Dear Gentle Reader, there are literary things in which I will not indulge or with which I will not waste your time. I won’t do these things because I, myself, don’t like them. I don’t read, and by extension write, gratuitous violence or sex or excessively grim or bleak settings. I’m not going to use difficult or clichéd narrative techniques.
1. Excessive violence and/or sex
Gratuitous violence (or sex, for that matter) is morally and ethically problematic. Unless the character's a sado-sociopath, a person who would indulged in gratuitous violence for the sheer pleasure of it, the usage of such violence is misplaced, salacious, and prurient.
Part of this is a reaction to all the smash 'em up, blow 'em up movies that Hollyweird puts out. But it's not just Hollyweird. We can find it everywhere from the grocery story to the movie house to television. Sorry, not doing it. It takes no brains to blow something up or shoot somebody. Furthermore, I think the continuous use of violence as a plot device is lazy. The writer couldn't think of anything better or the director couldn't envision anything better. Or some producer decided that the audience only wants that.
Violence for its own sake cheapens the violence, renders the violence devoid of shock value, and satiates the audience to the point of numbness. If we see violence in real life, we don't care. Excessive violence in movies and television--the news is the worst--also gives licence to people to express their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs with greater and greater vigor--to the point of violence.
To keep a leash on the worst demons of my own nature, who don't need any encouragement, I avoid stuff with excessive violence.
It’s also uncreative. Every time an author or moviemaker resorts to violence as a plot device, it closes down other, more thoughtful, potentially more suspenseful, and possibly, more powerful, solutions to the problem at hand.
Historically, however, violence tended to be excessive. I must, therefore, represent it accurately. To not address such violence when necessary is as much a deviation from the historical record as reveling in the violence--and as morally problematic.
In my novel, I write about smuggling. It was organized crime. Like all organized crime syndicates, smugglers used violence. They used it to keep people in line and to cow a populace. Smart smugglers used just enough violence to make their point and no more. Paying well was a much better inducement than excessive violence. My smuggler, “Gentleman Johnny” Tregonwell, knows that the management of men by violence is, at best, limited.
I also have to write about slavery, an institution that was built on gratuitous, brutal violence--chainings, whippings, brandings, lynchings, abortion, and infanticide. The purpose was to crush the spirit of the people enslaved. Violence kept that industrial system working.
In my novel, I only write about the slave holder, Dr. Napier, who both supports the institution of slavery, with all its inherent violence, and seeks ways of supporting, even caring, for his slaves. As he says, they are valuable property. Therein lie all the contradictions.
(The research for this character stopped me in my tracks. I was stunned by the level of violence, of self-justification, and of inhumanity. And I thought I was hardened to historical violence by the Henrician Reformation, which was no picnic with all its executions. Hah.)
There’s a small flashback to Armitage’s first day in Jamaica. He saw a slave auction when he was fourteen. I don’t describe it much; I use enough description--mostly physical and emotional aftereffects--to make the reader see why Armitage is an abolitionist. He is joined in this by his brother, the Archdeacon, and by Captain James Durdan, both of whom are Evangelical Anglicans.
2. Grim settings
I have say that a too grim setting or a difficult narrative technique will put me off. I certainly won’t write them. If I can’t stand to read them, then I’m not going to be able to live with them through the year or more it takes to write a novel.
I gave up on an Ian Rankin novel because it was so relentlessly grim. There was no hope, and not even Rebus could save a cast of crushed individuals. I couldn’t finish ANGELA’S ASHES. Reading that was like being beaten at every turn. I surrendered. I know Frank McCourt didn’t surrender--thank God--but his memoir was still more than I could take.
Right at the line is THE GRAPES OF WRATH.
I like struggle and conflict among the characters. I don’t have to have a happy ending. I don’t even have to have resolution. I can take defeat. MILDRED PIERCE is all about struggle, betrayal, and defeat. What I can’t take is relentless defeat and grim circumstances. That not just defeating in real life; it’s soul crushing. I don’t read to have my soul crushed.
2. Difficult Narrative Techniques
There are two that I have come to dislike--the sidekick as narrator and first person point-of-view. The first one is difficult at best, and it’s made more difficult by authors who insist on have adult sidekicks narrate event that occurred during their impressionable, teenage years. The second one, the traditional POV for private-eye novels, is limiting and, frankly, I think it is overused.
The first one I will never use, for I loathe it. It’s unbelievable on one hand and too distancing on the other. I don’t like the Bruce Alexander mysteries with Sir John Fielding and I won’t read Arturo Perez Reverte’s Captain Alatriste novels. They both use that technique. Philip Kerr pulled it off in DARK MATTER, but his narrator was an adult when things happened, and he remembers on the occasion of Newton’s death. In that respect, it’s framing saves it.
I do use the first person POV in my novel, which is mostly told from third person close. It provides a different, female voice as counterpoint to the male voices, but I am sparing in its usage. I also use journal letters, and this eliminates the problem of “who’s the narrator talking to”. Susanna is “talking” to her sister Fanny.
Here’s one more narrative nit to pick--I will never tell a story in historical present tense. I hate that technique beyond all reason. If it’s history, it’s in past tense.