The dark side, Baby!

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Gala

Do you love it, think it, write it? Do your friends and family know?

I was telling a friend that if Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho came to my house for Thanksgiving I'd have a twinge handing him the knife to butcher, er, carve the bird.

OTOH, my readers and audience prefer my violent scenes, preferable those with a few strokes of sex mixed in.

I've found that with all of my family gone now, I feel even freer to write the dark stuff. I've heard other authors say this. There are several books on the market on adult orphans; I'm waiting for my big wild "mommy can't see me" streak to hit hard. I see it coming.

I look honest and sweet to people. I smile, I'm soft spoken, I'm comppassionate. I look at photos of myself and think, "What an angelic countenance..."

I desire to write and publish more of the horrors (violence, psychosis, evil, nightmares) that have lurked in thought since I was two or younger; as far back as I can recall. If I believed in reincarnation I'd say I was reincarnated cuz how else could I know all this stuff? Well...my oldest brother was a sociopathic schizo...and there's more personal experience. But a lot of it I believe I was born with.

Curious if any of the rest of ya have ramblings, experiences on writing the darkness.

I'm not into horror genre, but I do enjoy seeing my audience raise their eyebrows and hearing them laugh nervously when my character turns more violent than her attacker. Yeah!

<img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif" />
 

maestrowork

I love the dark side. I deliberately want my protagonists to have dark sides. I think dark sides make people 3-dimensional. I don't know anyone, no matter how wonderful they are, who do not have a dark side. Even my best characters have dark sides, but you (readers) know they're fundamentally good people.

I explore a lot of my own dark sides when I write. I think it's very liberating, to be able to explore those feelings and fears and anger and not so nice stuff. I find that makes me more rounded and human and more understanding and less judgmental of others.
 

Gala

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I explore a lot of my own dark sides when I write. <hr></blockquote>

Me too, and more so as I mature in writing ability.

I am a recovering Baptist. The old complexes are difficult to kill, but not impossible, hee hee. Sharpen the knife.

If audience response if a guage, the dark stories I write, tinged with humor, are the most appealing. I've been experimenting with a group of writers, sharing writing I'd be the most ashamed for anyone to know I was capable of. They beg for more.
 

preyer

i think it's practically impossible for me to write a novel without thinking of the worst possible things a person can do, think, feel, or say. short stories... bah, screw those, you just can't get the full flavour of a character with a dark side. it's fun and challenging trying to at least somewhat justify their sins, too.

do i want mom, ms. religious, to read my books? hell no. but if it ain't fun for me to write, why expect it fun to read? i'm thinking the one thing i never had a character do is bestiality. no, i take that back. hm, damn. is there anything i haven't written for pure shock value?

the story i'm working on now is purely dark from any angle. it's not evil, but it ain't pretty, either.

i guess i'm a pretty demented person, truth be told. for instance, you ever wake from a dream about something horrible you did or done to you and sit their for a long while until the haze is lifted wondering if that was real? don't ask me why, but i recently had a dream where i strangled my ex-girlfriend, buried her in the basement of the house we had, and concreted the floor over. for several minutes i had to keep asking myself if i had really done that, and all the while i felt this very real and very strong guilt-- for something i hadn't even done! lol. the weird thing is, my guilt lasted for a few more daze, as if i was carrying around this huge secret. but it's great because now i understand completely without having to use a lick of imagination how the guy in 'the telltale heart' felt. read it? i *lived* it!

i believe that when you write, you have to be as honest as you possibly can with them. holding back on a character just because a scene or aspect of him makes you uncomfortable is actually a disservice not only to the reader, but yourself as well. mom will just have to learn to live with the fact she gave birth to the anti-christ.

on the flip-side, is there a writer out there without a very defined moral and ethical code? that is, don't writers tend to be very philosophical types of people who sees 'good' and 'evil' as labels of convenience, knowing there's a psychology motivating a person's and character's actions? i'm amazed how most writers can even have strong political convictions: aren't we geared towards seeing both sides? we justify our own dark sides by exorcising our daemons through prose then cruxify liars and thieves and gods for being what we only dream of being. for those of us who explore the nether regions of our own psyche while yet being considered sane, at some point doesn't it make you wonder how capable you are of committing these atrocities? with such knowledge, does that make us cowardly or righteous?

the dark side? if a person doesn't like it, avoid my novels at all costs.
 

Writing Again

My mother was never a prude, but she was practical. She would point out that "You can only go so far. Remember Mark Twain was smart enough to not publish everything he wrote."

She told me, "It is okay to push the limits, but not okay to put your neck in the noose."

