I thought I would write a little about motivation today, and not the sort that gets your bum glued to the seat and writing type but the character type.
I recently did edits on my novella Blood Scent hat is coming up for release later on this year and one of the comments about a scene was related to the characters motivation. I sat down and went back to why the person would have reacted that way and removed some things and added others. What this action clarified to me was that it is so important to understand the past of your character to know how they would react now. We are all different people with different pasts, so we will react differently to any given situation.
Opening the door to the room with scary noises seems a silly thing to do but if your child was in there you wouldn't hesitate.This is all obvious you say and I can appreciate that, which is where my next point comes in. As a writer of fantasy and paranormal I tend to have a certain amount of violence in my stories. I believe that the violence I use is not gratuitous though it can sometimes be graphic. I have always felt it was necessary to enhance the story, so when is violence inappropriate?
Someone recently said to me that you need to keep it real. I think this is true and your reader does not want to be treated as uninformed, however I believe if we are going to use certain types of violence such as rape and abuse then we should research the effects it has on its victims in the same way we would research fight scene. I for one will try to be accurate in my portrayal of victims and villains alike in their psychology for now. Would be interested on peoples views on this and how our writing can trigger past issues in our readers and how you feel about that.
