Sweet, pathetic or creepy?

LaRascasse

I dream, therefore I am
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In my story, I'm struggling to get a critical piece of information to the reader without resorting to a rather ungainly info dump.

Instead, perhaps it could be salvaged if my protagonist talks to his dead wife at night. It is just the sort of thing he'd (hypothetically) share with her.

As to the act of speaking to someone he used to love who has passed - is it sweet? pathetic? creepy? weird? not something a normal person (even by Literotica standards) would do?

If it is possible, what should the monologue ideally be like?
 
It might work if he thinks what he would have said if she were still alive.

Actually 'talking' to his dead wife might be difficult to get right. Suspending the reader's disbelief could be hard.
 
I'm not sure how creepy others would think it, but I don't think it would be creepy at all. Mostly because I sometimes think about my dad, especially at night when I'm laying awake in bed, and often regret not talking to him more in the last few years before he died. I have made up conversations with him in my mind. It wouldn't be too far a step to actually be talking to him. But it might wake up my wife.
 
My mother-in-law visits her late husband's grave every sunday, cleans it up and share the latest gossip with him. I don't see why your protag shouldn't. Just make sure to put earlier visits to her grave into the story, That way your critical visit doesn't come across as forced.
 
My mother-in-law visits her late husband's grave every sunday, cleans it up and share the latest gossip with him. I don't see why your protag shouldn't. Just make sure to put earlier visits to her grave into the story, That way your critical visit doesn't come across as forced.

Not quite graveside.

This is more personal, more intimate. He's lying all alone in bed at night and the talk is like something he would tell her if she was there.
 
Not quite graveside.

This is more personal, more intimate. He's lying all alone in bed at night and the talk is like something he would tell her if she was there.

In my story "Who Cares What I Wear?" the main character, Emily, composes letters to her former boyfriend in her head. That's her way of talking to him, helping get her thoughts straight, and no one said it was creepy.

Sounds like your character would be doing something similar, and again, it wouldn't be creepy. People do all kinds of things to think things through or organize their thoughts; something like this strikes me as hardly unusual.
 
What about this:

George lay awake, staring at the popcorn ceiling as the dawn broke outside. I'm sorry, Amanda, he thought. I wish I had told you about Jennifer. I wish you had passed without my keeping secrets from you. He knew that it was terrible, but at times like this he missed her. He wouldn't apologize for loving Jennifer, though. Only for not telling her in time. Jennifer had been there when Amanda couldn't. It was Jennifer, now, who helped with the doctor's bills. Life support was expensive, and the insurance had stopped covering it. It's why they both worked nights together on camera.
 
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In my story, I'm struggling to get a critical piece of information to the reader without resorting to a rather ungainly info dump.

Instead, perhaps it could be salvaged if my protagonist talks to his dead wife at night. It is just the sort of thing he'd (hypothetically) share with her.

As to the act of speaking to someone he used to love who has passed - is it sweet? pathetic? creepy? weird? not something a normal person (even by Literotica standards) would do?

If it is possible, what should the monologue ideally be like?

There's a series on our UK TV called "New Tricks". One of the characters, Jack Halford, has a rustic garden chair facing an illuminated memorial plate dedicated to his late wife, Mary. When he has a problem, he talks to her. Naturally, it's a bit one-sided.
Naturally, he does not get a reply, but the script gives one to understand what that reply might have been.

This technique might help you.
 
Nothing creepy or odd if the writing is natural, believable, with a truth to it.


It's probably just me, but the euphemisms for dying and death are the creepy things.

"Passed" or "passed over" sounds like a seance waiting to happen.

My mum used to rage when people referred to her "late husband". "He was never late in his life," she'd say, getting quite cross (English, my mum, got cross, never mad, never angry).

She died, my mum. That's always the easiest word, for me.

In her last few weeks, she had the most extraordinary conversations with people from her childhood, her granny, her dad, her young husband, her first daughter aged three in 1956, dozens more. The amazing thing was, she was quite lucid about it, and knew that I couldn't see them. The little room must have been very very busy, those weeks.

So yes, if it's believable and honest, it will ring true.
 
Nothing creepy or odd if the writing is natural, believable, with a truth to it.


It's probably just me, but the euphemisms for dying and death are the creepy things.

"Passed" or "passed over" sounds like a seance waiting to happen.

My mum used to rage when people referred to her "late husband". "He was never late in his life," she'd say, getting quite cross (English, my mum, got cross, never mad, never angry).

She died, my mum. That's always the easiest word, for me.

In her last few weeks, she had the most extraordinary conversations with people from her childhood, her granny, her dad, her young husband, her first daughter aged three in 1956, dozens more. The amazing thing was, she was quite lucid about it, and knew that I couldn't see them. The little room must have been very very busy, those weeks.

So yes, if it's believable and honest, it will ring true.

You would probably appreciate the start of a recent obit of a book reviewer friend known for not beating around the bushes in her book reviews.

Her obit starts something like, "Rumors are going around that I have passed. That's nonsense; I haven't had trouble with gas for years. I died. I'm deader than a door knob."
 
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Hey if it's good enough for NCIS you should be able to pull it off too. They did a whole episode where each member of the team had conversations with a recently killed team member. Of course she answered them back. Even asked them questions.
 
Hey if it's good enough for NCIS you should be able to pull it off too. They did a whole episode where each member of the team had conversations with a recently killed team member. Of course she answered them back. Even asked them questions.

Would that be the death of Kate ?
 
You would probably appreciate the start of a recent obit of a book reviewer friend known for not beating around the bushes in her book reviews.

Her obit starts something like, "Rumors are going around that I have passed. That's nonsense; I haven't had trouble with gas for years. I died. I'm deader than and door knob."

One famous Australian researcher wrote his own death notice: "Struan would like to inform his friends and acquaintances that he fell off his perch on Friday, 11 January 2002..."
 
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