This War of Mine and Writing Despair
Tips on creating a sense of hopelessness in your stories
Recently I've had a fascination with bleak video games that have sad, depressing stories. Not necessarily out of a desire to play them, but more out of intrigue at their very existence in the first place. I've even gone so far as to ask people in my network why they enjoy these types of games, with some very insightful responses. One of the bleakest of these types of games is This War of Mine, a survival/resource management game where you manage a house in a city ravaged by war. Vital supplies are scarce, people are desperate and hostile, and the situation isn't going to improve anytime soon. Your goal isn't to rescue the princess or save the world; your goal is just making sure the people in your house live to the next day...and eventually that goal will be unobtainable. It's a game about impossible choices and the soul-crushing nature of war from the perspective of the everyday citizens caught in the crossfire, not the soldiers trained and equipped to handle it.
There can be catharsis and powerful emotions in a story of hopelessness. People can relate to the Sisyphean struggle to beat impossible odds and emphasize with the oppressive weight of the situations and environments these characters are placed in. If this is a topic you want to address in your stories, here are some ways you can make it work.
The World is Bleak
One of the things that helps immersion into This War of Mine is the bleak, wartorn environment the story takes place in. buildings are destroyed, supplies are scarce, and soldiers patrol the streets looking for scavengers to kill. it presents a very dark and oppressive setting for the player to operate in. Whether it's this, a dystopian society, or a harsh climate. You can even describe areas like an inner city or a sleepy small town in ways that feel oppressive by accentuating the elements that make those conditions hard to change or escape from. You can include harsh weather or foreboding skies, or anything else that can depict your setting as a place people would leave if they could. You want to craft a world that feels like overcoming the conditions of the setting are an exercise in futility. Even if the scene doesn't look bleak, you can still depict oppressive conditions that paint the environment in a negative light. that sleepy small town could be isolated, bland and boring. That inner city could be dangerous with old, outdated architecture. whatever it takes to portray your setting as a place people wouldn't spend too much time in if they could will work.
Insurmountable Odds
One of the most haunting short stories I've ever read was "Tragedy at the South Pole", the tale of Captain Robert Falcon Scott in the pages of the old Childcraft books from World Book Encyclopedia. Not only did Scott's expedition fail to be the first to reach the South Pole but they faced a harrowing trek back to their ship amidst one of Antarctica 's worst blizzard seasons. As the story progressed it was evident that events were not trending in a positive direction, and with each setback it was becoming clear that it would take a miracle for Scott and his party to make it back alive. Spoiler: miracles were in short supply that day.
Pitting your characters against unbeatable obstacles can add to that sense of hopelessness. Enemies with more power than your characters can deal with or natural disasters or systemic oppression can wear your characters down to where they're asking what's the point. And their efforts to overcome those obstacles must be thwarted at every turn.
Another way to create that sense of despair is putting your characters in situations where they have to make impossible choices that have unpleasant outcomes no matter which way they go. The acclaimed video game Life is Strange forces the player into a gut wrenching choice between the life of their best friend and the safety of their entire hometown.
Like I mentioned before, it doesn't have to be physical obstacles. It could be an oppressive lifestyle that seems impossible to escape from. Small town life or poverty can be hopeless. Dealing with mental illness or an incurable disease can be despair-inducing. The daily grind of working a dead-end job you can't advance at while being unable to find better work was something I mined in my story "The Hand You're Dealt". Fighting addiction can seem like a losing battle, especially when it's someone close to you dealing with it. Any situation where a character can feel trapped with no feasible means of escape can create that sense of hopelessness.
The Downward Spiral
One of Magic: The Gathering 's most endearing novels is Nemesis, a tale of a heroic wizard stranded on the oppressive homeworld of a sworn enemy, and just to survive must compete in an ill-fated contest to be the ruler of a world he wants no part of. The world itself is hellish and depressing, but it is how the plot progresses that really hammers home the despair of the story. The wizard Ertai's options are usually all bad, with the only difference being the degree of wrongness with the choices offered. His minor victories are snatched away from him at every turn and each action he takes further entrenches him into this nightmare world, similar to how if one is stuck in quicksand, fighting to free yourself only makes you sink deeper. This is something I recommend you do when you develop your plot. Murphy's law is your friend and you want to put your characters in as many no-win situations as you can think of, with their solutions leading to yet more no-win situations. In a situation you are writing, ask yourself what are the 2 or 3 worst possible ways things can go wrong. Then you want to funnel the circumstances leading up to those outcomes so that they are the only logical paths for your story to go in. Take a hard look at your situation and think of all the ways your character can get out of making those hard choices...and promptly find a way to eliminate those ways out. You want to create a sense of inevitability of things not ending well.
Another option you need to remove is the option to give up. The appeal of these types of stories is the spirit of perseverance in your characters and how they keep pressing on in the face of insurmountable odds. Give your characters a motivation to keep going, whether it's hard baked into their personality or there is an external reason like a oved one or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would make all of their suffering worth it. You want your readers rooting for your protagonists to somehow, someway find a way to get to a more pleasant outcome when at some level they know the train will crash.
Mental Health Effects
Being in a situation where nothing is going right can take a toll on a character mentally and emotionally. It can have a character unable to get out of their own head or their own feelings. They could start having doubts and questioning themselves and their ability to accomplish their goals. A hopeless situation could cause depression or anxiety. It could cause them to lash out or act irresponsibility, which would lead to more bad situations. They may feel they are alone and none can or will help them, and worse, that no one would listen to them if they wanted to talk about their struggles. Try to remember the last really bad day you had and how you personally felt during that period of time. You can show this effect through internal monologues or interactions with other characters, their body language and their choice of words when they speak.
Fleeting Bright Spots
False hope, flashes of brighter moments and moments of levity are ways you can break tension and use contrast to emphasize the bleak situation the narrative has placed your characters in. You can have your characters achieve what on the surface seems like a small victory, only to have that victory taken away or twisted into another crushing setback. The movie The Descent does this brilliantly, as what at first appears to be the heroine's cathartic escape from the cave she is trapped in turns out to be nothing more than a fever dream, and her real situation is actually much, much worse.
Flashbacks to happier times are another way to highlight the bleakness of the current narrative. And you can even subvert that by planting clues in those happier flashbacks that things aren't really as great as your characters remember. A notable scene in the TV show Scrubs treats a patient's illness like a traditional multicam sitcom replete with laugh track, only for the patient to flatline mid-joke, jarring everyone back into the more dramatic setting.
Tender character development moments can be used against your protagonists either by characters in the story or by you the writer via putting them in situations that exploit their vulnerabilities. You can play on these vulnerabilities and use them to force your characters into yet more no-win situations.
Conclusion
Telling a tale of despair and hopelessness can cause your readers to reflect on their own lives and the obstacles they have overcome in their lifetimes. Keep these aspects in mind when writing yours, and you'll have your readers shedding tears in no time.
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What are some of your favorite stories with hopeless situations? Give me your thoughts int he comments!