How do your characters deal with frustration? Not “how will this fit the try-fail-try sequence and advance character development” but “if I don’t do something I’m going to explode.” And what does your character’s society tolerate for blowing off steam?
Does your lead go to his favorite metal and punk club and slam dance, or bounce around the mosh pit to release tension? Does he chop firewood? Does she write fight scenes and choreograph battles* to displace frustration? Does she go hunting, riding with the hounds, or stalking deer on her estate, or fighting fish with a light line and dry fly? Does she throw things at her chamber maid, or scream at the gardener, or nurse her irritation until she can verbally cut down someone who deserves it? Does he pummel a mugger, or a punching bag, or a subordinate?
Depending on the place and the culture, pummeling a subordinate or family member might be accepted or even approved. Can you put that in a book, for a character-not-the-villain? Ah, no. When I wrote a book based on the end of the Tang Dynasty, the culture of the time in China had some practices that were perfectly OK to them, but modern readers would wall the book so hard it would go through the wall in the next room as well. So I made it a point that the male protagonist did not do those things, and had the servants talking about how wonderful he was to not raise more than his voice at the female protagonist.
I find characters that get irritated, frustrated, irked, and otherwise act like the rest of us are easier to identify with. In fact, a character who is observed never losing her cool, always cheerful, never even mildly irritated when the Fickle Finger of Fate goes “Flick!” would make me a touch concerned. Either she’s internalizing everything to the point that she’s going to explode, or she’s internalizing everything because she has never been permitted to be irritated due and suffered when she did show emotion, or something’s off with her wiring. That might be a Clue for readers, or another character, to be watchful around her. Or it might not, and the subsequent eruption catches everyone off guard, including the protagonist or others.
My characters tend to work off irritation through physical means, if their culture and situation allow. If not, there are ways to vent (kicking inanimate objects like a fence or shed, prayer, going to the range and putting holes in targets, making a meringue by hand.) It fits their personalities, gets things done, and does not hurt other people. In a scene I’m about to write, the protagonist shows his 7-year-old son why Junior has to learn to vent properly and keep his cool until then. The lesson includes a birdbath, sticks, and a few minor bruises. And Dad working very, very hard to stay calm and detached and not show his own anger and frustration.
*I know no one who does this. Really. Pinkie-claw swear. Ignore the paw behind my back.
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “Venting in a Socially Acceptable Manner”
Does she write fight scenes and choreograph battles* to displace frustration?
Jill “the sword lady” Bearup?
TBH, I find fight choreography difficult enough that it rather adds to the frustration. Most of my characters tend to express frustration verbally, to whoever is at hand, and their upbringing/culture determines how they express it. There is one character who as a young man worked through his feelings about his parents’ death by taking up jousting (his universe’s Eglinton Tournament was part of a larger movement of interest in Ye Olde Days combat techniques as sporting events). In the present day, a mild, polite response from him might be him trying to diffuse a situation…or him trying to needle a person in response to them annoying him.
Not just frustration, but also other strong emotions that are difficult to vent in polite society.
I have one scene I’m ruminating on, where the hero, missing for days, newly rescued and worn out, is obliged to look in on the students in his academy at their dinner on his way up to bed, to reassure them that he is back. The scenario started days ago with an accident at the lab in his business, and he expresses relief that no one (else) in the lab was seriously injured.
A student remonstrates with him that it wouldn’t have been his responsibility if that had happened — it was an accident, after all — and this sets him off, in his exhaustion. He breaks into an impromptu lecture along the lines of:
“The responsibilities you take on are what make you a man or a woman. Without them, what are you? I chose to build that lab, to hire those people and train them. I AM responsible for what happens when I do that. Choose your responsibilities well.”
This is the baldest statement the witnesses (and the reader) have ever had about the downsides he feels in the wave of the successful business projects he has embarked upon. It’s not the sort of thing he ever reveals.
“Lord-”
“Silence! Another word and I will cut you down where you stand. But I will not waste my tools so lightly. Now, begone from my presence, and do not let me see your face again until I have summoned you.”
The soldier said nothing, just bowed and scurried from the chamber.
“My lord was that…”
“Courtier? Do not think you are so valuable a tool as that.”
Your Evil Overlord has priorities. *Thumbs up.*
I’m not even sure he is an evil overlord. He could simply be a lord in a culture that demands that sort of ruthlessness.
Even so. Priorities! I love it.
“And what does your character’s society tolerate for blowing off steam?”
My characters made a “no hitting!” rule after the first example of Brunhilde losing her temper with George in “Unfair Advantage.” She broke a fire hydrant on his head.
Because can you really let invincible combat robots lose their tempers and act out like that? Also the robots are quite protective of their Humans, biocreatures being unique and very squishy, easily damaged, irreplaceable and so forth. Also we don’t live very long, and they worry.
So there is a fair amount of swearing, foot stamping, yelling, and the odd bit of shoving. Certain characters have been known to take it all out on any enemy fool enough to be in reach.
At one extreme, I find the manga are prone to heroes who are conquerors. In a culture in which a casus belli is not deemed necessary. It undermines them.
*I do it backwards. Character losses his cool (again) and I stomp around the house in a temper for a hour or so.
Good thing my husband’s going to be out of the house for a few days, my MC needs to really lose it . . .
Yeah, culturally appropriate vs what your readers think appropriate is a consideration.
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