Reader-Character Confusion & Character-Author Confusion

[samhasstories]

I'm not sure I completely understand the point of the original post, but I think I mostly disagree. There's no point in trying to lecture readers about what they are supposed to do, how they SHOULD read a story. They're going to read a story how they want to read a story, and there's nothing you as the author can do about it. When you hit the key to publish a story, you give up control over it. It will be read how it will be read. There is no right or wrong. I think it's silly to take the attitude toward your readers, "You SHOULD read my story THIS way." Nope. That's never going to happen.

I was about to type up a reply to this thread, but I think you said exactly what I was going to say - eerily close to verbatim.

 

[lovecraft68]

Freudian slip?

Nah, hung over typing, I'm off this week and got blasted last night. Went back and fixed it.

But I'm not sure cop would be a Freudian slip...unless one has a fetish for law enforcement.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Exactly.

I find it funny when people choose to write about controversial subjects, and yet are surprised when readers tell them "hey, I find this controversial!"

Authors don't want readers telling them how to write, right?

Guess what? Works both ways. We can't tell readers how to read.

Best we can do is own our choices as writers. And hope we can face ourselves in the mirror without shame afterwards.

Because THEIR side is correct, it's the people who disagree with them who are controversial.

 

[AlinaX]

There's another side to this: Author-character betrayal.

In the search for stories and an audience, an author may be tempted to nudge characters in ways that were not envisioned at the start. This is a problem especially with long-running series, and for television series it's even more a problem because different writers will tug the characters in different directions.

Take Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory. For the first season or so, he was this fantastic character who could be and often was headcanonned as aro/ace, but clearly the writers were more interested in making fun of him than ensuring respectful and consistent characterisation.

I would say there's nothing wrong with an author taking characters in new directions, but groundwork needs to be laid and/or the changes must be traumatic and explicit; otherwise readers/viewers will be perfectly justified in saying, "Hey, that's wrong."

Oh, and as someone who so often writes about women discovering they have magically grown cocks, I would like to be clear that this is indeed something I condone.

 

[SimonDoom]

Now, if you describe a rape scene in great detail, you must have first worked it out in your head in equally great detail. But occupying your mind with the details of a rape scene is... rather hard. Occupying your mind with a rape scene for a prolonged amount of time will most likely leave you in a dark place. Unless, of course, you have done this so many times already that you learned to compartmentalize... or enjoy it in some capacity.

I'm not sure this is true. Consider Stephen King. He's spent an entire lifetime imagining and writing about horrific things. But he's done interviews where he insists that there was nothing particularly strange or dark about his upbringing and as far as I can tell he seems like a pretty well-adjusted guy. Agatha Christie spent a career writing about murders. So have countless popular authors. I don't think there's evidence that it sends them to dark places. I think people DO compartmentalize, and I think compartmentalization is far more common than people acknowledge. This is one of the reasons I take such a liberal "do what you want to do" attitude toward fiction. Readers' and authors' approaches to art vary almost infinitely, and no one approach is right or wrong.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I'm not sure this is true. Consider Stephen King. He's spent an entire lifetime imagining and writing about horrific things. But he's done interviews where he insists that there was nothing particularly strange or dark about his upbringing and as far as I can tell he seems like a pretty well-adjusted guy. Agatha Christie spent a career writing about murders. So have countless popular authors. I don't think there's evidence that it sends them to dark places. I think people DO compartmentalize, and I think compartmentalization is far more common than people acknowledge. This is one of the reasons I take such a liberal "do what you want to do" attitude toward fiction. Readers' and authors' approaches to art vary almost infinitely, and no one approach is right or wrong.

With regards to Stephen King, I'd say it's important to note the caveat, "Seems like". I'm not saying anything about him personally, but there have been plenty of serial killers who seemed pretty normal to their neighbors.

