All good stories aren’t sunshine and rainbows, right?
I’ve never been one to shy away from conflict and messiness in my stories. Terrible parents? Check. Messy friendships? Check. Committing international crimes? Check.
But what about the darkness? Would I let my characters murder, cheat, or lie? Would I let them be terrible people?
To understand my sudden realization and transition to less sanitized topics, we must go back to my first semester of university.
One of the classes I took my first semester was called “Plagues and People,” which, unsurprisingly, was about plagues. While I originally took the course for a general education credit, I soon fell in love with reading about diseases throughout history. When I ran out of books to read of diseases, though, poisons soon took center stage.
That’s right, I was practically reading Victorian Era true crime.
For a while, I wasn’t completely aware of my sudden love of darker topics and how I was almost afraid of making my characters be capable of anything within those darker topics. Of course, my characters faced “dark” things, but I never could quite get myself to make them do the wrongs that I enjoyed reading about.
(I also could never write a successful sex scene, but that’s a completely different issue. I just get flustered too easily and proceed to write way too much foreplay.)
It wasn’t until just recently, when I happened to be half-following the latest season of Pretty Little Liars that I thought more seriously about portraying characters doing the “wrong” thing more in my fiction. One of the biggest complaints of the new series is that the writers shy away from letting the characters commit the crimes and hold the lies that made the original series so entertaining.
From there, I found myself thinking more about the terrible things characters could do. A story idea popped into my head (that would probably make a very good plot for a Pretty Little Liars season, if I do say so myself), one that was messy and fun and filled with acts that would make some clutch their pearls, but just made me more excited.
At the same time, I was writing the first draft of another novel. Organically, the darkness that had been stirring in my mind since I picked up my first book about poisons mixed with the inspiration from the show and its complainers to create a draft that was filled with actions I had never written before.
And it didn’t stop there. Though I have focused on Ghosts of the Steel Road and its sequel the past two months, plot bunnies have hopped around in my brain, each one more villainous and fun than the last.
I’m not completely changing how I write. Ghosts of the Steel Road and the other two books in its series are ultimately about people trying to do the right thing. Honestly, most of my writing is about trying to do the right thing. But even when you try to do the right thing, it doesn’t always happen like that.
Sometimes, though, it is fun writing the villain.
More importantly, though, is that I’m finally letting my writing mature with me. I’m old enough to not be phased by the darkness, so why should I stop myself from writing about it? Who am I censoring myself for?
Though I’ll still be keeping the same tone for the rest of the Steel Road series, I’m excited to begin a new chapter with my writing. One where I’m less afraid of an audience that doesn’t exist, and where I remember that, as a self-published author, I’m in charge.
Will it probably be a bit until the fruits of my labors are fully shown to the world? Possibly. But when it happens, it’ll be amazing.
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