Character Accountability

By
Okay, so you have the perfect main character "talking" to you.  You follow what they tell you and sometimes they agree with what you personally believe and sometimes, well, it's completely contrary to all that you put faith in.  I know I've run into it in the past, and in fact, with my current WIP I'm dealing with exactly the same thing.  But how far is too far and where should the line be drawn?

In recent months I watched a movie that affected me deeply, but it wasn't the plot line, the well-thought out characters, it was what 1 specific character said.  In fact, that one line stalled the rest of the movie for me.  I had a hard time paying any credit to it.

You see, about 2 years ago now, I lost a good friend to suicide.  He would have been 32 at the time.  He was happily married, everything seemed fine.  And even though my husband and I had been great friends with them for a time, we grew apart.  But with this said, they both still held a part of our life in theirs.

Now any of you that have lost a loved one, a friend, an associate, to suicide know that there is never a satisfying answer to why.  You are angry, you're hurt, you even try to justify their action but trying to sympathize with what they may have been feeling at the time.

But when a movie line touched on this personal experience with what I considered a callous statement, well, it tainted the entire movie for me.  I won't disclose the name of the movie, but suffice it to say that this character basically said that the person who had committed suicide was courageous.  Instantly my defenses went up.  But it made me realize that what we put out there as writers has the ability to affect people, whether for the good or for the detriment.  We get to decide which.  I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

Comments

  1. Scott ChaseFebruary 20, 2011 at 3:36 PM

    Making something like suicide courageous is either stupid, or from another culture. I am not one of these multi-cultural folks who think that we should accept everything a culture does just because they are different, but I know that in the past (key word there, PAST) certain cultures have treated ritualistic suicide as an honorable death. See "The Last Samurai

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to make a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

When Family Doesn't Support Your Writing

By
If you can empathize with the title of this post, then you're not alone.  So many writers, myself included, can honestly say they have family members who don't support their writing.  Some may go so far as to tell you they don't even want to hear about what you're working on, what you've done, what your goals are.  That hurts. But think about it this way, in some ways is writing any different that an other life decisions your family may not agree with?  I'm sure, if you're like me, you get very defensive when it comes to your writing.  In fact, I'm not going to deny that it places an iron wedge in the relationships.  After all, if your focus in life is your writing, and they ask so what have you been up to ...what are you supposed to do lie, remain quiet, answer another way even though you're so excited about your current WIP you'd tell a stranger?  Ticking clocks are heard in the background while you decide.
Read more

A Big Decision...

By
Image
For those of you who know me, and follow me on Twitter, you may be aware that I’ve been debating whether to pursue publishing traditionally, or take the plunge and self-publish.  With all the “buzz” on the internet, and after great consideration, I have decided to go ahead and self-publish. I had asked myself, does this mean I’m giving up ?  And, the answer is irrevocably no.  Self-publishing used to carry a type of stigma that somehow labelled the work as adhering to a lower standard, but things have changed.  Authors are taking pride in their work like never before, and just because of the increasing ease to self-publishing, they’re not allowing this to affect the quality. In making my decision, I also considered the fact that just because a book is published traditionally it doesn’t mean that it will meet with success.  Many self-published books have received awards, honourable mentions, and have met with even more-than-modest sales.  In fact, there’s ...
Read more

Write What You Love

By
We've all heard the advice, write what you know.  There's been a lot of debate over this piece of advice.  Some see it as valid direction while others argue that there wouldn't be any books if we just wrote what we know.  For example, how many mystery novels are written by real-life detectives?  And, I guess that advice is null when it comes to fantasy genres, and historical fictional works.  No fairy from Neverland wrote a book, and no one from over a hundred years ago can write a book currently.   But, this doesn't mean that we can get sloppy, in fact more work is involved, and this is why writing what we love supersedes all, in my opinion.  How else would we get motivated, and stay motivated to see a novel through to the end? In fact isn't it love for what we’re writing what pushes us through to the conclusion even when we may find the interest in our book weaning, or through the rough middles?  Isn't it the love for what we're writing that f...
Read more