Doing Bad Things

A great many people dream of writing a book, at least it would seem to be the case judging from the people I talk to. And a few of them do go on to write. And then a few of them go on to start their book.

Writing the book is not a project to be taken lightly, at least if my experience is anything to go by. Its not even just writing what you have to say in a clear and enterprising way, keeping your reader turning the pages. But in creating characters that live in peoples minds. In creating an overall construct that reveals these characters and their story to a finale that leaves the last page turned and the human mind wondering if that author has written any other books. Hopefully not with the intention of avoiding them. Most of that won’t be news to anybody that has spent any time writing.

The thing is though, if you are going to accomplish all that then at some point in time during your story you are probably going to have something horrible happen to someone good. This will usually be at the hands of someone bad.

And therein lay the problem. Most of us are in the main good people who would find it difficult to even contemplate assaulting, stabbing, beating, injecting with drugs, raping or shooting.

Despite the occasional blood rush in matters concerning religion and inanimate objects I would consider myself as standing among the good people.

So … progress on the book writing front had slowed of late as I have now come to the point of writing the bit where the bad people do the horrible stuff to the perfectly innocent and undeserving central characters.

It is not so much just in writing these acts but you have to think through actions and causes, work out logical processes and justifications for the bad things. Basically start to think like the perpetrator of these deeds. And then describe them in such a manner that brings home the horror of the situation to the reader and then manifest the trauma within the victims mind and even physically.

The weird thing is that having put it off for so long, now I have started this process it has been rather more enjoyable than I ever imagined it would be. Thinking like a bad person has actually come quite easily. Sure I have felt guilt as the deeds have emerged onto the page and some of the deeds are not very nice at all. But there has been something quite satisfying about the whole process.

I think it is the novelty of doing something you know to be absolutely wrong while knowing nobody is actually getting hurt. And knowing you are solely responsible for deciding whether they get caught, whether the victims get revenge or the bad person goes on to do more bad things. That in order to read about a murderer, someone has to commit the murder in their minds and then write it down.

I suppose I must have known that would have to be the case but it did not become real in my mind until I had to actually do it.

(Loud nefarious laugh slowly fades into the background).