The Author in this week's Spotlight, Colin Palmer, submitted a short story and has given permission to showcase it on the Scribbler Adventures blog. Yes, here. It's titled TheThe Left Right Man. The story is absolutely fantastic, a bone-chilling adrenalin rush, the POV (point of view) unique. I have not read anything written from a killer's POV that was realistic or entertaining. Until now. And it prompted this blog post...
At some point I believe we all wonder what makes a killer a killer, what makes a psycho tick, what makes a lunatic lose his mind, what happened when they were but wee pups to make them so terribly sick. We want inside the tangles of their thoughts. We wait, like starving rats, for the crumbs to drop. We want details that will tame our demons, that will give our nightmares higher octane fuel!
We glamorize and idolize the most heinous of monsters; the sickest, most wicked and twisted, are the minds with which we are most curious, some to the point of obsession. We lie to ourselves, believe we have not lived or worked side by side with killers in a society that loathes and fears their existence.
I assure you that you have, more likely than not, met a socio/psychopath or a simple homemade murderer at some point in all your years of roaming naively through the labyrinth of life. You simply could not see past their disguise. They are masters of manipulation and impersonation; they are the very thing each of us want them to be until they lose the need to be anything for any of us.
1 in 25 people are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder. Not all are killers, but all are capable, all, remorseless, unempathetic. We become enraptured by the mind-warping brutality of these beasts, captivated by the blood and the gore and the gruesome details and the sheer reality of their insanity.
The damaged and broken, disturbed and deranged, these are the minds that capture our curiosity, entangle us with fascination. Their existence alone created an overwhelmingly lucrative market for horror tales and thrillers and psychological torture stories, a steady march of dark demented art through the streets of Hollywood and onto the shelves of Barnes & Noble alike.
Not many stories are penned from a killer's perspective. We need more stories like The Left Right Man, stories that wrap us up in the darkness that cloaks the Killer, give us a glimpse of life through the eyes of a narcissistic sociopath oozing with misogynistic thought bubbles and outbursts.
I think authors shy away from characters that they themselves cannot fall in love with, but that is exactly what they need to do. Fall in love with the killer. Stop portraying the bad guy as two dimensional creatures. It is not realistic. Readers want to hate them so they are written to be hated. But... Killers are people, albeit mostly despicable, undesirable, disgusting people but people nonetheless, people with dreams and goals and fears just like the rest of us, just add a dash of bloodlust and subtract all those mushy lovey emotions and viola!
To write from the Killer POV means to think in that POV, not an easy task for most. It's a psyche hard to grasp as a caring, loving, normal human. As a writer, challenge yourself:
To write from the Killer POV means to think in that POV, not an easy task for most. It's a psyche hard to grasp as a caring, loving, normal human. As a writer, challenge yourself:
Create a dark, disturbing, lunatic that you feel bad for hating. Make your reader feel guilty for empathizing with a monster. Stand in those shoes and look through those eyes and show us what is going on inside that cracked noggin!
Here's a little something to help in your killer creation: 5 Tips for Writing Believable (and Creepy) Serial Killers
*Please Note: If you are easily offended by fictional dialog from the POV of unsavory characters, this story may not be for you. For those that desire a peek inside a twisted, demented psyche, step inside... The Left Right Man
Write like it's criminal!
©Jen Snow
