Just like with the Romance chapter, I'll provide you guys with tips on how to write angst too! 

Tip #1: Gimme a reason

Why do you wanna write about angst in the first place? Is it really necessary in your books? There better be a real good reason as to why your character is suffering or else your readers won't understanding what's going on or why this is happening. 

Maybe you want to show why your character is the way they are? Or maybe you want to use that angst as a way to change your character and give them some development? These are good reasons as to why you would write about angst! 

If the only reason you want to write about angst is so your character could get closer to the love interest, then you're just romanticizing their issues and you should stop. 

Tip #2: Mental illnesses

Depending on the severity of the angst, your character or characters are probably going to have some mental illnesses (which is very likely if you're writing either Harry Potter or Percy Jackson). It could be depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. Whichever it is, you're obviously going to need to do some research on how to properly write them out.

PLEASE JUST DO YOUR RESEARCH!

And make sure you actually show them through your writing! If your OC is depressed, don't have them go "I'm sad :(" every goddamn line.

Show that they're sad rather then having them comment on it all the time. Your readers aren't stupid (maybe), they're smart enough to figure out how the characters are feeling without you shoving it down their throats. Let your readers discover and feel the emotions themselves, it'll make your book ten times better.

Also, if your story has a suicide scene in, DO NOT write it out in detail. There's been a lot of mental health research about this and so far they've all stated that graphic portrayals of suicide in books, TV shows, movies, etc leads to the increase of suicide rates. I think the same might go with self-harm. So yeah, you can write about these, BUT DON'T GO INTO TOO MUCH DETAIL!

Tip #3: Be careful of the wangst!

What is wangst? According to the Urban Dictionary, 'wangst' is the combination of 'wank' and 'angst'. It basically means ridiculously overblown self-pity or 'whiny angst'.

(*cough cough* Piper *cough cough*)

(And maybe Harry too, sorry man)

This sort of thing happens when authors try too hard to make their stories angsty and make their characters respond to it. Sometimes, the tragedy they're crying over isn't even something super sad.

Wangsty characters choose to cry and/or whine about their issues instead of actually going around trying to solve it. Sometimes these characters are called out on it, but they still do nothing to change, other times these characters aren't called out so they continue to bitch about it even more. They're either excessively angry or excessively sad, and the books are practically filled with chapters of them just wangsting around and doing nothing helpful.

DO NOT DO THIS! Nobody wants to read a book where the main character just bitches about their issues and does nothing to actually help themselves. It may as well just be a diary written by a moody teenager rather than an actual book.

Give your main character a personality other than being whiny and pathetic. Have them actually help themselves or accept help from others. They might not do that at the beginning, but your character should realize somewhere (preferably before the end) in the book that they're being dumb and snap out of it and actually start trying to make their lives better.

Tip #4: Oversharing 🙂

This... is the thing that annoys me the MOST when it comes to angst. 

Look, I get that you wanna show how angsty your book is by making your character miserable... BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE THEM TALK ABOUT IT SO MUCH???

It's kind of the same with wangsting, except this is so much worse because the character is very VERY vocal about their issues. And worse, they compare their trauma to others and act as if what other people experienced doesn't matter because what they experienced was much "worse" 🙄

Some random person: Ugh, my life sucks 😥

The super speshul OC: Oh you think your life sucks? YOU ACTUALLY HAVE PARENTS AND YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO WATCH YOUR FRIENDS FUCKING DIE! YOU'RE NOT THE ONE BEING ABUSED, I AM! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE A SHITTY LIFE, YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! MY LIFE IS SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE, SO SHUT THE FUCK UP—

The random person: 👀 *quietly leaves while they're in mid-rant because wtf*

This is just... 💀💀💀 Please don't do this. The amount of times I've seen "dark" or "angst" fics where the main character just openly complains about how "traumatized" they are and—

Guys, this is not realistic. 

Most people who are traumatized don't want to talk about their trauma. They don't want to talk about it to their family, their friends, their therapists, and they definitely don't want to talk about it to people they don't even know. 

(Some people do like to talk about their trauma, but believe me, they don't go about it like this)

Having your character vocalize their issues so much to the point that it actually sounds like they're boasting about how traumatized they are is not you write a traumatized character. 

I hate it so much because the author's don't have anything right. After the traumatic event occurs, the only changes the main character undergoes is a more bitter, darker, and angrier mood and that's literally it. 

Here are the signs and symptoms of trauma in children (I used the children version one since this is a guidebook for Harry Potter and Percy Jackson fics, and most OCs would be teenagers so yeah): 

(Honestly some of those things can apply to anyone regardless of their age ^)

Look at all those signs and symptoms and the MC apparently only suffers through anger outbursts 😤

Look, I get that it's hard to show trauma without being so straightforward with it, especially since some readers won't be able to catch the less obvious signs so they might not even realize that the characters are supposed traumatized.

But fuck the readers. As I've said before, it's important to SHOW not TELL. 

It would be weird for you to have to write "MC has regressed behaviors because of their trauma", so you would need to write about trauma in a less blunt manner. Show the regressions, show the anti-social behavior, the withdrawal, the emotional numbing, show all of that instead of saying "MC has anti-social behavior". 