As to Agatha Christie, there is a significant difference in writing a story where we find someone dead, then proceed to figure out the proverbial whodunit than a story where there is a graphic description of the murder.
I used the example earlier of an author who repeatedly crafted graphic descriptions of human torture and sacrifice in his works, a different author in the series I'm currently reading had a part where the villains are sacrificing someone to summon a demon. He wrote a bit about the evil high priest preparing his tools, sacrifice is brought in, sees the tools, starts screaming and end scene.
We pickup later with two villains commenting on how enjoyable the process was.
Both stories contained a human sacrifice, one involved the author really getting into it, the other didn't.

 

[intim8]

So what is the jumping off point to extrapolate that kind of behavior?
Based on my admittedly limited knowledge from Psych 101 and Criminal Justice 101 in college, NC isn't really even about sex. So, where do you begin?

I think you draw on more numerous and more fine-grained analagous experiences. I don't even mean an experience analogous to rape, if that is what you're trying to write about. Not even sexual experiences. If you've ever had any power over anyone, even briefly, even if it was playing, if you've ever manipulated someone for even a second, that experience can inform some small aspect of that scene you want to write. If you've had an asshole boss and even briefly fantasized about how you could humliate them if you ever won the lottery and could buy the company you work for, you can use that feeling.

It doesn't even have to be that clearly analogous, I'm just trying to come up with examples. The useful part of some past experience might be one tiny aspect of that whole experience, just a fleeting moment within it. And it might become one small slice of the experience you're trying to write about. That whole scene might come from dozens of experiences, and extrapolations from them.

I think of past, actual experiences, as building blocks, like a box of legos. Except they're abstract, you get to change their shape and texture and meaning when using them to construct something in a story.

I've written some stories from a female POV. ( At the Big Bay Window (3.8kw) ). I have literally zero experience at being female. But, something I learned back in high school (much to my surprise back then ), females are actually people, not mystical alien beings. So, whatta you know, I do have experience with being a person. I can, (I hope) extrapolate from my experience as a person, add in some of what I know about biology and psychology, add a few scoops of empathy, sprinkle in some second-hand knowlege, and construct a reasonably rendered female experience.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'm not sure I completely understand the point of the original post, but I think I mostly disagree. There's no point in trying to lecture readers about what they are supposed to do, how they SHOULD read a story. They're going to read a story how they want to read a story, and there's nothing you as the author can do about it. When you hit the key to publish a story, you give up control over it. It will be read how it will be read. There is no right or wrong. I think it's silly to take the attitude toward your readers, "You SHOULD read my story THIS way." Nope. That's never going to happen.

I will partially disagree with you here. Everybody is free to read and experience any story the way they want, and of course, I agree that getting actual directions from the author on how to read the story is a bit out there, but...
We have spent a good part of our education in literature from elementary school to high school to learn how to read. Not just how to read the letters, but how to read a literary work. Our teachers always made us ponder what the author wanted to say here? What is the hidden meaning? What is the meaning of this metaphor? Taking into account the historical and social nuances of the time, what did the author want to criticize? And so on.

It is not wrong to try to nudge readers into looking for a different perspective on a story they are reading. Just a nudge, nothing more than that. They might find additional pleasure if they recognize something deeper than what they saw at first. Or they can just read it any way they want. Neither of these two approaches is wrong. Lecturing them one way or another probably is. This is a place for fun reading, most of all. But there is also no shame if you are nudged to find something more than pure fun.

All this is assuming that a story actually has some message and meaning beyond the surface level. I dare someone to make a wild guess on the percentage of stories that contain such depth.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I think you draw on more numerous and more fine-grained analagous experiences. I don't even mean an experience analogous to rape, if that is what you're trying to write about. Not even sexual experiences. If you've ever had any power over anyone, even briefly, even if it was playing, if you've ever manipulated someone for even a second, that experience can inform some small aspect of that scene you want to write. If you've had an asshole boss and even briefly fantasized about how you could humliate them if you ever won the lottery and could buy the company you work for, you can use that feeling.

