November 6, 2023
Writing Violet Evergarden Style
Violet Evergarden is a character in the eponymous Japanese light novel series – and subsequently anime. But what does “writing Violet Evergarden style” mean, and why should we care?
Well, as I’ve said before, finding connections in fiction is crucial for creating a cohesive, conceptually solid narrative. But there’s more: Finding connections in general leads to more knowledge, more productive imagination, more surprising paths.
To blow my own trumpet, one of the best compliments I was ever given in my academic life – in the official report accompanying my MA grading no less – was that I have “an uncanny ability in finding connections”.
And so, writing Violet Evergarden style – writing the way a character in a young adult anime writes – might sound like an odd thing to base a writing advice post on – probably not as odd, though, as pairing narrative diversions with a scantily dressed comic heroine. In any case, there are very, very important lessons here.
Writing like Violet Evergarden: Affect (or Lack thereof)
Violet Evergarden is a young girl – a minor by our contemporary standards; the story is set in a fictional world in an interwar-like era – who has been seriously injured as a child soldier.
After recovering, she decides to work as a so-called Auto Memory Doll, which in the world of the series basically describes a ghostwriter. People come to auto memory dolls to have letters, invitations, marriage proposals, and all sorts of such work written by professionals, people who know how to extract the maximum emotional impact from words.
But there is a problem for Violet: She doesn’t understand affect.
Picture Data in Star Trek and you get the idea. Violet begins her journey relentlessly matter-of-fact, direct, unable to understand the complexity and ambiguity of human emotions – let alone put them in writing.
For example, as clients describe how they’d like a letter addressed to their parents, with whom they’ve lost touch and haven’t had much to say, Violet takes this literally and composes a letter that, more or less, reads like a report. Though impeccable in terms of vocabulary and syntax, it is completely devoid of soul.
Soon, however, Violet overcomes her shortcomings, thanks to a crucial element: understanding a concept.
The Importance of Concept Focus
As her clients begin to explore their own complex feelings, struggling to make sense of the impossible ambiguity of human emotions, Violet develops a talent for focusing on the key element, the key concept hidden behind a story.
For some characters, frustration hides the fear of rejection; for others, perplexity turns out to be the fear of loss. Though Violet doesn’t personally understand emotions – indeed, her motivation for becoming an auto memory doll is in her desire to understand love – she begins to understand what it is that people find important.
There is a deep sense of irony involved in Violet’s predicament: To her, the process is initially opaque. Yet the behavioral power of affect becomes directly entwined with the act of writing.
Click to display the embedded YouTube video
So, Writing Like Violet Evergarden: What Does It Really Mean?
In practical terms, think of it like this: Even if you haven’t understood the conceptual foundation of your narrative (which you should have), that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Because writing is a partly subconscious process, your authorial mind places there connections. And these connections are like locks that have keys.
Sometimes there is one key. Sometimes there are a few, united by some sort of super-key; a unifying super-concept that makes everything fall into place.
Ask your characters: What is it that they need? What is this all about? How do they move from one state to another, what have they learned and why?
Writing like Violet Evergarden is to approach your narrative and your characters from the perspective of someone who doesn’t have the answers but does have their eyes (and heart) open. There’s something you’re missing; this isn’t a story of X, but X is a camouflage for something deeper.
Understanding the World Through a Fictional Character
Though there is a delightful meta- element here, what the heading talks about is an experience Violet herself has: While working with a screenwriter (another meta- level!), she discovers that although she hasn’t felt the emotions she reads on the pages, she can vicariously understand them through the characters she can empathize with.
In reality, writing is always a two-way street. The book the writer is creating teaches them how it wants to be created. And sometimes books might take over entirely.
4 Comments
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I personally love how this series wrote side characters. To quote an article I wrote about philosophy in anime, I cited this anime because the script works with the viewers. It is a fascinating experience.
“Violet Evergarden made me shed a lot of water weight because I just wept. Seeing this war veteran struggle to acclimate in a world affected by war was gut-wrenching. Nietzsche’s idea of Amor fati comes to the rescue as the episodes roll by – we can overcome our past without erasure by relying on acceptance. Violet comes to terms with her reality by surrounding herself with perseverance.”
Kino’s journey is other one you can check out. It’s got some fascinating writing choices too.
Excellent points, and indeed the way side characters are written deserves a whole other post on what is the “role” of side characters in a narrative. Besides the screenwriter I mentioned, another interesting such character was the mother who asked Violet to write letters and the woman’s young daughter. That was really hard to watch. That it’s fairly predictable whom the letters are addressed to and why is yet another learning point on how predictability can be a narrative device itself.
Authors who are neurodiverse still manage to write, even fiction. They must have to deal with some version of this supposed disconnect between affect and output – I think the barriers might be more permeable than we understand. And readers can learn from both ND and NT (neurotypical, majority) authors.
There are – indeed, I’d claim they ought to be – as many styles of writing as there are authors, so your argument makes perfect sense.