If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…
So says Marcus Antonius in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’.
Which seems, to contemporary ears, a tactical error.
If you are intending to make a person cry, you shouldn’t announce it to them immediately beforehand.
Isn’t that just like saying —
I’m now going to tell you the funniest joke you’ve ever heard.
Most people’s reaction is surely going to be —
Let me be the judge of that.
And so if I say to you that the very short story at the end of this entry will make you cry, or at least sob, I am almost certainly setting you up to resist.
I’m asking for a burst of comments along the lines, No, Nothing, Not a squidge, Didn’t feel a thing, and Actually made me laugh, mate.
It’s like the Wilco song, ‘I am trying to break your heart’.
Whether my heart gets broken or not is up to me, thank you very much.
Well, no.
By putting yourself under the sway of a writer, by continuing to immerse yourself in their story, you are submerging yourself in their saltwater ocean — which may be warm or freezing, and which is likely to have very strong currents, and which may contain mermaids or sharks.
That’s not to say you can’t read or reread them from within your own hermetically sealed diving bell or bathysphere or submersible. In other words, keeping your critical distance.
Marcus Antonius’s words seem likely to have you putting up whatever emotional defences you have available.
Even worse for any possible effect the following piece of writing might have on you is for me to say —
I carefully wrote and rewrote this story, over a number of days, in order to maximise the chances of it making you sob.
Now it’s almost certain to fail, isn’t it?
Because even by admitting to there being craft behind it, I seem to be distancing myself from any kind of emotional truth.
Wouldn’t it be better for me to say —
I was in floods of tears as I wrote this. The whole thing just poured out of me, completely beyond my control. It was as if some greater force were dictating it, and I was a mere vessel for it.
Mixing my water metaphors, but conveying the strong sense that I was just as much a victim of this story as you will be — that’s the way to ready readers emotionally.
The truth is something more like this: I had the experience narrated here. I stood on Lamb’s Conduit Street and saw what and who came along, just as I describe. That did happen to me. I felt churned up. I became tearful. And I knew, because I had been so emotionally flipped one way and another, within half a minute, that this was a very powerful scene. Perhaps another writer could make something of it, but me? No. I wouldn’t go near anything so, so what? So obvious. So direct. So potentially sentimental.
But months went by, and I couldn’t forget.
Finally, I gave in, and wrote it down in a notebook — intending to leave it there.
But I hadn’t got it right, so I rewrote it, changed the start, changed who I was meeting, put their real name in, took it out, began again.
Every time I went back to this tiny story, I felt I was writing something that had the potential to make readers cry, or at least sob, and that every word choice I made should aim to achieve that as wholeheartedly as possible.
I should write it like I’d speak it.
None of this, I hope, makes me a bad, manipulative person. Instead, I think, it makes me a writer doing their job.
It’s not a reprehensible thing to believe that you’re going to have a particular emotional effect upon a reader, and to work to augment that effect.
All of which has deliberately set this story up as coldly as possible.
However, I hope everything I’ve said also stands as a trigger warning. This story does contain details some readers may find upsetting.
Just As If
So I’m standing outside The Lamb, top end of Lamb’s Conduit Street, waiting for a friend. This friend’s a writer, and she’s halfway between her first collection of short stories and her first novel.
It’s a sunny Spring morning, just before twelve o’clock.
I’m standing waiting, because I got here early, and to my left I hear clip-clop hooves and I turn to see two white horses trotting up the road – and the white horses are pulling a carriage – and the carriage is made of clear glass and is shaped like a pumpkin – a pumpkin like in Cinderella – and of course what I think is, It’s a wedding. All the other people on the street are looking, too.
At that moment, just before twelve, I’m sure it’ll be a bride inside the pumpkin, heading off to her fairytale wedding, or a bride and groom, just back from their fairytale wedding.
So as I look at the carriage coming closer and closer, I expect to see a grown woman with perfect make-up wearing a lacy white dress, but as the white horses trot past me what I see instead is a tiny pale girl – about eight- or nine-years old – wearing a sparkly white dress with a delicate little cardigan – and she has a plastic tube taped to her cheek and running up into her nostril –
And then I see there’s a couple of nurses walking along the opposite pavement – they’re keeping pace with the horses, and taking photographs of the pale girl inside the pumpkin.
And then I see there’s a woman between the nurses, and she’s also taking photographs.
And I feel bad and then I feel terrible – it’s not a wedding, I was completely wrong, it’s a very sick child who is probably going to die, because – well, because someone is doing this wonderful thing for her, and this must be one of her wishes, to ride along like Cinderella in a fairytale carriage.
And I am glad that my writer friend isn’t here to witness such sadness.
But then, as the pale girl passes me by, I see she is smiling wonderfully and is so so happy, happier than any bride I’ve ever seen, and she is waving to the people on Lamb’s Conduit Street, just as if she were a princess, and just as if she were a princess, they are waving back.
It did make me cry. Thank you Toby, and well done. ❤️
For some reason, I rarely cry at anything. Me wife says I'm dead inside. This, like many things that make others cry, left me unemotional. It's well written, and a beautiful scene, but it don't touch me.
I realised later in life, it might be due to being schizophrenic (as is much else in my life), as a symptom is muted emotion.
It takes different things to make me cry. Unexpected things. Mind, I do have 'inappropriate emotional response' to many things. I once cried watching a documentary about the colour blue. I love blue. The colour I mean, not the shit boyband. Another odd thing I noticed is, I can become aroused by someone crying. I also laugh at things most are horrified by. Terrible things. I don't know why. Someone suggested nerves, but I don't get nervous about anything. I have no jump reaction either.
I'm sure the piece made others cry, but not me. I don't think I experience empathy unless I'm connected to someone someway. Not necessarily to know them, but even meet them and talk to them or something. Children dying don't upset me if I don't know them. I always think, it's sad, but billions of people died throughout history, often horribly, so it just seems part of life to me. I understand it's tragic for the parents, and I'd be devastated if my boy died (yes, I have a child, I'm aware some think this changes you into a more compassionate and empathetic person, but I still don't cry at kids dying). This can be difficult at times, when I don't have the expected reaction in a social situation, and people look at me like I'm a monster.
My brother hanged himself. We were close. I was devastated. But I can look at images of men hanged, see it films, read it in books, no bother. Funny thing is, when I'm with someone who needs empathy, I'm told I can be more empathic than most. I suppose I can get in others' minds and see it from their eyes. All this aside, I don't think I ever cried from anything I read in fiction or non-fiction.