In those days it was the adults who disapproved of me. Nowadays it is the kids who disapprove of me. But hey, when you've been disapproved of for as long as I have, you wouldn't want it any other way.
 

HConn

... don't writers tend to be very philosophical types of people who sees 'good' and 'evil' as labels of convenience, knowing there's a psychology motivating a person's and character's actions?

No. Writers are just as varied as anyone else.
 

preyer

maybe i should amend that last part to read 'novelists' instead of 'writers.' i took it for granted that that's how that word would have been read in the forum, but i see how how it could be misconstrued to mean any writer of any kind. still, i believe there are some common things we tend (and that's really the qualifier here) share. we're generally pretty smart folk for the most part even if not all of our grades necessarily bore that out all the time (ahem!), should be fairly observant, and more often than not seem to be the watchers and not the active participants in a drama (though i never seem to avoid being around it on some level). do you agree with that more, or less?
 

Jamesaritchie

I like well-written horror fiction, but such fare as American Psycho is beyond the pale for me. A matter of taste, but I prefer good story, good characters, and I'll take my sex and gore off stage.
 

Greenwolf103

I really think it depends on the kind of book you are writing. If a reader perceives a book to be horror, they'll expect a certain amount of gore and darkness. And, hey, if that's the kind of book you are writing, it's allowed!

I know what you mean about what others will think, though. I feel that way with my chapbook of horror poetry. (I've even been asked things like "what were you thinking?" and curious looks from people reading it.) But, you know, you're a lot better off not worrying about something like that. Worry about your story. If something belongs in the story, leave it there.

And, yes, writing this stuff does allow us the chance to explore our dark side (everybody has one). But what's important is that we are able to distinguish fantasy from reality.
 

Gala

I didn't read American Psycho, nor have I made it through any of Thomas Harris books (Silence of the Lambs) but enjoyed the movies. I've enjoyed Patricia Cornwell's older books, however, and used to soak up true crime bios.

For me it does boil down to honesty in writing and supporting a good story. I don't care to write gratuitous anything. I've critiqued such work.

In one case the reader tried to shock us (he said so when he prefaced the reading) by having a cyber-robot mother rape her daughters--something like that. The audience was clearly bored but we gave him the most positive critique we could. I'm sure there was a lot of "I was intrigued by..."

I spent much of my life in what's called disassociation. That means one is in physical and or emotional pain and blocks it out. Such a person has great courage and survival skills, and is often successful beyond their ability.

Writing novels is a fun way for me to use that education, and notch it up further to let my own shadow talk. The one I was born with.

And isn't it fun when someone cuts you off in traffic or is rude or exhibits a superiourity complex and you get to twist and torture them in the day's missive?

Psycho babble aside, I love writing the dark side, and that's all that matters! Thanks for the great replies.
 

Yeshanu

I'm not into horror, and I don't put things in my novel just for the shock value, but if my characters and my novel don't have the dark side in them, it's not truth I'm writing, but lies.

One of my major problems with my first draft was the good guys were too good (no dark side) and the bad guys were too bad (nothing the reader can empathize with).

The world isn't black and white, or even shades of grey. It's living colour, and our writing should be, too.
 

zerohour21

Pretty much everything I write is dark, morbid, grim, and pretty sick. Mostly, they are short stories, but i have a few novellas and novels, as mentioned before. Some of my characters are nice, while others are not so nice.

As for opinions and philosophies, as mentioned earlier in this thread, well, I can be pretty opinionated, though usually can see both sides of an issue. I may or may not vehemently disagree with you, though will still at least try to understand where you are coming from and will recognize that you are not a bad person or a moron just because you disagree with me.
 

preyer

sitting down to write the worst possible thing for its own sake has no point, thus no shock value. the point is there has to be a purpose for it. robo-mums raping their own spawn, on the surface, doesn't seem to be a reason to write the story. that's certainly 'worse' than having my 16th century 15 year old protagonist seduce and have sex with the priest on the altar, but i, all humility aside, can pretty much guarantee my scene will be much more shocking because it's, ahem, appropriate, at least for the story.

those who gloss over sex and violence do so for their own reasons, but from my standpoint it's hard to delve into the character's inner workings without providing the details of the acts themselves. oh, i'm sure better writers than myself can, but, damnit, who *always* wants this stuff, for lack of a better term, white-washed?

after all, the anti-hero has been some of the most popular characters of all time. villians without redemptive qualities and heroes without sin are for cartoons.
 

Writing Again

Learn a lesson from The Godfather: Those people are good who fight an evil worse then themselves.

( For those who do not understand the reference: The Corleone family refused to deal drugs. )
 
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