It doesn't even have to be that clearly analogous, I'm just trying to come up with examples. The useful part of some past experience might be one tiny aspect of that whole experience, just a fleeting moment within it. And it might become one small slice of the experience you're trying to write about. That whole scene might come from dozens of experiences, and extrapolations from them.

I think of past, actual experiences, as building blocks, like a box of legos. Except they're abstract, you get to change their shape and texture and meaning when using them to construct something in a story.

I've written some stories from a female POV. ( At the Big Bay Window (3.8kw) ) I have literally zero experience at being female. But, something I learned back in high school (much to my surprise back then ), females are actually people, not mystical alien beings. So, whatta you know, I do have experience with being a person. I can, (I hope) extrapolate from my experience as a person, add in some of what I know about biology and psychology, add a few scoops of empathy, sprinkle in some second-hand knowlege, and construct a reasonably rendered female experience.

Sure, but all the Mars/Venus stuff aside, there isn't nearly as much difference male to female as some people think, and of course there are outliers that overlap.

You can certainly use all the little feelings as you mention, but again to my point, the cognitive effort isn't nearly as great.
If I am writing a male character I can easily think about all the men I know and ask myself, "how would they handle this?" It's a small step.

Going from, "how it felt wanting to humiliate someone" (a desire I can't say I've ever had) to "what it feels like to rape someone" is a giant leap.
No one is saying you have to have done something to write about it, but the farther it is from your actual experience the more effort it requires.

 

[intim8]

I would say there's nothing wrong with an author taking characters in new directions, but groundwork needs to be laid

Absolutely this. I write off the cuff, seat of the pants. My characters often surprise me, but when they do, I usually realize that it was my subconscious telling me: this is what the character we made would actually do here, not the thing you wanted him to do. You wanted him to be a completely good guy, but we wrote him with a hidden dark side. You didn't know it was there, but we did.

 

[samhasstories]

I will partially disagree with you here. Everybody is free to read and experience any story the way they want, and of course, I agree that getting actual directions from the author on how to read the story is a bit out there, but...
We have spent a good part of our education in literature from elementary school to high school to learn how to read. Not just how to read the letters, but how to read a literary work. Our teachers always made us ponder what the author wanted to say here? What is the hidden meaning? What is the meaning of this metaphor? Taking into account the historical and social nuances of the time, what did the author want to criticize? And so on.

It is not wrong to try to nudge readers into looking for a different perspective on a story they are reading. Just a nudge, nothing more than that. They might find additional pleasure if they recognize something deeper than what they saw at first. Or they can just read it any way they want. Neither of these two approaches is wrong. Lecturing them one way or another probably is. This is a place for fun reading, most of all. But there is also no shame if you are nudged to find something more than pure fun.

All this is assuming that a story actually has some message and meaning beyond the surface level. I dare someone to make a wild guess on the percentage of stories that contain such depth.

I'll agree that there are ways to learn to read to find things in texts that you wouldn't be able to otherwise. Maybe for some that's a more gratifying way to read. You can read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and dive into the Christian allegory, or you can enjoy a fun fantasy story.

I picture C.S. Lewis standing over a weeping child who has said they think the lion is cool, saying You're reading it wrong, it's Jesus, stupid.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I'll agree that there are ways to learn to read to find things in texts that you wouldn't be able to otherwise. Maybe for some that's a more gratifying way to read. You can read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and dive into the Christian allegory, or you can enjoy a fun fantasy story.

I picture C.S. Lewis standing over a weeping child who has said they think the lion is cool, saying You're reading it wrong, it's Jesus, stupid.

I don't think C.S. Lewis would be at all upset about that, as long as the reader finds the qualities that Aslan embodied as good, or even, dare I say "cool" he'd count that as a win.

Another interesting connection to this thread, C.S. Lewis said of writing the Screwtape Letters (for those not familiar they are the letters from a senior demon to his apprentice giving him advice):

Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment. … [T]hough it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before I was done.

