Yay! Thread!!! Rant! Rant! Rant! *cough* I mean...this may be a rant...

All right, let me start of by saying that I have not only hit this situation once, but multiple times. In fact, I'm known to write very dark scenes, my mom is scared of reading my books, and my dad has on occasion asked me "Is this how you really feel, Bethany?" It's rather humorous now that I am certain I'm not crazy or psychopathic. I'm not depressed or mental. I'm simply a writer. And now I shall explain why.

After given detailed thought on a torture scene I wrote a little while ago, I decided to delete it. I had told myself it was too dark and that I had to redo it, keep things G rated; I mean, I didn't want to make my parents take me to a psychiatrist or something. But after I made the terrible mistake of pressing the delete button I decided that what I had done was not wrong, in fact, it was entirely normal.

If you think of it, as humans, we experience a lot of emotions; we laugh, cry, scream, sob, fall, and fly mentally every year. We can sometimes be in the clouds then hit the ground and whatever makes these emotions occur leaves an impact on us; something we won't forget and a lesson we shan't soon have to re-learn. Therefore, we search for this emotional impact, as writers, to give to our readers. Even unconsciously, we want to shock ourselves with our own writing. In my opinion, if my death scene doesn't at least tug at my heart. It. Isn't. Good. Enough.

Due to this constant want for emotional impact we write a lot of scenes with extremes. While writing scenes with a very happy extreme is a great way to end a book, sadly, happy things do not seem to make an mark on the reader as much as sad scenes do. Therefore, I think, one of the reasons we write these scenes is actually for the emotion in them, the sad, dark emotion that won't be easily forgotten. The morals that, even unintentionally, can be portrayed through such a time. The characters that make it through even the darkest of experiences.

Furthermore, I'd like to mention the evil in these scenes. It has another thing to do with our life experiences. See, we have all been through pains (that are at least big pains to us) and, as writers, we automatically put these in our books. These life experiences are what form our writings. We have seen evil and darkness and we wish to find a way to portray this; thus the dark scenes are written. In the darkness of our minds, we like creating these villains that depict all of our pains...then having our good guys demolish them by the end of the book.

Lastly but certainly not least, I would like to mention that writing these is not something to be embarrassed of or feel guilty about. As I said before, I believe each scene is our own extreme of what we have gone through and our hopes to give our readers an emotional impact that will stay with them; any writing written with emotion is worth reading and should not be kept hidden from the world.

Bethany Faith

I totally agree.

Wow. Just last night I finally talked myself into posting a topic about this. I think my topic is close enough to yours that we'll marry the two and I'll just post my rant on your thread.

My personal struggle takes your question - are we right to write scenes like that? - and adds something to it... are we right to take pleasure in those scenes?

This is a topic I have struggled with for several years now. As I’ve been preparing to finish a rough draft of “Peter’s Angel” once and for all, it’s been laid more heavily on my heart… because I remember that Peter’s Angel was once deleted in part because of this issue. I’ve mentioned the issue off-handedly to a few other members and have been encouraged to pursue it in more detail. So, I will, finally.

Now you’re going to have to bear with me while I talk it out and try to explain what I’m getting at. This is a rather personal issue for me, so in the overly dramatic works of Mike Wazowski, “I’m baring my soul here – the least you could do is pay attention!” Hang with me and we’ll see what we can make of this!

So. The short version – I love writing torture scenes and similar moments of despair. I relish the moments when my characters are in pain and grief.

The long version – I realized some time ago that the easiest way for me to latch on to a character is to pity them. I am drawn into stories where I feel sorry for the main character; I care for them almost instantly and am desperate to see their fate. “Poor mistreated orphan” type openings work for me, because I empathize with the character instantly.

The same mentality applies to scenes where the character is to be pitied. Torture, grief, “all is lost.” The moments when the character lies in a black pit of despair. Often physical pain and tears are involved.

I love writing these scenes. I relish the emotional richness, and they are moments I will revisit again and again. As a result, these scenes are often some of my best writing from a technical sense… or perhaps it’s just that I personally enjoy them the most.

But I wonder, often – is it right? Is it really healthy (and, worse, ladylike) to have just beaten your character to tears… and love it? How can this fit with Phil. 4:8 and Prov. 17:5? Such a scene would make me shiver if I heard about it happening in real life, say in the news – I can’t stand the thought of real people suffering in this way. How, then, can it be right to enjoy torturing fictional characters?

