Everyday Canvas

The Use of Frustration in Character Portrayal

Prompt: The award-winning Sci-fi author Nancy Kress names frustration as the most useful emotion in fiction. Do you agree with her, and if you do, in which ways do you think she is right?

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I don’t know if frustration is the most useful emotion in writing a story, but it is a fact that most other emotions start with some kind of frustration. When a character is not getting what he wants, his first emotion is frustration. Other emotions may follow it in varying strengths, and even those, I believe, are mostly in direct ratio to the original frustration that the character feels.

Frustration leads to a chain of other emotions. The first emotion after frustration is usually anger and then grief or sadness for the heartbreak of the failure. Trying harder may follow it and if frustrated again, blaming oneself or other ways of coping with it could be the next step.

The actions that may come after those initial emotions may be depression and taking to drinking or other vices to ease the pain, but stronger characters usually want to take revenge or try a different route to their goals. It all depends on who the character is.

The problem with frustration in a plot is in the portrayal of it. Stronger emotions are easier to show, but if the initial frustration is just a feeling of being upset or a slight annoyance because of inability to change or achieve something, the writers need to be creative in their interpretation and depiction of it.

Frustration is usually accompanied by confusion; therefore, using confusion is a good ploy to consider but only at the beginning, since we don’t want totally confused characters from the beginning to the end of our stories.

We can show a character’s frustration through his bodily signs such as stiffened posture, pinched lips, the shaking of the head, and the gritting of the teeth. We can also show it in his actions, such as pacing the floor, slamming doors, or pounding a fist on a tabletop. Then if we can get into his head, we can show it in his thoughts or listen to him as he talks to himself.

Frustration may serve as a window to self-discovery, too. For example, people who suddenly find themselves in a bad situation, say an enemy attack, can feel frustration followed by shock, fear, and uncertainty, and then, they may be compelled to look inside themselves and reassess their lives and their ability to be resilient.

The way we show the initial frustration can foreshadow the ending of the story. For that reason, its dramatization is something we need to consider seriously.