 

[SimonDoom]

It is not wrong to try to nudge readers into looking for a different perspective on a story they are reading. Just a nudge, nothing more than that. They might find additional pleasure if they recognize something deeper than what they saw at first. Or they can just read it any way they want. Neither of these two approaches is wrong. Lecturing them one way or another probably is. This is a place for fun reading, most of all. But there is also no shame if you are nudged to find something more than pure fun.

All this is assuming that a story actually has some message and meaning beyond the surface level. I dare someone to make a wild guess on the percentage of stories that contain such depth.

I'm almost 60 and I've spent my entire conscious life as an avid reader, so I definitely think there are good readers and bad readers, and I encourage everyone to develop their reading skills to the fullest. But as an author at a place like this I am sanguine about the fact that my readers come in all stripes and there's nothing I can do about them, and I sometimes ruffle my eyebrows at the fact that some authors seem to be very put out at the reactions they get from their readers. It's just a waste of time. If I get a bad or confused comment I laugh and I move on. I can't imagine being bothered by it or spending time thinking about how that reader should learn to read better. It's not gonna happen.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'm almost 60 and I've spent my entire conscious life as an avid reader, so I definitely think there are good readers and bad readers, and I encourage everyone to develop their reading skills to the fullest. But as an author at a place like this I am sanguine about the fact that my readers come in all stripes and there's nothing I can do about them, and I sometimes ruffle my eyebrows at the fact that some authors seem to be very put out at the reactions they get from their readers. It's just a waste of time. If I get a bad or confused comment I laugh and I move on. I can't imagine being bothered by it or spending time thinking about how that reader should learn to read better. It's not gonna happen.

I understand you completely, but if your idea was by some larger-than-Armageddon miracle put into reality, and we all had a blog to communicate with our readers, would you be set against giving a nudge or a hint to your readers about the deeper meaning you had in mind? I am not saying to discuss or argue about it with them, but just hinting and who gets it gets it?

 

[SimonDoom]

I understand you completely, but if your idea was by some larger-than-Armageddon miracle put into reality, and we all had a blog to communicate with our readers, would you be set against giving a nudge or a hint to your readers about the deeper meaning you had in mind? I am not saying to discuss or argue about it with them, but just hinting and who gets it gets it?

Not at all. It's a useful dialogue to have. And I don't want to do the OP an injustice. I just thought the initial post came across a little too strong, a little bit too much like, "Here's how you SHOULD be reading my stories." I think it's more useful to keep it in the permissive rather than the instructive.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

I'm not sure this is true. Consider Stephen King. He's spent an entire lifetime imagining and writing about horrific things. But he's done interviews where he insists that there was nothing particularly strange or dark about his upbringing and as far as I can tell he seems like a pretty well-adjusted guy. Agatha Christie spent a career writing about murders. So have countless popular authors. I don't think there's evidence that it sends them to dark places. I think people DO compartmentalize, and I think compartmentalization is far more common than people acknowledge. This is one of the reasons I take such a liberal "do what you want to do" attitude toward fiction. Readers' and authors' approaches to art vary almost infinitely, and no one approach is right or wrong.

I'm not even going to try and claim to have a real insight into Agatha Christie, since the woman wrote A LOT while I have only four of those books standing on my bookshelves. But, as far as I know, the woman hasn't "spent a career writing about murders", but rather writing about solving murders. I never heard about her books being particularly graphic. She focused on the mystery instead of the violence.

Now, Stephen Kind, however... I'm going to fully agree with you. Having read Misery before watching the movie, I fully understand why they replaced the amputation scene to a "simple" smack with a sledgehammer. That man knows how to compartmentalize. Even though I have to admit that I don't think it would be fair to categorize his novels as gore.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm not even going to try and claim to have a real insight into Agatha Christie, since the woman wrote A LOT while I have only four of those books standing on my bookshelves. But, as far as I know, the woman hasn't "spent a career writing about murders", but rather writing about solving murders. I never heard about her books being particularly graphic. She focused on the mystery instead of the violence.

