Inside the bad guy's head

As NaNo progresses, I'm finding all sorts of things about my characters. This marathon, to me, is all about freewriting; that is, not having a recognisable outline to follow, just some ideas about characters. If you know your characters, everything else follows.

It's been an interesting ride to watch these people who've come out of my head, but I wonder if authors are sometimes a little psychotic.

To write well, or even great, you must get into their heads and see things from their point of view. Sound odd? It probably is to the population at large, but an author has to get in touch with 'The Dark Side' to create not just the moral, upstanding, heroic person, but the evil psychopathic enemy, too - unless the story is deliberately structured that the bad guy isn't an integral part of the book, or is better served as an ideology (see Tolkien).

I'm still unsettled by yesterday's writing, though, because of what my bad guy did. Sometimes, I think authors have to be brave to write what they do. Not because of controversial ideas, but personally brave; to write what disturbs them, upsets them, or pisses them off.

I had a scene where my two protagonists finally get together and make love. That was fine, but with the Stalker nearby, the act was going to have consequences. I'd forgotten that the characters were in charge of this book and were going to act accordingly; and he did.

I spent alot of time wrestling with the first scene; a slow word count, deleting because it wouldn't work, or the motivation was wrong, but finally got it right. Yay, happy dance. Then came the dark cloud and I had to walk away from the keyboard as I realised what had to happen.

In what non-writers would call some seriously fucked up thinking, I couldn't stay away. I had to write it down; and did, with fingers flying over the keyboard. One serious assault of my lead character - okay, let's not be squeamish, it's a near rape scene, with accompanying violence. Shocking, devastating and... right.

And when it was done, my hands were shaking, hell, I was shaking. I really wanted to write a happy scene after that, but I couldn't think of one and it would have been wrong of me. So I finished the day's work on a really nasty scene.

More fucked up thinking: I slept really well after that. I won't revisit the scene until it's time to edit, but it's a good piece. It fits in with the book and the characters. Now, we get to the aftermath. I have to get this right too, or readers will see it as false, or superficial and throw the book across the room. I don't want that. I want readers to hurt, to ache, to be furious and hoping for appropriate vengence and a just end.

Authors must step out of their comfort zones to portray truth in their novels. Not your truth or my truth or an amorphous universal truth; the truth of the novel.

And sometimes, that means getting in touch with your inner psychopath.