This thread seems unlucky. Too many black cats. But then again, I'm probably just being catish. (sitcom laugh track)
Seems ok to me. I don't know what the exact context is, but I think if you want to show her being ashamed of crying (and many of us, men or women, are when at the workplace), mentioning that she might just do it if she was alone is a good addition here. Don't worry about the crying women cliché too much. Like others have said, it's healthy and normal. If your readers think it's annoying, shameful, or sexist, it's their problem. Btw, Chandraleksha is an interesting name. While it may be a mouthful (eyeful?) to your readers, I like seeing long names 'cause, in my native country, especially the surnames are pretty terrifyingly long and you don't often see names like that in fiction.
I see no problem in women crying, but in a book it becomes pretty boring if people are crying, at least if you ask me. If I were you I'd try do better show what's so depressing instead of stating it. To have the characters crying over things that happen in the book is just a cheap way to make readers care. To instead make the readers cry is much better. Then you don't even have to mention that the characters are.
That last sentence is only true if the only reason you are describing the crying is to show that the scenario is sad. And by your own application of show don't tell crying is more interesting than saying they are sad so if you want the reader to know the character is sad in response to the scenario crying is still good. One telling is another showing. That rule doesn't even stay with the same application between contexts.
I tend to agree. It's a bit hackneyed to just say 'And she cried.' instead of telling us what about this situation got to her. But with a character who is well established when we know well most of the time it'll be self-evident what is upsetting her. Even when we're finding out something new it's more effective to show something effecting the character first then get into why later. Leaving the ambiguity gives more investment in the scene because the reader starts actively looking for the reason why. There's a wonderful scene in The Elephant Man. Anthony Hopkins walks up the stairs in this big mansion house goes to the door to meet his patient and a single tear streaks his cheek. We don't see the patient yet. We don't know anything about why this upsets him. All we've seen is him arrive. And one glance at something is enough to make this grown ass man cry. And finally we see why. Not knowing and waiting just a moment for us to understand why elevates an otherwise nearly cliched scene to something Oscar winning. It's a beautiful scene because we don't know.
That's a fair point. If you're a plot-based writer then just effectively communicating why this character is sad is more important. If you're a character-writer then naturally you want to spend time on this getting to the core of why. It's definitely reasonable to say 'I'm not getting in depth with this part of her character' and move on. Yeah, something about funerals gets to me. I haven't had a close relative die in a long time but one of my older cousins (who I had met twice in my life) had cancer and that just really got to me. I cried at my girlfriend's gran's funeral too. I never knew her well but she was a nice old bird who was always happy to talk with me and I was sad to see her go. Then again I go around in a bubble of drug use; I never ever cried before I started using but since then I can cry because I'm happy. So I stock up for a funeral and let it out. Something like Coming to it late I really like crying.
I cried mostly when I first found out. And again, I didn't do that. Sometimes I feel like I should have cried more. (Why aren't you racked with heaving sobs you heartless bastard!) But I don't know. How much is good?
I get your point. But I've seen manuscripts, mostly based on writers own experiences, where character cries all the time, as a way of getting the reader to care or feel for the character, and that never worked for me. Seeing those character cry didn't move me the least because the reason didn't engage me. Same thing with character vomiting all the time, especially when they receive bad news or witness a betrayal. It's become so cliché, especially when it happens several times in the same book. After a while you just yawn at their constant vomiting and put away the book.
Whats wrong with a woman crying? I have an MC that does it 3 times, the first two are from an internal struggle, and the third when she is afraid her love interest might die. I almost had another MC cry for indirectly killing an old girlfriend, but he did get a little mopey for a minute or two. So again what is the problem with crying? It happens to everybody.
Nothing is wrong with it. But anything can be overdone or be done in a cliche fashion. My sister was reading the first few chapters of my WIP and in when the first female character was introduced as a secretary, she took offense over it. (Of course, she totally ignored that the first chapter has two males characters with one of them being the secretary of the other.) People see what they want to see.
You'll never make everyone happy. At some point you just have to write what works for you. Maybe your sister would like it better if instead of a female secretary it was a highly trained transexual chimpanzee (that identified as human). Because transexual otherkin chimps are massively underrepresented in fiction.
No, I just really, really don't believe in otherkin. And I don't think we have any confirmation of transgender chimps seeing as it's purely internal. While as homosexual sexualities result in some level of homosexual behaviour, there is no transgender behaviour. Some transgender women are tomboys. Some are very feminine. It depends. So we don't know. We can't read their minds.
What are you saying? Are you saying that a chimpanzee couldn't choose to identify as human? You monster!
It highlights the situation rather than bringing down the woman's character. Whatever it was that was going on, it was indeed depressing. Also - nothing wrong with crying.
