PENANCE is coming in April 2013.
After the Sandy Hook massacre, I saw a few bits by various other crime writers agonizing over their choice of genre, wondering if, by writing stories that featured violence and mayhem they weren’t contributing to a culture that makes violence and mayhem possible.
I applaud the sentiment. Whenever there is evil, it seems our first impulse is to point the finger at somebody else. Taking the time to look inward instead, making sure you’re not part of the problem, that’s a good thing.
I can’t say I was one of them, though. Maybe ‘cause I’m old. Had that impulse years ago, after some other senseless and horrific act. And back then I figured a couple of things. First, folks have been writing stories chock full of violence since, well, forever. Hell, the Iliad and the Odyssey are pretty much the oldest stories we’ve got. In the first one you got Greeks and Trojans carving each other up over some hot chick and in the second, Ulysses gets home and wastes a mess of guys who were hanging around his house and hitting on his wife because they thought he was dead. Second, assuming that anything I wrote was much more than a mosquito fart into the sails of popular culture felt a little presumptuous.
Death is something I do think about, though. Maybe also ‘cause I’m old, I dunno. Lots of philosopher and psychologist types have done their share of navel gazing on the relationship of death and the creative process, how the yawning maw of the grave and the prospect of eternal nothingness have us scrambling to leave some mark, to mean something. Maybe that’s so.
But any way you slice it, death is a big deal. For each of us, at some point, it’s gonna be the entire freakin’ deal. So what I don’t like, in crime fiction or otherwise, are stories that trivialize death. Stories chuck full of red-shirted Star Trek characters, people tossed in to the story for no reason other than to die so the author can move the plot along.
Hey, I get it. I’ve got plots, I’ve got to move them along, and I’ve killed characters to do it. I understand that it’s all Deus ex Machina when you’re behind the curtain. You’re the author. You’re god of this world. So characters live and die at your pleasure. You are pulling the strings and levers. You just want to Rube Goldberg it up enough that the reader doesn’t call Deus ex Machina bullshit on you, doesn’t think you’re a lazy fuck who just pulls shit out of your ass because you couldn’t be bothered to do the work, to make a world with some rules and logic, one that makes sense. In the end, the story is a machine of your creation. You are the Deus and it is your machina, but you want it to be something special, some big steam-punky monstrosity full of gears and levers that is effective in its operations, but that is also mysterious and a wonder to behold. You don’t want it to be the Coke machine in the hallway that spits out a dead guy whenever you push a button.
Where the hell was I? Oh yeah, death.
I guess this. If you’re gonna be god of this place, then you owe something to your creations. If you’re gonna dream up some poor bastard just to bump him off because that’s what the story needs, give him a little dignity. Make him an actual character, not one of those shooting-range profile targets. If you’re gonna make somebody die, then make the reader care that you did.
In my second novel, MAMMON, a guy goes on a little killing spree just to trigger a war between a couple of criminal enterprises that are in his way. Wants to give them something to keep them busy so he can accomplish his mission. And yeah, that’s making up characters just so they can die. When I read back over that part of the draft, I was really pissed at myself. The scene felt empty, lazy, machina-y. It was just a line in one of those dot-to-dot drawings, a line from plot dot A to plot dot B, except a line drawn with human blood (OK, imaginary human blood).
So I went back and rewrote it. And a good chunk of that scene ended up as a stand-alone story that ran over at Shotgun Honey a while back. (You can read that here if you’re curious. http://www.shotgunhoney.net/2012/05/north-star-by-dan-oshea.html )
The point here? Don’t waste it, not anything. Not a character, not a death. Give things the weight they deserve. Then you aren’t being cheap, you aren’t being exploitive. Then you’re telling a story, not writing violence porn.
We need stories. And things like Sandy Hook are one of the reasons why. The world does waste lives. It doesn’t make sense. So we all need diversions. We all need other worlds to visit, maybe to help make sense of this one, maybe just to get away for a while. If you’re in charge of making one up, make it one worth visiting.