To throw a wrench in things… one of the issues I struggle with in regards to these scenes is that, for them to have the fullest extent of pity, they often have to be godless in some way. For a character to be truly broken, they sometimes have to exaggerate a situation, forfeit Christian joy, or forget God entirely. Men often have to sacrifice their masculinity. Similarly, I can usually only put my guy characters through these kinds of things because it is more grit than I am comfortable inflicting on my women characters. How is that right? Of course, not all moments of pity are godless; I’m just saying that some of my favorites are.

So, my proposition to add to this thread is this… what do you think? Do you take pleasure in your torture scenes? Why or why not? Do you feel this is acceptable in the sight of God? Why or why not?

Good, goooood topic.

I have the same "problem" as Philli. I enjoy writing my dark/violent/emotional scenes. Like a rough-draft scene I wrote where people assassinated a prince and then started mowing down the surrounding crowd. And where my two MCs had to endure an unjust trial. And then their respective sentences: the girl to a severe whipping, and the man to death by---heatstroke. Those scenes came out quickly, easily, and remain as some of my best writing.
And then my death scene...Ah, that one gave me that dark little thrill, and I really felt for my characters. I loved the feelings I got writing that scene.
But, I don't think there is anything wrong about the scenes themselves. However, they came from a part of me that I am not real familiar with, and that people close to me don't know at all. I know my daddy will be a bit surprised when he reads those things that came from the darkest part of my soul.

I have felt pain, and seen pain. I do have those emotions inside me. I just don't have to use them much in real life.

It's not bad to write these scenes that tear away all pretending in the characters and push them to the breaking point (I've been there) and they're ready to give up. It occurs every time someone, even real life, goes through a challenge that is beyond what they can currently do. Once you hit that point, the only place to go is up. Thus, it strengthens the hero's journey and the character development better than not having the scene.

I have quite a few dark scenes in my novels. One of my friends said that Merlin's Blade was "like a well ordered cemetery." Yikes!

Also, my oldest daughter, Adele, wrote many dark scenes when she first started writing at about age 15. This greatly shocked me, as I wondered where they came from.

After talking with her, and examining my own thoughts, I think the source, at least partially, is that we live in a very, very, very brutal world, and this is part of our way of dealing with all the awful news and horrors going on around us, even in our own cities.

We have to process it somehow in our own lives, and we also need some way of exposing it for what it is. Thus it comes out in our fiction.

(NOTE: Let's be careful here to keep the talk "G" rated about the brutality in the modern world, for the sake of younger members of HW.)

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the origins of such scenes.

My recommendation is to make sure that whatever dark scene you write, that it only be included in the final writing if it actually and truly serves the story, rather than our own needs or whims.

But ... even if you don't keep the scene in the final draft, don't delete it! Save it off in some other file. You might write another story where it serves the story (after re-writing it), and that can save you time.

-Robert

I myself have written a couple torture scenes. My MC, Braim, in the Legend of Braim, is tortured almost to death. Then another MC (a woman disguised as a man actually) jumps in front of him to save him from death by throwing knife. I have planned many more moments of pain for main characters throughout my planned book series. But my take on this is that it is like refining silver through fire (Take away the dross from silver and the smith has material for a vessel). My main character comes to belief in Vitaren (The Maker) through torture, and the woman disguised as the man grows closer to God after she is discovered and returned to the home she fled from.

Does anyone else have the same reason for dark scenes in their books?

I do find that (most of) my dark scenes have a purpose, usually as a sort of transition passage to force a character from one emotional state to another. On a couple of them, they do actually come to terms with God in the end... which is a good thing, but there would be other ways to achieve that.

Great responses, everyone! Thank you.

