3 IT WILL RIP MY HEART OUT AS I WRITE IT AND THEN EDIT IT AND IT WILL RIP MY READERS' HEARTS OUT
and wow it will be an adventure

Death, make the reader really love characters and then make them plead for their life before dying.

No problem!
AT LEAST YOU CAN ACTUALLY BRING YOURSELF TO HARM YOUR CHARACTERS glares at myself

No problem!
AT LEAST YOU CAN ACTUALLY BRING YOURSELF TO HARM YOUR CHARACTERS glares at myself

I'm so sad
I have the deaths of two of my favorite characters planned (I have a core group of 5, and I think I'm adding a sixth, and I'm def killing off two of the main 5 lol)
and like
one of them is a wild ride
you think he's good
then you think he gets captured by the bad guys
but really he's a spy
and like
IDK then he kinda becomes good again by the end and kills the mastermind behind the oppressive takeover of the country
but he dies in the process
Kinda hoping to make him a grey character by the end
not really good or bad

Let me know when you publish cus from what I've heard, your stories sound great Kat!

ha ha thanks
I'll do my best lol
I'm in the middle of book 2…. maybe only a third of the way
but I'm working on it

Cradling the body of their true love in their arms as the breath leaves the love's body.
OR EVEN BETTER
MC watches their true love cradle their partner (so MC is A, they love B, but B loves C) and B is sobbing and crying and totally torn up and A knows that now B is available and a part of them is happy, but really their heart is breaking as they watch their true love's heart break. And they watch as person C, a part of person B, leaves person B, and it's just heart-rending oof

Let your MC mess up so so so badly. Like, almost irreparably so. And have everyone hate them for it. Let the MC be wrong and everyone else be right.

Mmmm. Yes.

YOU KNOW WHAT GETS ME
you have like
this one phrase
and one of your ships says it to each other all the time
and then
at the end, something goes wrong, they break up or one dies
and you use the same phrase but now it has an entirely different meaning

sorry I have so many angsty things
but nowhere to put them all
so you get them all