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Scott
Acolyte
Joined: 19 Mar 2008
Posts: 22
Location: Hudson Vally, NY
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 Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 1:17 am Post subject: Writing DARK Fiction - An Essay... |
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After reading rsmcoy's thread about dark fiction vs. horror I was reminded of an essay I recently wrote on writing "dark fiction" for my Writers' Group. Thought I'd share it here...
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Write to Offend, Offend to Write...
Our writing is the expression of our innermost secrets. Writers love having secrets, they love telling them. But the trick is in telling them in a way that they still remain secret… We offer fleeting glimpses of the dark turmoil churning in our brains, the black puddles pooling in the bottoms of our hearts. We serve up an elaborate stage production of how we would like to see our anguish, frustration, hatred and misery evoked in various interesting and creative ways. We write to offend, and we are often offended by what we write (certainly before and usually after the editing process). Writing is all about pushing buttons, crossing the line, evoking reactions... and courting the exhibitionist urge to reveal dramatic insights into our own tortured souls---but just fleeting glimpses, mind you! Writing is a burlesque performance. A minstrel show. A private 24-hour snuff webcam.
And we wouldn't have it any other way.
"Hey look at me," says the writer. I can make you laugh. I can make you cry. I can inspire you to greatness. I can make you hate. You are my marionette. We are all just puppets.
Read my work. This is my life. This is what I've done. This is what I want, what I strive for, what I hope for, what I believe. This is what I've been through... Not really, but kinda sorta. The writer lives in an emotional world, not a physical one. A churning, surreal ocean of extremes without ultimatums. The writer's mind is capable of things that are incomprehensible to the non-artist. The writer confronts the unimaginable on a daily basis, wrestles it, dissects it, devours it, and makes it his own. The writer can envision Hitler's desire for power and purity, he can embrace Manson's cockneyed need to dominate and manipulate everyone around him, he can empathize with Dahmer's bizarre tastes for torture and gore, and he can sympathize with Jones' Kool-Aid solution when the shit hit the fan.
The writer routinely goes places that others would never dare. And he brings back war stories.
If you don't scare yourself with your writing, you're doing something wrong. If you don't offend, you're not delving deep enough. If you are playing it "safe" you are playing to lose.
Write to offend. Write to anger. Write to incite riot. Not in your readers, but in yourself...
Go deep. Go to a place in your mind, memory or imagination that you've never been. A place that scares the living shit out of you. That offends you. That disturbs you. Write about it. With no holds barred. Let it all hang out. Don't think about your readers. Scare yourself. Offend yourself.
Now take what you wrote...and find humor in it. Twist it and turn it and strangle and reshape it to make it palatable, interesting and poignant for your readers. Make them feel the emotions that you just made yourself feel.
In my job I have to read a LOT of scripts, treatments, pitches, and there's one very common mistake that I see a LOT of writers making. Well, two mistakes actually---the first being writers holding back and bowing to convention and political correctness for fear of offending whomever they are submitting their work to. There's very little to say about that other than, "Don't do it." Don't censor yourself. Write what's in your heart, and if you're good at it your readers will 'get it.'
But the second mistake I see is in the work of the writers who ARE willing to take a chance with dark, offensive stuff, out-of-the-box and unorthodox work. 90% of the writing I see that has a dark or offensive element to it comes off as amateurish: offensive merely for the sake of being offensive. It, more often than not, reads as if the writer is giving his reader the finger. And even when there's not so blatant of a disconnect between reader and writer, this dark material all too often reeks of personal experience (and unless you're writing a memoir, this is a no-no). Now, before calling me out on the things I said in the beginning of this essay, hear me out: personal experience is certainly the FUEL for creativity, but it is crucial that the creative writer learn to channel that experience into something provocative, something that the reader can relate to.
Love him or hate him, Tarantino is a master of writing offensive dialog that everyone can relate to. And yet, he's said that the majority of conversations in his films are based upon thoughts and conversations he's actually had.
I am currently finishing up a very dark novel---the most terrifying thing I've ever written. It's about cults, and mind control, and suicide, infanticide, race riots, spousal abuse and the end of the world. There are a lot of dark places I need to go in order to understand my protagonist, and a lot of terrifying experiences I need to revisit in order to write him. But that's not to say I've experienced anything that happens in the book.
It's the ability to take your own experiences and open yourself up to the things that offend you and weave them into something that lives outside of yourself and that others can make their own that separates the hobbyists from the pros.
Go. Write. Scare yourself, and then scare me…
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_________________
--Scott
www.myspace.com/sardy
www.apocalypsefiction.com
Last edited by Scott on Sat Mar 22, 2008 4:20 am; edited 3 times in total |
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John P. Wilson
Disciple
Joined: 19 Mar 2008
Posts: 44
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| Posted: Sat Mar 22, 2008 3:17 am Post subject: |
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Dude, I've got to read your novel; sounds awesome. Very inspirational essay, makes me want to get back to my story in progress. I find that getting personal with my fiction is hard to do. Even if I've had four or five beers, I find it almost impossible to dig too deep. That's why I enjoy horror so much. My meanings can be buried deep beneath my plot. Sometimes I'll ask myself why I choose a character and why does he make the decisions he makes. If I think on it enough, I can see things in my past that have crept through to the printed page and I go, "oh yeah."
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"You feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?"
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shroud
Site Admin
Joined: 19 Mar 2008
Posts: 121
Location: Milton, NH
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Scott
Acolyte
Joined: 19 Mar 2008
Posts: 22
Location: Hudson Vally, NY
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zgraves
Initiate
Joined: 19 Mar 2008
Posts: 9
Location: San Diego
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| Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 9:05 pm Post subject: Writing Dark Fiction |
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I really enjoyed the piece. It reaffirms why I got into this racket in the first place. Mainstream is so full of "political correctness" that I get nauseous. It's nice that I can turn around and use that nausea in a short story!
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Efraim Z. Graves
"A book is the axe to break the frozen sea within," Kafka
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Natalie L. Sin
Inquisitor
Joined: 21 Mar 2008
Posts: 76
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| Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:03 pm Post subject: |
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| That's one thing I struggle with from time to time. I don't want to be shocking for no reason, yet sometimes I have trouble seeing the line and tend to tread TOO far from it. Practice makes perfect though, eh?
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