Winston Churchill once said, ‘Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths without giving offence.’ The challenge in By Violence Unavenged and its later volumes is describing and creating scenes and characters which are less than pleasant, yet readable. It also involves drawing on unhappy and disturbing experiences from my own past.
How to go about it without doing my head in? A few observations, which are more notes to self, although they may interest a few people (why else do I write these posts?):
To follow that master of horror and suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, the art lies not so much in the action but the reaction. How the character (and the reader) reacts is of greater importance than the object of the reaction.
Blatant or florid description is a disservice as it leaves nothing to the imagination. Include only what details are strictly necessary to form a lucid picture, and convey those details from a fixed perspective. Far more dimension is achieved through subtlety and irony which demand that the reader work with narrative hints rather than be told what to think.
Oddly enough, humour. How often it happens, when faced with adversity, a dark, often morbid humour rises; when the situation is so far gone one laughs instead of cries; or one finds the absurdity in the adversity? Sometimes humour works.
Lastly, keep in mind that the ugly truth is not an end in itself but serves a higher good, be it in terms of character or theme. It is a rite of passage.
I feel better now.