Good point. I’ve done this in the WIP, as a hit is the inciting incident. Something was missing, and I wasn’t sure what. Now I know: I knocked off people who only entered the story to be knocked off. I have to humanize them some, so they’ll matter aside from a plot point, even though they’re low-level drug dealers no one in the story is really sorry to see go.
Thanks.
Dan, you have wisdom beyond your ears and at your age those ears are getting pretty long. Good sentiments here. I have to admit after Sandy Hook, I felt a little guilt and ultimately upon reflection came to the same sentiment. Truth is, these horrific events are worse than most of my imaginings. Every word for a writer has a purpose and the results of those words lean towards the gravity of awareness and not senselessness as is the result of real world violence.
I like action movies. I don’t like the suicidal fanatic bad guys who are there just to die, but I realize that there’s only so much pathos you can generate in such a story. I think the best we can do is make violence dangerous for all involved. In fiction, it too often lacks consequences. You can mow down a room of criminals. One of them is going to have brothers who will hunt you for the rest of your life. they all have mothers.
Bullets do not stop in bodies, walls, car doors, floors, roofs… as we see all too often they ricochet, they penetrate targets and kill innocent people. They deafen everyone in the room. In a car your ears will bleed if the windows aren’t open. You feel gunshots in enclosed spaces. And guns in close quarters are often very little protection if you can be swarmed, grappled, stabbed and strangled.
I’m writing a pulp war novel right now. I’m doing my best to make the violence ugly. Sure the bad guys are fodder, but the good guys never make it through unscathed. Did anyone cry for Penelope’s suitors in the Odyssey?
On the other hand, do you want to read or write about someone who can murder with impunity? In reality, they are rare. We have mechanisms for dealing with the trauma of killing. Very few actual bad-asses resemble those in fiction.
I would highly recommend reading Marc MacYoung and the book On Killing, if you want to write about violent people.
There are individuals who do not react with fear to the prospect of violence, some even become excited. Most of them inhabit prisons and mental institutions and are not coming out anytime soon.
The sane people are afraid, no matter how well they hide it and work through it.
Fantastic post, Dan, as always. (Now I have to go back and reread my copy of MAMMON.)
And, Pluck? I love this:
“There are individuals who do not react with fear to the prospect of violence, some even become excited. Most of them inhabit prisons and mental institutions and are not coming out anytime soon.
The sane people are afraid, no matter how well they hide it and work through it.”
Ms. Monkey,
Alas, you read the original, wrote-it-online first draft. MAMMON’s been through a couple of overalls since then and I’m still working on it. The scene referenced in the post is part of a plot line that wasn’t even in the original (’cause, you know, there REALLY wasn’t enough going on in that one).
Ah. Well, then I have virtually an entirely new book to look forward to then, don’t I?
You’re a beautiful writer. I love the fact that you’ve given so much thought to the issue of violence in fiction. I find it interesting that I haven’t given it much thought even though I’ve now dedicated a number of blog posts to the gun debate raging in the USA. What has troubled me more is the senseless violence in film.
I recently went to see Django Unchained with my husband and 16 yr.old grandson, an avid filmmaker already. I didn’t find the over the top violence funny as Quentin Tarantino had intended. It seems I’m in the minority. In light of the recent tragedies in Sandy Hook and Aurora, my sensitivity to extreme violence in the media has been heightened. I don’t see the comedy in films like that; I see bodies torn apart by assault weapons. The three of us talked about censorship, which we all oppose, and yet, where do we draw the line?
Similarly, with Boardwalk Empire, I like the production values, the story is compelling and yet, I find there are many scenes where I have to turn my head away. I guess as long as I watch these films, tv series, etc., I’m contributing to them continuing in this fashion.
We must tell stories about death and violence because we don’t understand them. Like all of the best questions, I want to wrestle with them, but I don’t want to get intimate with them in the way that would give me the answers. Because then I would be dead.
Thank you, Elizabeth- I was paraphrasing a discussion I had with author and licensed therapist Zak Mucha (his latest: Heavyweight Champion of Nothing) at a bar in New York this month.