This is gonna sound weird

One aspect of being a writer that I enjoy in having a certain state of mind that makes be observant of the people and environment around me and what I read about. It many ways I actually really liked working at Wal-Mart during my summers when I was in college because it exposed me to a whole spectrum of people I won't talk to on my day to day travels. I had religious people preach to me, ex-marines talk about exploits in battle, and racists talk about defending their homes.

When I was doing research on female Russian named I found all these website selling Russian brides. I was amazed to hear them talk about the ladies as if they were a breed of dog with certain characters ideal of powerful American men.

Its aways good to have your world rocked a little bit. Keeps you thinking.

ACEnders said:

Has anyone experienced that before? I feel like maybe there's something wrong with me, almost getting enjoyment out of these people's pain. It's not their pain that brings me entertainment, but rather their stories. And it's not the kind of entertainment that brings laughs and smiles, but rather tears and heartache.

Is something wrong with me? Or is it just the passion I have as a writer?

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No, you are not weird. Your reactions are normal and necessary if you are to bring the experiences you write about to life for the reader.

My second book dealt in part with the beheadings in Iraq during the first few years of the US invasion. I forced myself to watch two of these. I almost died myself. You have no idea how long it takes to do this kind of thing, especially when done by murderers and not by a surgically trained person. Enough said on that.
Do what you have to do and then try, if you can, to leave in on the paper and not in your mind. I'm shaking as I type this, so what do I know about forgetting anything?
C

I would think that is one of the advantages to writing - having a bigger internal life, with more joys and heartaches than you can cram into eighty-some normal years.

I think part of the makeup of the good writer is a certain voyeurism. People are our subject -- we must observe them, study them, understand them. Advice columns and call-in radio are writer-candy. These days, so are Internet forums and blogs.

A writer incurious about other people isn't a writer I'd want to read.

The trick is to observe and study without causing the observed discomfort or pain. This is easy on the Internet -- just lurk. No problem with TV or radio, either. Where "live" subjects are involved, you need to learn how to spy and eavesdrop inconspicuously. Not all that difficult in our increasingly exhibitionistic or plain old oblivious society -- man, the things people don't mind yammering into a cell phone, inches from your ear!

I suppose some people on the young widows forum might be unnerved to know a writer was doing research among them, but others might even welcome the chance to have something of their grief tranlated, transfigured, into art. That they're writing about it themselves and putting it out in public reveals the human impulse to document and share experience.

Just go softly and compassionately, and ultimately you'll be doing good, not harm.

My wife calls me a "ghoul," because I view all the world's pains and heartaches as "material." She isn't mad when she says it, or disgusted, it is simply an observation, and an acute one. I think all writers have a bit of that "ghoulish" aspect, in that we look at human suffering the way "normal" human beings do. But then we have our other, sometimes secret but always present way of looking at it all -- as potential "material."

Don't feel bad, ACE. It sounds like this just happens to be one of the things that grabs you and makes you look. I don't think we choose them, they're kind of already there in our heads. We're all different. My thing happens to be graveyards. Now THAT'S weird.

steveg144 said:

My wife calls me a "ghoul," because I view all the world's pains and heartaches as "material." She isn't mad when she says it, or disgusted, it is simply an observation, and an acute one. I think all writers have a bit of that "ghoulish" aspect, in that we look at human suffering the way "normal" human beings do. But then we have our other, sometimes secret but always present way of looking at it all -- as potential "material."

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This is so true. Twisting someone else's dire circumstances or pain for the sake of a story may be necessary and fascinating and irresistable, but sometimes it does feel ghoulish.

The term ghoulish has been used three times in recent posts. I feel if I don't say something about this I will be tagged with this sentiment. My viewing two murders that were filmed by the murderers themselves had nothing to do with morbid bloodlust. It was pure research.
In the end I let the victims down. In the end I could not bring myself to describe their last moments. As a writer, I should have been able to overcome my sense of horror. Although I consider myself a good wordsmith, I was inadequate to the task. I don't feel like a ghoul. I feel ashamed.
C

When you care about what you read and what you write--that makes you the best reader and writer. The storyteller is the oldest profession, not as glamorous as the other, but much closer to the souls that hear and share.

citymouse said:

The term ghoulish has been used three times in recent posts. I feel if I don't say something about this I will be tagged with this sentiment. My viewing two murders that were filmed by the murderers themselves had nothing to do with morbid bloodlust. It was pure research.
In the end I let the victims down. In the end I could not bring myself to describe their last moments. As a writer, I should have been able to overcome my sense horror. Although I consider myself a good wordsmith, I was inadequate to the task. I don't feel like a ghoul. I feel ashamed.
C

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I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I never went anywhere near the decapitation films. You would have to rig me up like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange to make me look at that kind of thing. But I've heard from other people that they, like you, were very sorry they viewed the films.