Now, Stephen Kind, however... I'm going to fully agree with you. Having read Misery before watching the movie, I fully understand why they replaced the amputation scene to a "simple" smack with a sledgehammer. That man knows how to compartmentalize. Even though I have to admit that I don't think it would be fair to categorize his novels as gore.

This is my theory, and I disagree with some people in this forum. I think compartmentalization is the norm, not the exception. I think it's a common aspect of human psychology. Some people say nonconsent stories normalize or glamourize rape. Bullshit, I say. The human mind is capable of going into a fantasy space and having some fun and then extracting itself from that space and going back into the real world with no harmful impact whatsoever. Not everybody's mind, but most people's minds. Most of us, in my opinion, are like that. We can go to a horror movie and watch people being graphically dismembered and have great fun with it and we don't go home being that much more incrementally likely to kill people. Sheer and utter nonsense. That is NOT the way human psychology (for most people) works.

I don't believe for one microsecond that being an author who writes about serial killers makes you more likely to be a serial killer. There might be some small percentage of the population, who already are predisposed to be serial killers, for whom this is true. But they're a tiny minority, and they're probably not writing books. They're psychopaths who are barely functioning at the margins of society and they're probably not capable of writing decent fiction.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

They're psychopaths who are barely functioning at the margins of society and they're probably not capable of writing decent fiction.

Plenty of serial killers were highly literate, well educated, productive members of society.
There is a picture of Ted Bundy with Rosalyn Carter, he was very active in the Democratic Party at the time, well liked and popular.
He's the norm, not the exception.

 

[intim8]

Plenty of serial killers were highly literate, well educated, productive members of society.
There is a picture of Ted Bundy with Rosalyn Carter, he was very active in the Democratic Party at the time, well liked and popular.
He's the norm, not the exception.

That's John Wayne Gacy, not that it undermines your point.

I lived a 20 minute drive from his house when that all went down.

And much later, I was a regular at a fast food place where five dead bodies, the whole closing crew from the night before, were found in the cooler one morning. This serial/spree killer stuff is all around us.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

I don't believe for one microsecond that being an author who writes about serial killers makes you more likely to be a serial killer. There might be some small percentage of the population, who already are predisposed to be serial killers, for whom this is true. But they're a tiny minority, and they're probably not writing books. They're psychopaths who are barely functioning at the margins of society and they're probably not capable of writing decent fiction.

I feel like you somehow missed my original statement. You can write about serial killers, serial rapists, and whatever else kind of evil you want to utilize as much as you want. The difference is how much time you spend describing that evil vs. how much time you spend building everything in the world around it.

As I wrote before, yes, Agatha Christie wrote about murder. But she never spent much time describing those murders, or how the corpses looked like, or how the victims and murderers felt during the act.
I also think that there's quite a difference between spending 90 minutes watching a gory horror movie because you like the shock value, and spending hours upon hours visualizing those scenes to perfect them in the writing room (Though I'm fairly certain these people are so used to it by now, it's just a job for them).

I mean, even Stephen King, as gory and gruesome as some of his books are, contains more world-building and character development than bloody murder. In comparison, however, take a look at OPs stories for example, where you will find page after page after page of humiliation, torture, maimed characters, and rape. And while King wrote his stories as scary horror, instilling genuine fear in his readers (so you can argue it's about the thrill), OPs work is about sexual titillation. Those are two VERY different cups of tea going by the purpose of what is written alone.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

That's John Wayne Gacy, not that it undermines your point.

I lived a 20 minute drive from his house when that all went down.

And much later, I was a regular at a fast food place where five dead bodies, the whole closing crew from the night before, were found in the cooler one morning. This serial/spree killer stuff is all around us.

