The question of what genre I’d write was settled ten years ago, when my first agent held my hand through her comprehensive editing process and told me gently, ‘You can make this manuscript women’s fiction or you can make it suspense, but you can’t do both’.
I gave this statement a lot of thought. What did my personal lane look like? I’d written magazine articles, short stories, even a humor column, all of which held snarky women’s-fictionesque bits in them. But, a deep dive into the dark side held a draw so intense I could not ignore it. Though I loved writing humor or a cute women’s fiction short story, I would question myself about what I’d written. Did it hold a reader’s attention? Did it make people laugh? Will they relate to what I wrote regarding these characters’ relationships? What if readers don’t appreciate or understand my sense of humor? What if they just ‘don’t get it’?
In stark contrast, when I slid into my “start” position to begin a gory scene, I was riveted. Picture a Formula One race car driver, hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, sitting low and sleek in his metal missile, thinking about only one thing – the start signal. Now, picture me at my desk in the same position, hands at ten and two over my keyboard, my mouth slightly open in anticipation, my pulse speeding up, riveted to one thing – how to make the gore and gristle authentic. For instance, if guns are involved and someone is shot, how does the blood erupt? Does it trickle? Spurt? Does it gush? Where will the blood pool, and how large is the stain? What color is it as it dries? How does it smell? Within the grisly world of cliff-hangers and life-or-death scenarios, I’m off to the races, my fingers pounding my keyboard so hard I wonder how it survives. Let’s not even talk about the thrill I experience when I write about a brain injury, which lobes are affected, the lingering deficits, and how it can make my character even more dark and interesting. Even better than that, describing an autopsy. Ahh. The autopsy scene sent me into raptures.
During these golden moments, I don’t second-guess myself about what a reader may or may not think. I’m on glorious autopilot, and don’t even care. Maybe this is my voice, which is a sad state of affairs and I may have serial-killer tendencies, but it’s apparent that the choice to write stay-up-all-night thrillers exhilarates, and writing something tame and non-dangerous does not.
However.
The dangerous aspects must occur against a high-contrast backdrop of a story about normal, though flawed, people. Their families. Their dreams. Their new careers. Romantic relationships. The fun of it happens somewhere around chapter four, when my twisted brain swerves off the road onto a dark and overgrown path. I’m left to sit back, stare at what I’ve written, bite a fingernail and wonder why this detour happened. How am I going to thread this needle into a plot twist that works? Where is the motivation for this character’s strange behavior? Is it dangerous? Does it make me breathlessly want to turn the page? Where the heck am I going with this?
The writing journey is often like a high-speed chase, but it can also be as satisfying and serene as a Sunday afternoon drive. I am forever grateful to the agent that inspired me to pick a lane and try not to veer from it. I’ve learned that if the thrill is gone, I need to get off the median and back into the appropriate lane!