All kinds of motivations could have driven the viewers, from leering sadism to a sincere wish to understand the horror of the murders and serve the victims.

I think it's important to think about a difference between reading a widow's forum and watching real life violence. The widows are willingly revealing their thoughts and emotions. The victims had no choice.

Nothing's wrong. You still have the reaction I would expect someone to have to all the grief and pain you're reading about, so I guess your passion for writing is shining through.

Eldritch said:

Don't feel bad, ACE. It sounds like this just happens to be one of the things that grabs you and makes you look. I don't think we choose them, they're kind of already there in our heads. We're all different. My thing happens to be graveyards. Now THAT'S weird.

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Better not be! I love graveyards. The older they are, the better. I love the inscriptions. But I also think about how they died, from what, and why so young. Sometimes I'll see entire families wiped out within a month's time. Flu? Typhoid? Fire? Gets the imagination going. And yeah, when I see a baby's grave, that brings me to tears. Always.

Nothing wrong with doing some research. If you hadn't read the forums on the young widows site, would you have the character you created? Maybe you would have had to build characterization on your supposition and hope you got the feelings and emotions accurate.

I had to ask a coworker about his divorce because the wife of the MC in my story gets hit on by a guy who claims he is recently divorced. Not having been divorced, I didn't know timelines or details of one's life when it happens.

I talked to an older female coworker about dating and picking up men in bars and what it's like to have flattery poured on you as part of a seduction game.

I exchanged several lengthy emails with a professional stage magician to get some insight on the life a magician and the world of magic at large. Gave me some great insight.

So, you research what you must and your book will be all the better for it.

allen

Writing fiction without some emotional base is reality eliminates most opportunity for a bond of feeling between the writer and the reader. Since that bond is necessary to keep 'em turning the pages, you're not doing anythin wrong at all. It isn't ghoulish; it's professional. Writers are expected to be the witnesses of humanity; that's what gives us the fuel to create what we do.

Well, reading novels would then be a form of voyeurism too, wouldn't it? We often read to experience things vicariously, safe from the risk and repercussions, and the most powerful stories are the ones that engage us the most deeply. If you yourself are learning to look at people with more compassion and understanding and your stories enable your readers to do the same, where's the problem? It's not like you are gaining someone's confidence under false pretenses or exposing private details to the public without permission. That would be despicable. But things that people have freely made public, that you are adding to your understanding of the world to help create a deeper character, no problem.

As for beheadings, I'm not sure the victims would be well served by too faithful a description. I myself put aside books that get too explicit, especially if they are too well written. I stalled on both Stones from the River and The Kite Runner because I can not bring myself to read child rape scenes. I need a little emotional distance between me and the horror to be able to process it. Otherwise I am forced to harden myself and I prefer not to go that way. So don't think you have let the victims down if you don't do an actual description. There must be some way of working the sense of horror in without traumatizing yourself or your readers. Perhaps having one of the perpetrators suffering flashbacks or nightmares that you don't need to describe in full. Even have him recoil in horror at the memory and refuse to follow it any further. Tracy Groot pulled this kind of thing off rather nicely in Madman by revealing a horrible incident in little pieces through memories and never forcing the reader to directly experience the event in sequence. The emotional devastation experienced by the protagonist is very effective in creating empathy and a manageable level of horror without traumatizing the reader. We do not want to become spectators in the Forum, do we? That deadens our empathy.

I don't think there is anything wrong with your reaction to the posts you read, nor the fact that you read them at all. Now if in the course of your research you went on those grieft forums and pretended to BE a young widow and posted a fake story, I might think different. In a case like that, it would be like you were mocking their stories. Simply reading them and reacting is totally natural. And the research process is part of being a writer.

ACEnders said:

You're right. I actually thought about joining, but not to lie. To tell them who I am and what I'm doing...but there's a whole terms and conditions thing that basically you agree you're not lying and your husband really did die. I can't do that.

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Try contacting a mod there and ask if it would be OK if you joined just to interview the other members. The mods could then announce your presence and help you find people willing to talk to you.

Remember, you're not simply taking advantage of someone's grief to write a book and make a dime. By writing that book, you will be opening the eyes of anyone who reads it to the experience that maybe their coworker, hairdresser, cousin, friend, whatever, has gone through, and it just might help them to know what to say and do, which can be impossible to figure out on one's own. Many people simply say nothing to people who grieve, not because they don't care, but because they don't know what to say. Your book could help, and I think you'll find more than one widow on that forum willing to help you get the message out.