I agree, there can be better ways to get a point across to a character. But silver is only refined through fire (there I go again, using the silver metaphor, sorry...) and for some characters that is the only way to get the message across... I do agree though that there is a time and place in which other ways of drawing a character closer to God is better achieved with lesser methods

I will write scenes that are dark, and violent... But most of the time there are conclusions and oppisites that resolve the situations.
Also, keeping the characters in bad, even horrible situations does keep the book alive and make the readers want to read more. In situations such as these it is also a good place for your character to grow as a person, and to get developed more.
I have written some pretty sad/scary things! For the betterment of the story!
It's the same reason I (and most other people who do) kill people off! You really feel sorry for them and so does the reader!
Most of the time I will kill someone off and go; NO! Wait!??!! You can't die!!!! (I didn't know he was going to die, he decided that! Not me... isn't it annoying when the story writes its self?)
Yes, I am very sad... most of the time!
Sometimes when the villians die I am kind of slightly happy! Even though that is kinda bad hehe...

I found out, one way or another, that I love reading the scenes where a character is suffering. If I've finished a book and am in a sort of withdrawal mode and want to reread parts of it that's the scene I'll go for. Invariably, every time. (Weell... except for Lord of the Rings. Because if it's Lord of the Rings I'm going to go for a scene with Gandalf in it, and those aren't usually the characters' darkest moments.)

What I love to write, on the other hand, is death scenes. I struggle with writing torture scenes or really emotional scenes because I have problems with technicalities and I'm always deathly afraid that it's not going to have the impact I hope it will and that it'll just be stupid and maybe I shouldn't write the scene. But death scenes I truly love, and I have one in almost everything I've written. My mom accuses me of killing everyone, which isn't true, but I do have a knack for having death of an MC in almost every book I write.

Then there's Lightning Ranger... the book I didn't write for years because I knew it was a book my mom wouldn't let me read. The book that gets progressively darker, and yet is easily the most incredible thing I've ever written. I didn't know I could write that well. Even the parts that I wrote years and years ago (other works from those dates I don't let see the light of day without severe editing) are better than some of the stuff I've written recently. It's not even as much that I enjoy writing it, like Phili, as much as I feel driven to write it. When I quit posting it in the Fireside it was because I was being tormented by guilt over even writing stuff like that...

When I started posting it I expected people to tell me it was too dark and violent and hopeless but instead they loved it and it really, really bothered me that my best writing was my darkest, and that my darkest writing was my childhood games. I've kind of come to reconcile myself with that darkness... (although I still won't post any more of it until it is finished.) after talking with some friends about it and reading a lot of what other HWers said about dark elements in general.

All that said, I really don't feel like I've reached a conclusion, other than it's not wrong to write, keep writing, but how to deal with with the shame, the fear, or the dislike of writing it is beyond me.

I think what C.S. Lewis would tell you all is that the reason we love the dark/violent/emotional issues is that they make the story meaningful. Life isn't "all fricasseed frogs and eel pie", and if it was, it wouldn't be very interesting to read about, would it? Because it doesn't do us any good to read about mostly decent people living mostly decent lives in mostly decent places through a mostly decent story. We want to read about people who suffer, hurt, die, and are generally pushed to the edge of their rope (or past it) because we want to feel through the characters of the story, learn from them, gain emotional depth from them, and ultimately, we want to understand ourselves better by understanding them.

BTW, I didn't know I was capable of writing that, and honestly, I didn't even think of anything I just said before, until I was saying it. Hmph.

*Wow, everyone is pouring out their heart here, guess I'll join.*

Dramatic/emotional/dark scenes are often my favorites, both in reading and in writing. (Somebody told me I was really hard on my characters).

The original question was 'Is it bad to write these scenes' and 'how much is too much'.

It is not bad to write such scenes. Humans naturally go for the story line of Personistheonlyonewhocansavetheworld,andisfightingallthebadguystodoit, andmostofthegoodguyseitherdon'tknowwhat'sgoingonorhavecompletelymisunderstoodthesituation. People like it when the hero is against all odds; even better if he almost dies/is killed while saving the world.

But how much is too much? How often should you do a really deep scene? Here are my thoughts.

1. Make sure there is a reason. I mean plotwise, or characterwise. It needs to do something to the plot, the character, or both. Both is better.

2. A scene that is emotionally gripping should be centered around a primary character -- either main character or someone else who frequently has the stage.

3. Make sure you balance your deep scenes with more lighthearted scenes. Do some ridiculous banter, make somebody do something that embarrasses himself/herself, let somebody be happy, or wonder why he's not sad when he thought he would be. Shake things up! This is a pet peeve of mine. I think 'cheesy' when the whole book is over-dramatized, because that's not the way life goes. Save your deep drama for the deepest parts of the book.

