writing an insane character

Hey guys , im doing some research for my "chracter personlity guide" would like some tips on mking insane characters :). the best tips will be on the guide!!

edited 12th Apr '11 7:42:53 PM by FallenLegend

Base it off me. no, seriously.

Actually, that really depends. what kind of insane do you want? There are many varieties at my disposal I can provide you with insight into.

So what kind of crazy are you looking for? This covers a huge area when just saying 'insane'.

edited 12th Apr '11 8:20:38 PM by jasonwill2

Like, do you want Hollywood Insane, like Ax-Crazy psychos or Cloudcuckoolanders? Or do you want actual mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or personality disorders? We already have a Useful Notes page on personality disorders, I think.

Ah, here.

edited 12th Apr '11 8:54:43 PM by CrystalGlacia

I've already covered personality disorders ( still thx for the heads up).

Yeah I now this one is very big So I guess some general tips will be enough. This is for a chracter guide I am doing :)

^^ Lol that made me laugh

Breaking the Fourth Wall and having them be Wrong Genre Savvy at the same time is always a safe bet.

I highly recommend Terry Trueman's Inside Out as an example of good first-person insanity. (Written by an actual psychiatrist, too!) The protagonist doesn't seem to be capable of understanding that he's insane, so he just does whatever the voices say, but he does have some concept of how weird they are. ("Squish-wish, squish-wish, don't you wish you could squish a wish?" "Maybe I would if I knew what the hell that meant.")

Also worth remembering that for a long while, someone coming down with schizophrenia will be able to work out that the voices probably aren't real — but they won't want to believe it, because the alternative is being crazy, and accepting that the input of one's senses (or the perception of that) is not to be believed.

If you want to avoid the superficial "tee hee I'm so wacky" type of crazy, work out a very specific reason for their insanity and think about how they would respond to that event. As an example, take Cnaiur in the Second Apocalypse series. A chief's son in a warrior culture, he was manipulated and seduced by a slave into getting his father killed. He is consumed by guilt and shame, is intensely paranoid both about being manipulated and what other people think of him, and suffers from rage episodes and blackouts. All of the symptoms of his insanity are logical results of the event.

I have some insight into bipolar.. I have a lot of tendencies towards it and have been officially diagnosed it at one point (though it has been argued against, really its up in the air atm, and unlike bipolar I need a trigger as opposed to unexplained mood swings).

So I have some experience with bipolar if you need insight into that/havn't covered it. From a first person perspective of course.

edit: so did you cover bipolar yet?

edited 13th Apr '11 1:56:52 PM by jasonwill2

Fallen Legend, what KIND of insanity are you looking to write?

The happy-cheerful "nothing can ever go wrong!" kind? Sad, totally depressed (somewhat) self-aware? Tee-hee wacky? Something else? (just some possible examples)

If you can get a decent idea of what kind you're looking to write, it'd be easier to get to the descriptions you're looking to reference. Or something. It's 5 in the morning here and I'm tired, and my mind isn't cooperating. (I know I'm certainly not all sane, that's for sure)

A good Example of an amazing Crazy character was David Tenant's Rendition of Hamlet in the Film. See if you can find it (Patrick Stewart plays the king) He acts absolutely bonkers at points, and the Ophelia in it works as well. Both of them are the just off the wall insanity.

Alternatively you could use word soup disorder ( I cannot remember the name currently.) Have the character speak in words that don't quite fit, but with attention actually makes sense. For Example In my Campaign We have a crazy vampire, and when he was angry after he found out that a NPC raped and killed several little girls the vampire went on a rambling sentence "The black king killed the smiles, silenced laughter. Took the porcelain dolls and now all that's left is dust and ash" No one else in the group knew what he was talking about but it makes sense looking at the rambling

On the above note, look at common Malkavian (Vampire: the masquerade) Problems. A good rule when doing insane characters that aren't necessarily Violently insane is this joke from the Whitewolf books: How many Malkavian's(Insane Vampires) does it take to screw in a lightbulb: Answer: Fish

edited 16th Apr '12 7:44:09 AM by Shadenlor

One novel I read had that disturbed guy. I had a bit of a trouble describing him here - I mean, he functioned relatively well in society, I'd say he was of the "looks like anyone else" kind, a villain, but he wasn't notably violent or something, rather he looked like just a dumb jerk. But to the point. He had no backstory, or much importance to the plot, but was a POV character. He had a lot of weird internal monologues that the others lacked, and the way that they showed his worldview made it quite obvious he's not really sane.

The BOUNDARY METHOD.

There's a short video about that on this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/StoryStructureTips

edited 16th Apr '12 10:47:28 AM by Thumper

Whatever mental disorder you decide to go for, make sure you do your research and treat the subject respectfully, or readers with the same problem will have any right to feel offended.

"Insane" is far, far too vague a term. It covers a huge variety of behaviours. "Insane" is even broader than "Sane."

I would say that there are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Crazy people don't know they're crazy. Behaviours that seem weird to us are usually their way of making sense of the world around them.

2. Crazy people have trouble relating to the world, and the world has trouble relating to them. This can be frustrating for both sides.

3. "Voices in the head" is often really lazy. It can be done well, but it's too often used as just an easy way to justify a crazy person doing crazy things. Avoid it when possible. If you're going to have someone killing people, don't have him say "my dog told me to do it." If you're going to have the person hearing voices, don't do it in a cute or gimmicky way. The Shining provides an example of how to do it well.