Good catch, can't keep my serial killers straight today.
But Bundy is also evidence, he was a very personable guy as well. His victims willing got into the car with him.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I mean, even Stephen King, as gory and gruesome as some of his books are, contains more world-building and character development than bloody murder. In comparison, however, take a look at OPs stories for example, where you will find page after page after page of humiliation, torture, maimed characters, and rape. And while King wrote his stories as scary horror, instilling genuine fear in his readers (so you can argue it's about the thrill), OPs work is about sexual titillation. Those are two VERY different cups of tea going by the purpose of what is written alone.

Hey, take it easy–there's no rape in anything that's available on my story page. Ya'll got my only NC/R story pulled.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

Hey, take it easy–there's no rape in anything that's available on my story page. Ya'll got my only NC/R story pulled.

Sorry, my bad. Then your stories are "only" filled with the humiliation and torture of maimed characters for sexual titillation.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I feel like you somehow missed my original statement. You can write about serial killers, serial rapists, and whatever else kind of evil you want to utilize as much as you want. The difference is how much time you spend describing that evil vs. how much time you spend building everything in the world around it.

As I wrote before, yes, Agatha Christie wrote about murder. But she never spent much time describing those murders, or how the corpses looked like, or how the victims and murderers felt during the act.

Hmm, as somebody who inhaled a lot of AC as a kid, I can't entirely agree with this. She wrote quite a range of stories, and while she wasn't the kind to offer graphic descriptions of splattered brains and entrails, she could still get quite unsettling when she chose.

Some of her most memorable stories (at least three that I can think of) were told from the murderer's perspective. "Endless Night" is one she mentioned as one of her own favourites, and in that one she puts quite a bit of work into evoking the thought processes of somebody who'd probably be categorised as a narcissistic sociopath these days. Even without a lot of blood and guts, I found it pretty confronting when I read it as an impressionable tween. With apologies for the screenshot-spam:












...




...

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

Hmm, as somebody who inhaled a lot of AC as a kid, I can't entirely agree with this. She wrote quite a range of stories, and while she wasn't the kind to offer graphic descriptions of splattered brains and entrails, she could still get quite unsettling when she chose.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about.

The first excerpt can be summarized as "I saw an opportunity and held him underwater. They couldn't resuscitate him." - No emotion, no thought process instead of the spontaneous decision, no graphic description of the struggle, no insight into what the victim felt.

The second excerpt can be summarized as "I stabbed him multiple times and was scared about being discovered." - Again, no emotion about the act itself, no thought process about why he's doing it, no struggle, and blood isn't even mentioned.

The third excerpt, where the murderer tells Greta about his newfound joy in killing, is probably the scariest. But it's, again, not very graphic or detailed. It's scary because you learn that people like that exist! It is hardly a character exploration into how to stab someone to death, how to drown someone, or how to scare your girlfriend. It's all written like something she heard happened, with very little to no insight. And, most important of all, it's all rather short.

In comparison, to illustrate what I'm talking about, take a look at this:

"Sometimes I think I should cut the fucking things off, but I'd rather do THIS!"

The boy sat in the kitchen stool, unable to fight as wrapped him in a reverse headlock, his mouth at her sweaty armpit, and swept one leg up, slamming that foot down onto his balls which rested against the stool seat. She ground down cruelly and brutally hard, her teeth clenched in concentration as the boy's screams vibrated into her armpit.

"Almost.....almost...there...here .... It...COMES!!!" Laura yelled.

There were two discernible popping sounds as each of his balls exploding under the crush of her foot as she twisted it, her muscular calf bulging at the task. She felt the meat of his balls flatten under her heel and she came in her pants, shuddering her way through the orgasm as she continued to twist her foot and grind his balls to nothingness.

She let go the headlock and foot smash and the boy slumped to the floor, screaming in agony, writhing convulsively as he held his shattered nuts. Laura laughed and got him an ice pack, tossing it onto his crotch, which hurt him even more.

Now THAT's a graphic description of a violent act. It's painting a very detailed picture of the act, allows the victim to express their pain, AND shows off how the mother (yes, that's a mother doing it to her son) enjoys inflicting said pain after she orgasmed from maiming him.

Agatha Christie did NEVER go to such lengths.