(Confession: I laughed the whole time I was writing one of the worst scenes in one of my books; I laugh every time someone else reads it; I laugh every time I read it. I laugh because it is supposed to make people cry, but I can't cry because I know how it ends. Writers love manipulating people's emotions.)

Another reason is it makes you HATE the guy making the horrible things happen if it is a guy. And that is more emotions for readers! That is a good thing!




Hehe! Are you my long lost sister? We have so much in common! LOL

I used to do well with scenes like this back when I was younger. My best scene for years was a rambling epic detailing the heroic death of my favorite character. (in its current form, still probably one of my best)

But I can't randomly write dark/violent anymore. Even emotional/tragic is hard for me to write randomly.

This is my suspicion:

I'm a heavily sympathetic writer. I write best about emotions I feel.

Random torture irritates me. I don't want to feel it so I don't write it.

Death on the other hand is a part of life and some days I absolutely must write it so I don't go nuts. (heroic death of favorite character included)

Ditto for other emotions. My favorite pieces that I've written deal with sehnsucht, joy, northernness, that kind of thing. (I suspect this is a personality thing. I'm very much a hyperactive extrovert. Happy, too.) Every darkness is lit a bit by hope because I can't imagine a world so dark that light doesn't shine in someplace... or multiple someplaces.

But I can't be really really dark. Incapable of doing so. (I'm doing my best to be very dark for the current one-shot I'm writing with Em because it is a tonally dark story dealing with some pretty deep subjects, and everything I write seems very shallow. )

But in reading, I like mostly dark stories. Spec fiction tends to be in the 'dark' category. But all the dark stories I love, I love not because they're dark, but because of the hope that's still in the dark. Somebody always defeats the bad guy, even if it costs everything to do it.

Hey! Maybe!!!! That would be so neat!

I could see it now!
One child... was taken to Antarctica to be raised by eskimos... (And while fishing) he was dropped into the ocean, only to be saved by walruses and reared by them till his early teens when he ventured to Florida!

The other... was taken into a city.

Yep! We are twins separated at birth!

You're funny, Sven.

(I believe walruses and Eskimos live near the North Pole, not the South.)

...
Thinks... bad Svensteel!
*un-derails the subject*

But wait, I have to say something first! Obviously one of the twins was given a false birthday. (Maybe that is why I always get mistaken for about seven years younger than I really am...)

Okay, subject back on track.

*laughs* Great, I've entirely forgotten what this thread was originally about now. *looks at topic name* Oh... Right...

So, do we have a specific verdict that we have decided about these dark/emotional/violent scenes which we all seem to write?

Ha! See! You get it! It makes sense!



What about them?

I meant, did we all decide they aren't wrong and can be used to benefit our writing as well as emotionally impact our readers to get drawn into our books as if they were reading something as well-written as LoTR? Or are we all gonna keep hiding them in the deep crevasses of our documents folders?

I think they are good! (as above comments comply with statement)

There's nothing wrong about them. They're good.

So why do we feel guilt or shame about them? And how do we counteract that? And to reiterate Leah's questions, we agree that they should be written, but is it right to take pleasure in our character's suffering, even though it's fictional?

I do not think we are taking pleasure in our characters suffering at all. We're taking pleasure in depicting our pains... It's more of a relief than pleasure, but it has the same effect. If that makes sense.

I'm not sure I buy that. I know the explicit sensory triggers I take pleasure in, the specific sentences... and I don't know that it has anything to do with my pain.

To be entirely honest, I can't really disagree or agree with you there, Philly, I'm generalizing when I said "we", while all I can really do is tell you why I write these scenes and find a form of "pleasure" in them. You may have an entirely different reason which I cannot tell you, for your reasons are your own and not mine. But I'm sure that, whatever the reason, it isn't something dark and sadistic because, from what I see, you, as a person, are not dark and sadistic.

I really think it depends on the person.

You, Leah, have had some issues in the past. That's fine; you can write accordingly.

Some of us write for therapeutic reasons some days. That's also fine.

Having dark/violent/emotional scenes in books definitely isn't wrong, especially if it serves the story. Because life is dark, violent, and emotional. Just the way it is.

