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Author
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Topic: Realistic Suicide
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DigiteyeZ
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posted 02-18-2001 04:22 PM
I'm working on an idea involving a teenager's struggles with mental illness. Suicidal thoughts play a big part in the story. I have some ideas, but thought I would consult with fellow LAS members.What are some dark thoughts that a suicidal teen would have when they're not well? Not only thoughts about suicide, but otherwise dark, negative thoughts about how they're feeling, what they would like to do to themselves or other people, etc. I have the style worked out, how i'm going to tell the story, etc., but if anyone has any ideas to bounce off, please do. Thanks! |
Felix
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posted 02-19-2001 02:46 AM
Firstly, there'd be a lot of swearing in their thoughts. The slightest thing would set them off on a whole, 'They have no idea how easy it would be for me to kill them, then I'd kill anybody else and myself, they'd better not push me, because I'll kill them.'
You know, everything would be related to death, the sun is shining everyone's happy and they're still thinking 'They have no right to be happy when I'm so miserable', and to see them happy will make them even more angry and suicidal, 'They're not going to be happy when I'm dead and they realise it's their fault.'Very irational and depressive.
Hope this helps. ------------------
I once had 509 posts...but now I don't. |
gungho
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posted 02-19-2001 02:39 PM
Obsession with death is a huge sign that someone is thinking about suicide. If your character is thinking about suicide maybe you should have scenes where he imagines events like his suicide and the day after or his funeral. If he thinks he has no worth then at his imagined funeral people could not be able to think of anything to say about him and he can become even more upset. |
Bread_12
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posted 02-19-2001 03:18 PM
Well, if you really want to capture the individuals suicidal tendencies, i would suggest doing Voice Overs. Maybe something like the following:
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FADE IN:EXT. THE CITY STREETS - NIGHT THE SUICIDAL CHARACTER walks alone along the sidewalk. He keeps his eyes to the ground as he moves beneath the dim street lights. To his left, a street full of cars endlessly zooms by. SUICIDAL CHARACTER (V.O.) "I could end it all now. Every day, I think about the same thing. How can I end my life?" The Suicidal Character then looks at the many passing cars for a moment. SUICIDAL CHARACTER (V.O.) "I could just jump. Throw myself into traffic. That would end it. But what if I survive? No. That won't do." The Suicidal Character continues walking until he is on a bridge. He stops for a moment and looks down toward the black water below. SUICIDAL CHARACTER (V.O.) "I could jump over the edge. Drown myself. But what if that doesn't work either? I don't want to survive. I just need something that will quickly and effortlessly kill my pain." The Suicidal Character then continues walking. FADE OUT:
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Well, that is just as a street setting. What you must realize about the character in question is that he thinks about it. He wants to do it. But he doesn't want it to hurt a lot. He doesn't want to survive. He just wants it all to be over. My Two Bits, Bread |
E. Flask
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posted 02-19-2001 03:25 PM
Maybe your character would have a habit of watching funerals, drinking in the sadness and imagining it was all for him.Some suicidal people also break all their ties to the people they know-- they literally "drop out" of their own lives, as a precursor to actually ending them. You have a lot of powerful material to work with. Good luck. |
TrollHunter
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posted 02-19-2001 04:08 PM
Sometimes when I'm asleep and sick with a fever, I have feelings that everything is too big... It's a very odd feeling, hard to describe. When I get up to go to the bathroom, everything around me is so dark and hard to tell the difference between the door and the wall. Everything is almost too big for me to handle. Just another reason to sleep. I'll also wake up after having dreams about odd geometric shapes falling all around me... It's an odd feeling, again, very hard to describe. Sometimes I think it's the way a mentally disturbed person would feel all the time.Anyway... It's all kinda wierd, but that's what I've got to add. TrollHunter |
Priji_Master
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posted 02-19-2001 06:56 PM
wow! what kind of fever medicine do you use trollhunter? id like some of that.any ways, i know a couple of semi-suicidals myself so, from experience, they're always depressed and only talk to a few people, only confide in like 1 person if at all,they talk and say that their life sucks and then proceed to describe its suckiness, its quite disturbing but these ppl i know just keep talking about it so im bored of them. anyways, just some experience for you, learn from others' mistakes.
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DigiteyeZ
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posted 02-19-2001 11:16 PM
thanks a lot, guys! it's was i was thinking but couldn't express completely. these ideas will help me with writing this short. if anyone has any more ideas, please share them! |
shakespeareskin
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posted 02-20-2001 11:34 AM
hi guys.What type of mental illness are you looking at? different psychological and emotional problems have different symptoms. a few of the basics are Depression, Anxiety, anti-social behavior (such as social anxiety disorder), continual thoughts of despair and or hopelessness. feeling of worthlessness. If the character is thinking that he "could just kill everyone" or that everyone else is somehow inferior to him he (or she) most likely is not just suffering from a form f depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. If that is the direction you are going you could try something like Schizophrenia with a voice telling him these things, and in the end he/she takes his/her own life rather than giving into the voices. I'm working on a script now where a woman is seeing and hearing ghosts. Her doctors find a fluid filled sac in her brain (an actual cause for some schizophrenia). but the twist is that people with schiz. are not crazy, it in fact is allowing them to see and hear things that really are there the rest of us just can't hear or see them. |
DigiteyeZ
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posted 02-20-2001 07:14 PM
yes, Shakespeareskin, you're right. the character i'm dealing with has chronic depression, with OCD symptoms. So yeah, they would be thinking more about themselves than other people (mentally ill people tend to become very selfish and isolated). they would be mad at the situation, but not necessarily mad at other people, unless they were jealous of them or what they have. they may feel that others have more of a chance than they do at life and it's not fair that they have to deal with the stuff they're going through. That's the kind of person i need to write dialogue for, as if they were confiding in someone. And i'm not planning on having the person commit suicide at the end, i think that would defeat the purpose of the film (which is to educate and inform others about what people with mental illnesses have to deal with, and how they help their situation). So yeah, thanks for everything so far and if anyone has anything else to add, please do so. | |
