SICK IN THE HEAD

My apologies for not updating for a couple of days, my head has been elsewhere in the fogginess of a cold. That being said my mind has been contemplating the darkness we writers sometimes have to delve into to either keep the reader turning those pages or perhaps it’s vital to show the depths of depravity that a particular character will go to.

Now I am one of those people who doesn’t mind what you do to people in films you can stab them, decapitate them do whatever you like, but do anything to an animal and that’s it, I usually stop watching, for me it is as if an invisible barrier has been broken, a line has been crossed and I find it unnecessary. Hell anyone who knows me, knows I used to cry at lassie and can’t watch vet programs without blubbing like a big girl!

I am reminded of a particular scene in the film I Am Legend with Will Smith involving his dog, now I wont spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it and I actually watched the whole thing. It was a good film and the writer in me could see why the scene was important, but I have not watched it again even though it was a few years ago now. It stuck in my head, along with another scene in Dead Calm which I have not seen in over 20 years for the same reason.

Putting my writing hat on, I have been brave and plunged into those depths of darkness because one of my characters needed to make a choice and only by witnessing something dark could they move forward and make that decision. It took me a long time to write it and part of me still wonders if I should put it in the novel, but I know I must. Do any other writers struggle with this?

Do they worry what people would think and how they could even think like that? Do thriller and horror writers ever get hate mail because of scenes in their books people have found so horrific that they felt the need to berate the writer? I would be interested in anyone’s comments on the subject.