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... what happens when the pen is the sword?
I have no insights today, only
questions.
We have a common bond on this blog.
We're all suspense writers of one form or another, and if you're
like me, you've done research that's taken you dark places. But
speaking for myself, while some of the research gave me nightmares,
I've always had a clear understanding that I write fiction. I create
events and people that aren't real.
While the news has been non-stop lately
with horrible acts of terror and victimization, two conversations
this week have resonated in unexpected ways. Two writing friends
shared events that were keeping them awake at night. Men they knew,
people they'd gone to lunch with, worked with, thought they knew, had
snapped and lashed out. The men killed others, including their wives,
and then took their own lives. In both situations, my friends were
shaken—hadn't seen the potential for violence, any evidence of
mental illness—and were grieving.
I write about law enforcement professionals and
amateur sleuths who put themselves in harm's way to bring villains to
justice. I've read your books and know your characters take similar
paths. But this intrusion of real life into the fictional world has
made me wonder. We complain about violent video games and their
impact on the kids who play them. Are we writing novels that
desensitize people to violence or murder?
What do you think? Does the experience
in reading a novel evoke different emotions than the hands-on,
visceral experience of a video game? Do we need to dial down the
violence? Or does horror rule?