4. Try to be respectful.

Perhaps a more straightforward question than what kind of insane character you want to write is why you want to write an insane character in the first place. Answer that, and it should become much more clear what kind of insanity you're really looking for.

If it's just a whim, or you want to write someone insane because you like the Joker or River or Yuno or something like that, then what you're looking for is probably more along the lines of wackiness than any sort of realistic insanity. In that case, you're not trying to go for anything too serious, so just try to avoid descending into waffle-llama random "humor".

If you're interested in actually exploring an abnormal human psyche, the most important thing is to research your topic extremely carefully. A quick skim of the relevant Wikipedia article or the five minutes the subject came up in your Intro Psych class doesn't count; if possible, you should actually interview people who suffer from the relevant disorder, or who know such people closely.

Most of the more "well-known" disorders are already very much unlike their pop-cultural counterparts, so what you've heard or seen on TV doesn't count for anything either. jasonwill's post brings a common example to mind: bipolar disorder isn't about having "mood swings"; on the contrary, an individual is considered "rapid cycling" if they average even one episode every few months.

I am going to be self indulgent and give a character I am doing for an example.

For a LARP, I am playing a mute. Which means my thought process is never nearly as obvious as anyone elses. The character is also rather quirky without the muteness, resulting in many people thinking they're completely bonkers, even though the thought process is completely sane to me. This was a fascinating end result.

If you want to make an insane character, the first step is to remove the audience's access to their thought process. Or at least, internal logic. But you should know it at all times. And then purposely make it so that it's impossible to figure out. And then you make sure that the actual thought process is just slightly off.

For my character, I had them not understand sexual things, wave at everyone cheerfully, and enjoy spilling their own blood, which was just enough to make them slightly off. Of course, for better results, you want to do something else.

If you want the character to come across as totally unhinged, and you also want to write from that character's perspective, then I would suggest indulging in a bit of Stream Of Consciousness. That particular style seems to work rather well for insane/panicked/hyper/whatever perspectives.

EDIT: Why does not direct to Inner Monologue? They're not remotely the same.

edited 18th Apr '12 2:15:16 PM by LizardBite

I'm also looking to write an 'insane' character. Okay, so here's the gist: he witnesses his friend fall to his death, which he was indirectly involved in. He gets over it, albeit with a little guilt due to the fact that he refuses to tell anybody about his involvement. Later, he is involved in a car accident with another friend (he has a lot of friends, okay?), whom he watches die before his eyes. This leaves him with some trauma and paranoia. The latter makes him accidentally kill his roommate. And then more muders, accidental or otherwise occur. Yeah, it's basically his Start of Darkness.

I have no idea how to portray this. Also, after undergoing all of that, this sort of insanity develops into the wacky-crazy type you've described up there.\\

edited 10th Mar '14 5:44:49 AM by RandomAdventure

Actually, depending upon the form of insanity, crazy people can know they're crazy.

I'm bipolar- severe enough to draw disability. Knowing when I'm edging toward a bad state is something that's survival for me. I know very well that I am crazy. I had a panic attack yesterday - I knew I was in the throes of it and that something was going wonky in my brain - I just couldn't rein it in.

In fact, it sometimes feels like a part of me, the core of me is "trapped within" while the rest of me is crying and twitchy or yelling and can't get it together.

So, no, I'll offer a counter to the common idea that "crazy people don't know they're crazy." It depends upon the type of crazy. It's why some of us crazy people get help and take our meds - We *know* we're borked and are trying to work our way up to halfway-sane.

Hope this helps.

Even deeply violently disturbed people are capable of recognizing their condition. People who kill out of compulsion may not be able to stop, but there are recorded cases where they've done things that make them easy to catch so others can.

Damn I can't for the life of me remember the guy's name but he was a murderer and basically wrote a note saying he knew he was very sick and needed help.

Was killed by police or something, wrote in his will that all his assets should go towards mental health research.

Just wish I could remember his name.

Sounds like you're thinking of Charles Whitman.

Also, to reiterate Shadsie's point, there are a lot of disorders where people can realize they're "crazy." For example, I have OCD and like many (if not most) people with it, I'm able to recognize that I spend excessive amounts of time worrying about the same things, yet I do it anyway due to anxiety.

I think as a general rule, people with mood and/or anxiety disorders are more likely to realize they're suffering from a disorder, whereas people with psychotic (which is probably what most people think of when they think "crazy") or personality disorders will at best recognize they're "different" from other people, but are much less likely to think of it as something wrong with them.

edited 12th Mar '14 10:02:06 PM by FingerPuppet

The one tip I can toss in for things is, when portraying them, what they're doing has to seem sane to them. There should be a rhyme and reason to things that make sense to them, but not anybody else.

"Insane" is often not what people think it is. More often than not, people in real life who are deemed clinically insane are more likely to hurt themselves as opposed to anyone else, and it's more likely they'd just stare off into space, occupied with attempting to pick up the scattered fragments of their broken minds. It's really quite sad for those like me who have experienced it and recovered, although I imagine friends and family feel the same way.

Anyway, my tangent aside, what you're thinking of as insanity in the typical fictional sense is more likely to be classified as sociopathy. They may have other legitimate disorders such as schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder, but for "violently insane" characters, the root of the problem in real life would usually be deemed sociopathy, rather than the orbiting secondary ailments.