Excuse me while I write about using the bathroom
Basic bodily functions (or the lack thereof) in fiction
Hi friends,
Have you ever noticed that books rarely mention going to the bathroom?1 Even in stories during which questions are undoubtedly raised in readers’ minds, this issue not often addressed. At least not in the books I’m reading. I suppose that’s because potty breaks are such a natural and necessary part of life, like breathing or eating, that they aren’t worth mentioning. I mean, how often does this particular part of being a human being really impact one’s day to day life? Unless you’ve got intestinal distress, you’re potty training a toddler, or you’re trapped with a group of strangers in an enclosed space with no toilet in sight, a trip to the potty is not exactly noteworthy.
But when it is relevant to the plot, it's worth mentioning the pot.
In my middle grade novel in verse, Mari in the Margins, the main character is the middle child in a family with nine kids. The story centers around her chaotic family life, and so naturally the bathroom (though not specifically “going to the bathroom”) gets an occasional mention. How could it not in a story that takes place in part in a chaotic household of twelve people? Mari finds relief (from the chaos) on more than one occasion by escaping into the bathroom!
My current work in progress is a historical novel in verse. Part of that history is outhouses. And much of the story involves a group of people, many of them young children, unable to leave a one-room building, even to use the outhouse.
So as I’ve worked on this book I have had all of these interesting issues to consider. Will there be "accidents"? Will the group of people have to come up with an alternative? What could they use for a make-shift chamber pot?
I have to admit that I'm delighted at the prospect of dealing with this issue as the story progresses. It presents such possibilities for developing tension and revealing aspects of different characters' personalities! Want to know more about an 11-year-old’s character? Put her next to a six-year-old who can’t hold it anymore and watch what happens. Of course, you can also throw them into the middle of a deadly blizzard. But, why not both? In real life, both would be an issue. Anyone who’s been around a six year old for more than an hour or two knows this to be true. So, while I’m not writing a story about indoor alternatives to outhouses in survival situations, I’m not going to let this opportunity go to waste.
I want this story to feel as real and relatable as possible. In my research for this story, I read a lot of firsthand accounts of this particular historical event. Stories about children being stranded at school or making their way home through a blizzard against what seemed like impossible odds.
I’ve tried my best to put myself in the situation these children found themselves in. Part of that is imagining having obstacles to the everyday things we often take for granted, like being able to go to the bathroom when we need to, even if it means heading outside to the outhouse. This story would feel a lot less real if I were to avoid writing about one of the most basic bodily functions and the challenges it presents for the characters.
As writers, we owe it to our readers to make my characters as real as we can. Writing about these everyday tasks, especially in survival situations, can reveal aspects of our characters that we might not ordinarily think about.
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What do you think? Do writers sometimes miss opportunities by avoiding these kinds of questions in their stories?
In other “potty talk” related news, perhaps you’ll be happy to know that my aging dog’s potty issue that I mentioned in last week’s newsletter turned out to be a bug, not age-related incontinence. It affected both dogs, and they are both better now! Phew!
Brandon Sanderson has an explanation for this in chapter 9 of Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia, book three of his Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series. Fun middle grade series!
What really drives me nuts is when a character allows that they have to pee in the worst possible way and then the author drags on and on while you're thinking "will you for the sake of all that is holy please let your character pee."
I cycled through eyebrow raises and snorts of laughter while reading this. BECAUSE, as a writer I always wonder why eating and toilet-time are sometimes NEVER mentioned in books. Did the author just forget? Did the editor find it irrelevant? They are part of the human condition!