About that Story Nugget

[captain_slinky]

So yeah... see, about that Story Nugget I posted earlier...

...I want it *GONE*.

It started out s a weird third-person nightmare I was having, just a quick snippet of the story that my awake-brain extrapolated on and built in to a full story, and now my brain won't leave it alone and my brain keeps going SUPER DARK with it.

My brain is going to places that scare me - A LOT. Places that... like, if it were a TV show, I'd turn off the TV. Only this is MY BRAIN and I *can't* turn it off! It's ALWAYS ON!

I try to distract myself away from it with mind-numbing stuff; do the dishes, listen to the radio, watch TV. Doesn't matter, my brain goes back to "I want this Deputy to make a journey from law-abiding good guy to wretched despot. I want the reader to be sad, relieved and glad when he dies at the end. It needs to be not just the end of HIS story, but the end of a MONSTER story. How do I make him a monster, but a pitiable monster. How do I rationalize the horrors that he does?"

And then I rationalize his actions, in my head. And I come up with even MORE terrible things. It's... it's a whirlpool of justification that I don't agree with and I don't like and I don't want it in my head, I don't want my brain to make those leaps. I don't want to think of the kind of mindset that can make rape in to a noble action, or make murder in to a reasonable alternative.

I need to get this out of my head :(

Comments

[aurora77]

Uh-oh. I know what you mean. You might have to write it out and complete it to get rid of it, to get closure. Remember that the fact that you're disturbed by it is a good sign because you know those things are wrong in your gut. Just because you can understand the actions of someone like that doesn't mean you agree with them or would want to act like them. But having to share your head with it when you'd rather not, that's really tough.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

There's a hard but important differentiation to make here, in that with a Fictional Character such as Leatherface, Freddy Kruger, Jason, etc. it's easy to see and understand motivations passively. "Oh he thinks he's ugly so he makes a suit for himself out of the prettiest parts of other people to wear. I get that. I understand what the writer did there".

But when those things are born in your own head with little or no prompt... no extrapolation from pre-existing data, no historical context, just a "Well OF COURSE he does this horrible thing, because to him it's the only way to save her" and HOLY CRAP WHERE DID THAT COME FROM??? Is that how my brain works?