Fiction Writers are Sadists
Aug. 15th, 2004 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplerabbitSo the book I am writing has me thinking a lot about the personality of authors and what their writing says about them. On a large scale, there is something particularly telling about being a fiction writer in the first place.
All my life I have had these amazing characters in my head and then I do extremely unpleasant things to them. Think about it. What makes the stories interesting to read is when bad things happend to the characters. I am not writing "Waiting for Godot" here. Most works of fiction are about about ripping the characters apart and seeing how they survive it -- if they survive it. I love the characters I am writing about. Yet, I also delight in putting them through hell as part of the story. In fact, the scenes I probably get the most stimulation/satisfaction from are the ones that are horrible for the characters. There is something intensely sadistic about being a fiction writer.
All my life I have had these amazing characters in my head and then I do extremely unpleasant things to them. Think about it. What makes the stories interesting to read is when bad things happend to the characters. I am not writing "Waiting for Godot" here. Most works of fiction are about about ripping the characters apart and seeing how they survive it -- if they survive it. I love the characters I am writing about. Yet, I also delight in putting them through hell as part of the story. In fact, the scenes I probably get the most stimulation/satisfaction from are the ones that are horrible for the characters. There is something intensely sadistic about being a fiction writer.
