I recently reviewed an emotional poem which the author admitted was autobiographical, and pretty much said “Make the reader feel the hurt more.” This poem is good but it needs intensity, it needs less softness. Yes that’s right, move the cushions aside. Then I can see your blood, and it is art. It’s what some poets strive for—an emotional hook. And I feel like a tyrant telling them to get better at it, to draw out more of their pain.

Fiction is torture, did you ever notice that? It’s “I’ll take these characters, and I’ll put them in the worst (read; most interesting) situation I can think of, maybe even one I’ve gone through but didn’t like and now they’ll have to do it to help me deal (sadistic, much?), and I’ll see how they fight to get out”. It’s Saw.

It’s so much fun.

I’m sorry.

Pain doesn’t feel interesting to us as we’re going through it in day-to-day existence, does it? When a person hurts, they simply want it to go away. They dodge the blade of tragedy and wait, and pray that it goes away.

But it does feel interesting to us, if we’re writers. I listen to screams and think “I can use this.” I’m as cold as a cliché villain. I think what words I can frame the terror with, to make it acute, to make it reliveable. Because people like it when they’re safe and someone else isn’t.

Cruelty!

We’re cruel gods, writers.

But I just had the greatest idea…