I’ve come to the horrifying realization that I’m a literary
psychopath. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why. Spoilers. Not a literal
psychopath, a literary one. There’s a very
big difference. Please don’t send people with torches or the police to my
door.
Most writers know that some of their counterparts, if they’re
not among the sect themselves, like to kill the occasional character. It depend
on what you write. If you write murder mysteries, it’s a sure bet you get to do
this. Thrillers? Almost guaranteed. Literary fiction? Maybe, it depends. Write
it and see where it goes. SciFi/Fantasy? The same. Romance? Um . . . not
usually. Not graphically anyway. Long death scenes just aren’t romantic. (Take
that Shakespeare!)
I write romance – usually - and I kill characters.
Habitually, it turns out. But I don’t draw it out, except once. Well, and I
have another one coming up . . . never mind. I also write literary thrillers,
but that’s a new thing. Since I killed a character something like five times, I decided maybe that one
wasn’t romance after all.
It’s okay, it’s good. It’s healthy. I save my emotional
scenes (death, sex, whatever) for when I’m in the appropriate mood for them.
When Hubby has a bad day, he takes it out on the dishes. Pots slam against the
counter as he makes dinner, or unloads the dishwasher (and I shoot dirty looks
to The Boy for not having done it already because it’s his job!) When I have a
bad day, I calmly walk to my computer, lock myself in my room, and kill a
character or otherwise ruin their life. The Lexi Frost and Thousand Words
series? I’ve had those mapped in general for years. And I’ve been writing key
scenes for years. I still have to write the actual books and jigsaw in the
scenes I wrote a year or two ago, but the biggies I’ve got written or outlined
because I was mad at someone or just really had to write a good sex scene and
knew these characters hooked up at this point in the future. It’s the
unexpected sex scenes I have to write now. Pretty weird for someone who doesn’t
plot things as a rule.
And yet I still
haven’t found a way to kill someone off by feeding them to piranha. (Everyone
needs goals.)
Anyway, writing death scenes helps. It releases a lot of
tension. Writing the aftermath of the death of someone from the viewpoint of
someone who was close to them is even better. A lot of emotion there. (Okay,
that’s worthy of the romance genre.) For those who enjoy writing, I suggest
considering this as an exercise, assuming of course you have a supply of
tissues on hand and no small children who are going to interrupt and ask you
what’s wrong. It’s really difficult to explain a connection to a fictional
character to a child.
“Your imaginary friend died?”
“No, honey, he’s not my . . . Yes. My imaginary friend died.”
I killed him by having his parachute fail to open. Then his backup got tangled,
forcing him to struggle with it and blowing him off course. He landed in a
tree, breaking several bones. Falling from the tree, he then fell backward down
a ravine where he landed among boulders and was bit by a rattlesnake.
“That’s sad.”
“Yes.” It was overkill. Literally literary overkill.
No comments:
Post a Comment