And please... for fucks sake, PLEASE, do not have your MC shout to the top of their lungs about how horrible their life is because of this and that and how they have it worse compared to everyone else. That's inaccurate, annoying, and it's just an overall insulting way to portray those actually suffering from trauma. 

Tip #5: Character deaths

First off, if the character who's being killed off isn't meaningful to the story or important to the main character in any way, then I don't think it really matters how you write their death scene. Hell, you might not even describe it. You can straight up just have someone say "(this character) died yesterday." and end it at that. None of your readers would really care.

BUT! If the character is meaningful to the story or important to the main character, then you should probably put a little more effort into their death scenes.

Never do their deaths off-screen if they're an important character. Always write it out! Kill them off in any way: they pass away from an illness, they're murdered, an accident, etc. But don't make it random!

If your character passes away from an illness, let that illness be known from the beginning rather than "Oh no! OC has cancer! *two chapters later they die*" No! That's too quick! Let the character suffer and let their loved ones suffer too!

A successful character death also requires other character's react to it as well! If the OC was well-loved, then write about their loved ones struggling to move on without them and don't make it last one chapter and then the next, they've perfectly moved on. If the OC was hated, then show the aftermaths of it too. Why was the character hated? Were they the leaders of a totalitarian regime? Show people celebrating! The readers should also feel impacted by their deaths as well. Either way, just show the affects of their death.

OH AND AVOID THE LONG-DRAWN OUT DEATH SPEECH! It's too cliche and over-dramatic. Look at how Rick wrote his death scenes. The characters had pretty short lines before they died that most of us remember by heart like:

"Charlie... See Charlie..."

"I can see the stars again, my lady."

"Deserve better... If they just... had thrones—"

"Ethan. Me. All the unclaimed. Don't let it... Don't let it happen again."

And so on. They're short, but pretty damn meaningful so a loooooong ass speech is unnecessary.

Tip #6: Get in the mood

I find it hard to write angst if I'm listening to a bunch of upbeat songs, so go listen to something sadder. I suggest going onto YouTube and just finding one of those hella specific playlists like "sad songs to cry to", "songs to remind me that im a loser", and so forth.

Yeah, the titles are really specific.

Tip #7: Don't try too hard...

Please don't create outrageously unrealistic situations to hurt your character in an attempt to make your fic angsty. 

An example of this are all those betrayed Percy fics 💀

The camp would never toss Percy aside the second some asshole other son of Poseidon shows up. Nor would Annabeth ever cheat on him with said other son of Poseidon. That's not only completely unrealistic, but soooo OOC for EVERYONE. 

Annabeth wouldn't do that. 

Chiron wouldn't do that.

The Stolls wouldn't do that. 

Clarisse wouldn't do that.

The gods wouldn't toss away their literal savior. 

Fuck, even the bad guys wouldn't do that. They'd take one good look at the Percy Jackson wannabe and be like "Ew, give us the real one back"

Just... try to make the angsty situations realistic and don't make anyone OOC. 

The problem with writing angst is that authors try to make situations for their character to get hurt, and they sometimes take it too far by thinking up unrealistic scenarios and making the characters act OOC. That's just way too much and they're going tooooo far. Tone it down 💀

Tip #8: Some people might not get it... But don't let it get you down 🥲

When you're writing angst, you might write about mental illnesses and abuse and well... sometimes people aren't going to be aware of it 🥲🥲🥲

Do NOT let their confusion tempt you to make your fic more straightforward. The thing about angst is that you should always show, don't tell. It won't look very professional if you just straight up say "This character has depression because she is being abused by this other character". No no, no. Like I said, SHOW don't tell!

I have personal experience with this 🥲 While my readers are very much aware of how fucked up my characters are, some are still surprised whenever I or someone else talks about the abusive actions of a few of my characters. 

Don't let this make you believe you're not writing your angst well enough or that you need to be more direct with how you write it. You're doing perfectly fine and you write beautifully, some readers are just unable to read between the lines as well as others. That's not your fault or their fault. If this ever happens then maybe just try to explain it to them in a comment or whatever, just don't EVER change the way you write because of this! 

Tip #9: WARNINGS!

ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO LEAVE WARNINGS! 

Either do it in your intro chapter or foreword or whatever you wanna call it, or put your warnings in the beginning of a chapter. Just make sure to leave warnings somewhere in your book because depending on what kind of angst you write about, it could be triggering to some people. 

AND EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, IF YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE ABOUT SUICIDE...

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PUT A WARNING RIGHT BEFORE IT HAPPENS. Yes, I know it might ruin the surprise effect you want to give your readers, but like I said back in Tip #2, suicide is extremely triggering for people. 

Give your readers a chance to brace themselves, or better yet, if you write out a suicide scene (and please don't make it too graphic), put up a divider so your readers can choose to skip out on it.

And by divider, I mean something like this: 

⚠️ SCENE BEGINS HERE ⚠️

[suicide scene]

⚠️ SCENE ENDS HERE ⚠️

Keep your readers safe, yall 😃👍

And... THIS WAS ALL I COULD THINK OMFG. It's so weird because I just LOVE torturing my characters and making shit angsty but I just kept blanking out when I was writing this chapter. I guess angst just comes to me naturally... which is a little concerning, but oh well 😂