Winding the Mind: Writing Violence Without a Snap

Madness doesn’t arrive all at once.
It accumulates.

When I was writing Jessie Anne, I wasn’t interested in the moment she “snaps.” That trope—the mild-mannered woman who finally breaks and becomes violent—has always felt lazy to me. Worse than lazy, it felt disrespectful.

Generations of women are swallowed daily by pressure, labor, emotional restraint, humiliation, and quiet endurance, and the overwhelming majority of them do not erupt into murder. To suggest that sustained mistreatment naturally produces violence isn’t just narratively thin, it misunderstands women entirely.

I didn’t want Jessie Anne to become dangerous because the world was cruel to her.

I wanted her to be dangerous from the start.

Madness as a Constant, Not a Catalyst

Jessie Anne isn’t a good woman pushed too far. She isn’t an avatar for “what happens when women are finally done being nice.” That framing collapses real female endurance into spectacle, as if violence is the inevitable endpoint of being mistreated.

It isn’t.

Jessie Anne’s mind was always off-center. The descent isn’t about transformation, it’s about exposure. What changes over the course of the book isn’t her capacity for violence, but how close the reader is allowed to stand to it.

This distinction mattered to me on both a craft and a moral level.

The horror comes from realizing she’s not unraveling under pressure, she’s revealing herself through repetition, fixation, and rehearsal. Her obsession doesn’t create the madness. It gives it shape.

Obsession as Repetition, Not Intensity

Real obsession doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels procedural. Responsible, even. You’re not acting - you’re thinking. Planning. Refining.

I kept returning to a simple, universal experience while writing her:

Getting the phone number of someone you’re crushing on and NOT texting them.

Not because you don’t want to, but because your brain won’t let you. You replay every possible message. You imagine every outcome. You rehearse restraint as if it’s discipline. Each delay feels like control. Each repetition convinces you that you’re being careful, not consumed. That’s obsession before it becomes pathology. And for Jessie Anne, that looping was always there. The thoughts don’t escalate. They condense. They tighten. Each repetition removes a little doubt and adds a little justification. The same idea returns, slightly sharpened, until it feels inevitable.

She isn’t spiraling forward. She’s circling.

The Illusion of Control

Obsession thrives on rules.

Jessie Anne tells herself not yet.
Later.
Soon.

These moments of restraint aren’t evidence of morality; they’re evidence of structure. And structure is how unhealthy minds survive long enough to do real damage.

This was crucial to me: her violence doesn’t come from losing control. It comes from believing she has it.

Just like waiting to send the text. The longer you wait, the more meaningful the act becomes. By the time you finally do it, it doesn’t feel impulsive. It feels considered. Necessary. Earned. Violence, in her world, works the same way.

Release Is Not Chaos—It’s Relief

When action finally arrives, it isn’t explosive. It’s quiet. Because the climax already happened in her head. I didn’t want violence to function as a rupture. I was more interested in what happens when a mind rehearses something so thoroughly that action feels less like a break and more like a continuation. I wanted it to feel like the last step in a process they’d already watched her rehearse again and again.

Jessie Anne doesn’t snap.

She completes a thought.

Why This Kind of Madness Is Harder to Look At

We’re comfortable with madness that announces itself - screaming, incoherent, obviously broken. We can distance ourselves from that. We can say I would never. But obsession doesn’t announce itself. It sounds like thinking something through. Like being careful. Like self-control.

Jessie Anne is frightening not because she’s a symbol of female rage finally unleashed, but because she was never waiting for permission to be monstrous. The cruelty of the world doesn’t create her - it simply gives her something to orbit.

Not all suffering turns people violent.
Not all endurance cracks.
And not all monsters are made.

Some are simply allowed, over time, to show themselves.

Madness doesn’t arrive as a scream.
It arrives as a thought you’ve had before.
And before that.
And before that.

Until one day, you stop waiting.

If you enjoyed Hysterical and are interested in stories that explore obsession, psychological repetition, and violence without a breaking point, here are a few books that may resonate with you:

• Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
  A clinical, looping interiority where obsession curdles into violence without moral rupture. Ruth never “snaps” - she just keeps going.

• Animal by Lisa Taddeo
  A masterclass in rehearsed violence and eroticized fixation. The narrator’s interior life does the damage long before her actions do.

• Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
  Filth, repression, repetition. The tension comes not from escalation, but from how long the mind can sit with its worst impulses before acting.

• My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
  Not violent in a traditional sense, but shows obsession as routine, control as self-erasure, and interior collapse without spectacle.

• The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
  A brutal examination of repression, repetition, and desire turned inward until violence feels procedural rather than explosive.

If you have not yet read Hysterical by Amber Dean, you can purchase it at:
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