XD

Could it possibly be that baring your soul is embarrassing?

Thanks, Bethy & Mel. This is a good topic.

Baring my soul is definitely embarrassing. You're basically taking your covering off, letting other people look inside.

Anything I write in front of anyone I don't absolutely trust in mind-burningly embarrassing for me!

(he-he... burningly; new word!)



-God bless

My new theory, came up with while sweeping and thinking of how brilliant Neil's assessment is.

For many of us our darkest scenes are our favorites. What else can you think of that's similar? Do we prefer the tragic music or the happy? We all love happy, but the tragic is what really makes you feel, what really impresses you with its passion. So perhaps we enjoy the dark scenes because they are our best; because they aren't just writing, it's passion. We're showing our characters darkest hours, and really it's brilliant. Being able to write that accurately is quite an accomplishment, and we enjoy doing it.

And it's also beautiful. If our darkest scene are our best, than isn't it normal to enjoy writing them? And at the same time we are tormented, because they are so dark, and we feel that that's wrong. When our characters are at their darkest hour that's when they are the most beautiful, the most precious to us. That's when our writing is the finest, when we almost want to weep over our own words.

And as for the rest, letting someone read what you've written is frightening enough. What if they don't like it? So it's even worse to show our deepest passions, and favourite scenes to possibly be criticised and ridiculed. So we hide them under our beds, afraid of our own power.

Not much different than a few characters I know, come to think of it...

*nods* I like that assessment, Vanya, it makes very much sense.

Very interesting, Vanya. That is exactly why I often prefer minor music over major - it has more depth, typically.

That's encouraging, Lady E. The scenes I revisit most, particularly certain moments/sentences of said scenes, are typically moments of pure despair (emotionally) and/or great pain (physically). They are often on the grittier end of my writing, some of which I am ashamed to show for that reason. Some of the scenes are written; others are just in my head. Some of them I have decided to delete from the book for various reasons, even moral ones, but I keep them in my head and... revisit them. When it's quiet, and my mind can wander, and I just want to shut off and feel that... that thrill. That fix. I'm not that happy about it, but I do it. Still. Why?

"He wanted to be let up. He finally allowed himself to admit it – he wanted his hands to be untied."

"That was the last straw. He could go no farther – and he didn’t want to."

"Edwin turned his face away. Perhaps he was glad the night was quiet, that no one was out tonight, no one who could see him and wonder. He walked the rest of the way with his head down."

Etc., etc., and so forth... And those would be on the mild end of things...

I know that feeling now, Phili. *squints up face and finally decides to talk instead of cowardly skulking off*

Way back, before I was a "writer" I had a group of spies who were somewhat loosely connected to Lighting Ranger. (I made them more connected because I wanted them to interact with my bad guys later on and now I've totally got dozens of spare characters on my hands that I don't know how to work into the novel as a result.) My favorite thing was to do was to get them captured and torture them for information. Aloy, Emoy, Kanque... if I let those guys out to talk they'd tell you how much I must have hated them... of course, I did it to Lightning Ranger too. I didn't want to envision adventure or happy scenes, I just wanted to imagine the dark ones. This is the stuff I would go to sleep with. And when I did start writing it was what I wrote.

And then I became a Christian... and then my life got complicated and I pretty much abandoned my characters in my head... and then I started writing. And I came back to Lightning Ranger and my torture obsession and I didn't even know how to react. Part of the reason I don't really enjoy writing those scenes is because it reminds me so much of the darkness and despair that was my life at fourteen. Which I'm getting over. (Which is because I'm growing up. Which I didn't want to do, but I'm getting reconciled to it... since I met all of you which is what made me grow up which is another story.)

So I'm a little more cool towards scenes like that now. I don't love them, I don't hate them, although they tend to be my better writing and I do like making my characters suffer, but I recognize that for the reasons I posted above; that light shines the brightest in the darkest hour. And Lightning Ranger still feels like the skeleton in my closet, and I still weep over writing it. But one day, I suspect, it will be the most brilliant thing I have ever written, so I pray, and press on, and wonder if I'm only afraid of it because of its associations with my childhood.

This.

I've had a similar break in my writing. I was already saved, but God convicted me on the content of my writing. I deleted nearly everything and started over.

