Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "preferences"
Why I Love Fictional Mystery
Many years ago, along with practically everyone else in the U.S., I read HELTER SKELTER. It was absolutely fascinating, and I never read another true crime book.
My friends sometimes tease me about how easily I dispatch people in my stories, but that's the point: they're book people, not real people. Despite their omnipresence these days, I avoid news stories that promise in-depth coverage of gruesome crimes and vicious criminals. That's real. Someone got hurt. Someone isn't right in the head. I don't want to know any more about it.
But in a novel, I'm fine with killing off one or two people, maybe more. It's part of a guided tour for the reader, a plan for his or her enjoyment. For a few hours we pit our minds against the detective's and see if we, too, can figure out who and why. As the writer, I have to really pay attention, because it's my responsibility to make it exciting and to make everything work out in the end.
Maybe that's the problem for me with reading true crime. I can't make it work out, can't stop the killing and the residual pain for family and friends. But in my books, justice will triumph and we will know it all. In that, fiction tops real life every time.
My friends sometimes tease me about how easily I dispatch people in my stories, but that's the point: they're book people, not real people. Despite their omnipresence these days, I avoid news stories that promise in-depth coverage of gruesome crimes and vicious criminals. That's real. Someone got hurt. Someone isn't right in the head. I don't want to know any more about it.
But in a novel, I'm fine with killing off one or two people, maybe more. It's part of a guided tour for the reader, a plan for his or her enjoyment. For a few hours we pit our minds against the detective's and see if we, too, can figure out who and why. As the writer, I have to really pay attention, because it's my responsibility to make it exciting and to make everything work out in the end.
Maybe that's the problem for me with reading true crime. I can't make it work out, can't stop the killing and the residual pain for family and friends. But in my books, justice will triumph and we will know it all. In that, fiction tops real life every time.
Why Do You Read?
I finished a book last night that was one of those "I can't wait to find out what happens" stories. The author had me caring desperately for the characters, hoping against hope that they could defeat the almost certain doom that swept toward them. I read and read and read...and then they died.
Greek tragedy and ANNA KARENINA aside, that's not what I read for.
I read to be entertained, at least when I read genre fiction. I contend that an "entertaining" author who gives the reader false hopes then zaps his characters betrays an unwritten contract between provider and client. Yup, you surprised me. Good for you, I guess. But getting to know a person intimately, coming to believe that he isn't really such a bad guy, and then watching him get shot by the cops and bleed out on the floor is not my idea of entertainment.
When I write, if I create a character readers like and root for, that character is going to triumph somehow. Not trying to give anything away. I'm just sayin'.
Greek tragedy and ANNA KARENINA aside, that's not what I read for.
I read to be entertained, at least when I read genre fiction. I contend that an "entertaining" author who gives the reader false hopes then zaps his characters betrays an unwritten contract between provider and client. Yup, you surprised me. Good for you, I guess. But getting to know a person intimately, coming to believe that he isn't really such a bad guy, and then watching him get shot by the cops and bleed out on the floor is not my idea of entertainment.
When I write, if I create a character readers like and root for, that character is going to triumph somehow. Not trying to give anything away. I'm just sayin'.
