Odd title. I'm aware. But we'll get there in time, my friend.
I was hit with a couple of realizations this morning, but here's a quick story first: today was just not my day. Nothing-- with the exception of a delicious chocolate milkshake-- contributed positively to my day at all. I'm not going to sit here and bore you with the many details, but you should know that I was operating under the influence of anger for the duration of Monday. Not the Oh my god I am so annoyed right now I don't think I can passively sit here and not whine about my life like a little baby kind, but the IMMA KILL YOU STAY OUT OF MY WAY kind. It was scary.
Realization #1 (that I've had over half a billion times): Mondays suck the life out you, whether you are at school, work, or just minding your own business on a remote island with no signs of civilization around. That's just what Mondays do. It's a universe quirk, I guess. I can't think of any other explanation for it.
Realization #2: I obsessively clean when I'm angry and need to think. You guys should see my room; it's so serene and peaceful that a deer might just walk through any second and mistake my bed for a nice little haven (I don't know where the heck that analogy came from... ignore it. Just ignore it.)
Since I try to turn things into deeper matters than they actually are, I stumbled upon...
Realization #3: MCs and other characters with anger quirks are pretty cool.
I've never written for an MC that had a weird anger issue tick, but I think it's safe to say that at some point in our WIPs, our characters get mad at some point or another. If they don't, that would imply that nothing in your story is wrong, which leads us to believe that your WIP has zero source of conflict whatsoever.
So I clean when I get angry, right? Here's another quirk: I had a horrible day at work a couple weeks ago, and I need to blow off some steam. In my blind rage, I bought a tube of cookie dough and drove over to the local park (this is at night, mind you), sat in the grass, and yelled everything I thought was wrong with the world at the sky.
...I am also a psychopath, if you couldn't pick that up from the last paragraph.
So the next time you come to a part in your WIP where your MC is visibly upset, don't just go the Clara clenched her jaw and and cracked her knuckles but swallowed her anger route; instead, think about taking the Clara got out her GPS and searched for the nearest lake so she could shoot her handgun at it path. It could be a stretch, but who knows? It could just add the depth you've been looking for.
"Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean." -Maya Angelou
