by Colby Marshall
I recently read a very interesting blog post about gender and rape in fiction and the comments following it. And while
the post and ensuing conversation was all very insightful, one comment in
particular intrigued me. It was :“Do I need to put the reader through this?”
I wish more
authors thought about this question. Violence for violence’s sake, for shock
value is exhausting and off-putting as a reader. I’m glad to see an author
asking that question, and hope others do as well."
I sat back and started thinking about this comment, because
as an author, it is incredibly important to me to take care of my readers. At the end of the day, I want to make sure
people who read my books have a satisfying answer for whodunit, that they know
what happened and why, and that they know anything else that they might
otherwise leave the book feeling like I couldn’t manage to write a proper
ending because my dinner was getting cold and the new episode of Downton Abbey was about to come on.
I jest. I actually
don’t watch Downton Abbey. Or eat dinner.
But this…this bugged me. After all, anyone who has ever read
Chain of Command knows that it is
basically a bloodbath. With such a
violent premise for a book, I'm sure
many a person could read it and think at times it was violent for violent's
sake. However, as the author, I don't
think it is. When I was writing it, I
didn’t think, “Now, what can I shock them with next?”
That said, the idea that readers might think any of the
violence in my books is there for the shock value made me ask myself an
important question: "If I’m not doing it for the shock value, why DO I do
it?"
I found that I already knew the very simple answer. I put in the violence because that is the way
the story is formed in my head.
Now, let me backtrack here and clarify: I am not one of
those authors who claims their characters speak to them at the breakfast table
or tells them on the subway how they’d like to romantically pursue a different
character than the author originally intended.
There’s nothing wrong with authors who work this way as long as you’re
not the chick from Stranger than Fiction—that broad was crazy. It’s just not how I operate.
Even so, though, I do tend to have very
specific visions of parts of my stories in my mind: characters’ physical
traits, scene settings and locations, the movements of the characters, and yes,
the events that happen in the scene. I
rarely sit down and try to think up scenarios and actions of characters. When I write a scene, it is usually fully
formed in my head already. I might need
to figure out logistics if anything turns out to be problematic, unbelievable,
etc.—what editing is for, but the violence in the scenes aren’t ever contrived
on my part purely to elicit shock. They
just are.
Which, for me, begs a new question. As an author, I have a responsibility to my
readers to take care of their satisfaction with the book, but at the same time,
my job first and foremost is to tell readers the story. After all, isn’t that why we as readers buy
books—to read a story someone else has to tell?
Otherwise, we would all makeup our own stories all the time. But no!
We want to be able to read someone else’s story, to live the story along
with the characters never knowing what happens until the next page is flipped.
BIO: Writer by day, ballroom
dancer and choreographer by night, Colby has a tendency to turn every hobby she
has into a job, thus ensuring that she is a perpetual workaholic. In
addition to her 9,502 regular jobs, she is also a contributing columnist for M Food and Culture magazine and is a proud member of
International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. She is actively
involved in local theatres as a choreographer as well as sometimes indulges her
prima donna side by taking the stage as an actress. She lives in Georgia
with her family, two mutts, and an array of cats that, if she were a bit older,
would qualify her immediately for crazy cat lady status. Her debut
thriller, Chain of Command is about a reporter who
discovers the simultaneous assassinations of the President and Vice President
may have been a plot to rocket the very first woman—the Speaker of the
House—into the presidency. Chain of Command is now
available, and the second book in her McKenzie McClendon series, The Trade, is due for
publication by Stairway Press in June 2013.
Chain of Command is now
available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, iBooks, Kobo, other major
e-readers, or in select independent bookstores.
Watch the official book trailer
for Chain of Command here: http://tinyurl.com/auye6bb.
You can also learn more about Colby and her books at www.colbymarshall.com
