{"id":5841,"date":"2009-10-10T12:22:59","date_gmt":"2009-10-10T16:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=5841"},"modified":"2009-10-10T12:23:52","modified_gmt":"2009-10-10T16:23:52","slug":"paying-attention-to-unpleasantness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/paying-attention-to-unpleasantness\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying Attention to Unpleasantness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Marshmallow Gun” (excerpt) — click for full original at <\/em>xkcd.]<\/em><\/p>\n

I realized a couple days ago — during this criminally busy week — that I hadn’t posted any writing samples in a long time.<\/p>\n

Many of the (non-blogging) pieces I’ve posted on RAMH<\/em> are grouped together under the category called “Paying Attention<\/a>.” But I don’t post a given bit of my work with a “I thought you’d be interested in reading this” preface, followed by the thing itself. (Yes, smart aleck: that would be too simple<\/em>.) Instead, I’ve prefaced each piece with a full blog post about an component of writing to which I try to (yes) pay attention when I myself am writing: setting, character, action, and so on. At the foot of each such full post is a link to some writing of mine which illustrates (if I’m lucky!) whatever point the post was ostensibly making.<\/p>\n

The topic of today’s post, obviously, is something no one really wants<\/em> to think of — and maybe not a lot of people are willing even to read. But I’m not talking about a specific something, mind you, because everyone has different thresholds for different sorts of unpleasantness.<\/p>\n

What things or experiences does the word “unpleasantness” call to your mind? Do you expect to encounter them in fiction? If you know you’ll encounter them in a given book, will you not<\/em> read it?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Some of this I (and a bunch of others) gabbed about a few weeks ago, in the post titled “The Ick Factor” and the comments which followed it. Slime, guts, Things That Are Wet Which We Wish Weren’t, and so on. Exploding body parts. Open-heart surgery. Then there are the great Victorian taboos, sex and death (he said, whispering). Bodily functions…<\/p>\n

Okay, enough of that — I’m kinda grossing myself out here a little.<\/p>\n

But unpleasant physical<\/em> experiences aren’t the only ones which make people squirm and want to run away. Psychological<\/em> ones are tough to endure, too: cruelty; madness; chronic frustration. And then there’s the whole matter of unpleasant language.*<\/p>\n

The problem of unpleasantness for a writer of adult fiction becomes particularly acute if he or she wants to depict life in all its noisome reality. Sometimes you’ll hear an author say, “Sex scenes are the most difficult ones for me to write.” That may be true, for those people. (One man’s meat…) But for my money, what’s really<\/em> hard to write well are scenes involving loathsome characters, behaving loathsomely.<\/p>\n

In the work-in-progress, Seems to Fit<\/em>, I have one such character. I know the rules — that if you make a loathsome character 100% loathsome, no one will believe in that character (or care about his\/her loathsomeness, I guess). You’ve got to add complex psychological layers, assign your villains some sympathetic traits, in order for their villainies to ring true.<\/p>\n

And yet… and yet…<\/p>\n

Chapter 2 of this draft of Seems to Fit<\/em> introduces my, uh, my antagonist<\/em>, let’s say. This early on in the book, I knew I’d have lots of later opportunities to layer his portrait with redeeming shadows. This early on, all I cared about is roiling the reader’s head: having earlier introduced a half-dozen “good” (if flawed) characters, I needed to make it plain that somebody “bad” enough will stand in opposition to them.<\/p>\n

Note that by “bad” I don’t mean like cartoonishly evil — Hitler-evil, Ted Bundy-evil. I’m just after, well, thoroughgoing unpleasantness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Please don’t read this if you’re offended by bad language, or if you’re currently dealing with godawful people in real life and think that reading about another will push you over the edge. Language aside, this really is not a nice guy in pretty much any way at all: he’s spiteful and vain, has a streak of cruelty, and a hint of sexual perversity. His grooming habits are questionable. It really was not fun to be inside his head, and — unless you can sort of keep what’s on the page at arm’s length — it probably will not be a “fun” read. Don’t expect to feel sorry for him after reading this.<\/p>\n

But I did want to deal with his\u00a0 unpleasantness early on and directly, to make it beyond doubt.<\/p>\n

And whether you read it or not, if you’re a writer (or reader!) of fiction, ask yourself some questions: How should a writer deal with “unpleasant” characters and behavior? Can readers — your<\/em> hoped-for readers — be satisfied with a story which holds no unpleasantness at all?<\/p>\n

It’s a short chapter. It just introduces him. The things he does here aren’t the worst things you’ll ever read about, or the worst things you can imagine. They’re just… unpleasant.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, all caveats and warnings and so on aside — if you want to see it, the link below will take you to the current version of this chapter. At this point, all you need to know to “get” this chapter are these elements introduced in Chapter 1:<\/p>\n