Feo Takahari
Auror
This is going to be a very personal post, and I apologize for that in advance.
I based my latest short story on the worst nightmare I've ever had, partially as a way of dealing with my residual fears. Zuri, the protagonist, suffers a horrible experience through no fault of her own (roughly analogous to being raped and tortured, although there's no direct physical contact with James, the person responsible.) At the story's halfway point, she gains the means and the opportunity to torture James to death, an act that she'd previously never have approved of. A great writer could have made it feel fitting that she'd turn back at the last possible moment, but I'm not a great writer.
Still, I had her turn back anyways. I set up foreshadowing from the beginning that she wouldn't go through with it, and I wrote out her conflict as her emotions swayed back and forth. I did the best I could, even though this "happy" ending still feels out of place with the rest of the story. But I can't help but feel that, had I taken the tragic route, the writing would have come so much easier, and I might have been able to give it the emotional pull it deserved.
To put it simply, I was not comfortable writing a story in which a likeable, sympathetic heroine died or suffered a total loss of identity for no greater crime than bad luck.* But should I have swallowed this discomfort for the sake of a better story? Or should I have just thrown out the story as unworkable rather than give it such a jarring tonal shift at the end?
* Some writers instead portray rape as a trial that causes positive growth for their characters, and vengeance upon rapists as the culmination of their development. Do I even need to explain why I couldn't write something like that?
I based my latest short story on the worst nightmare I've ever had, partially as a way of dealing with my residual fears. Zuri, the protagonist, suffers a horrible experience through no fault of her own (roughly analogous to being raped and tortured, although there's no direct physical contact with James, the person responsible.) At the story's halfway point, she gains the means and the opportunity to torture James to death, an act that she'd previously never have approved of. A great writer could have made it feel fitting that she'd turn back at the last possible moment, but I'm not a great writer.
Still, I had her turn back anyways. I set up foreshadowing from the beginning that she wouldn't go through with it, and I wrote out her conflict as her emotions swayed back and forth. I did the best I could, even though this "happy" ending still feels out of place with the rest of the story. But I can't help but feel that, had I taken the tragic route, the writing would have come so much easier, and I might have been able to give it the emotional pull it deserved.
To put it simply, I was not comfortable writing a story in which a likeable, sympathetic heroine died or suffered a total loss of identity for no greater crime than bad luck.* But should I have swallowed this discomfort for the sake of a better story? Or should I have just thrown out the story as unworkable rather than give it such a jarring tonal shift at the end?
* Some writers instead portray rape as a trial that causes positive growth for their characters, and vengeance upon rapists as the culmination of their development. Do I even need to explain why I couldn't write something like that?