Alaidia (Peter's Angel) went in the delete. Part of the reason was for the dark scenes... which were moments I tried for two years to forget, even though they'd occasionally come back for a revisit.

Then God gave Alaidia back to me, and I'm trying to rewrite it. And... we're working on it. But it still has scenes like that, even if it's different ones. My other works have scenes like that too, some of them...

Thanks for the great post, Katie.

I don't know that it is guilt we feel... I think it is a knowledge that we've poured out all the emotions we think we'd feel in such a situation (if we happened to be that person), and it turns out to be confoundedly like putting our real emotions on paper for people to read.

Maybe not quite; maybe not so intense. But still, there is an emotional connection, and we fear that other people won't quite get it, or maybe they'll even think it is unrealistic, or dumb, or something. And that is the same risk we take with baring our real emotions.

Also, I don't quite agree that we take pleasure in our character's suffering. That isn't it at all. All we are doing is feeding off of the One Big Story that is in all our hearts, and we are trying to make our own little story in some way match it.

See, as god of our own little story, we can't write about boring little good things happening all the time. There has to be bad things happening in order to make a conflict, which makes a story. So we take the bad that has to happen, and shape it into the most compelling thing we can come up with -- which, incidentally, turns out to usually mean serious trouble for the good guy.

It's not that we want to hurt the good guy. We want him to make an impact -- and that means he has to grow, and to grow he has to hurt.

*hugs Lady E*

Interesting quote. Certainly, I've noticed that I'll relish darkness in my book, but I absolutely cannot stand to read a lot of real-life news. It drives me absolutely insane to think of horrible things happening to real people. Of course, reality is always more disgusting than fiction - even the most torturous writer usually puts a cap on things, when real life criminals are purely vile. But still.

*Cannot believe she has not commented on this thread before. *

See, I don’t think there is anything wrong with a torture scene that has a purpose. While I don’t enjoy writing them in the sense that I relish making my characters suffer, I do believe they have a purpose not only for my book, but for me as well.

For me, these scenes are a release of pent up emotions. I’ve felt real, physical pain. I’ve also endured emotional distress and understand loss well. As Treskillard said, we live in a world that is filled with horrors and atrocities. I don’t think it’s wrong for us to process that and release it through our writing. I find tremendous release in putting some of the things that I feel personally into my scenes and my characters. Often times I feel like the world is the villain in my stories. I put myself in the place of the MC, and I paint what I feel the world does to me at times in my life, through the villain. For me those scenes are incredibly personal, which is why having beta readers, and eventually all my other readers, see those things, is a bag of mixed feelings. I put me into my books. Sometimes they are parts of me that I don’t just lay out there for people.

Also, some of the darkest times in my life are some of the most beautiful. Let’s not forget that it is God who places us in those situations for a purpose. We say “Oh that is terrible,” but is it really? Most of the “unthinkable” things in my life were times when I was closest to Christ.

Also, it is interesting that when you hear stories told by the suffering brothers and sisters in Christ, they tell you how worth it their torture was. I think in America we tend to downplay suffering and even torture. We have two issues. We minimize it, or we try to distance ourselves from it. We think it has to be one or the other. Neither really is healthy, I feel.

I heartily agree with every single word which Airianna just wrote. Particularly about us Americans tending to downplay suffering. Just...great job Airi

eru

Thanks, Andrew. I'm not surprised that last bit struck a cord with you.

I don't have much to add at this point, but I will say I struggle with these scenes too. I write them, and then cringe, blush, and wish I had a fiery abyss to seal them in while desperately wanting them to resonate. They show a side of me that doesn't get expressed very well in my writings, in my opinion. Writing these and actually keeping them is hard for me, even though that's the kind of scene I make up in my head at night. Not because I'm morbid, but because their healing hurts.



Exactly.

Well, although this thread seems to have fallen into obscurity, I hope no one minds if I raise it up again since this is a topic which I enjoy talking about.

When it comes to really violent scenes, I do my best to keep them within reason and keep them from getting too gory. However, most of my writing does tend to be very dark. My main goal is to inject a sense of realism in my stories and also show how life is without the light of God in one's life.

I could probably say a lot more on the subject, but I'll halt for now since I not only have to go, but also to see if anyone else wishes to jump in.