Being Bad, Because It Feels So Good

A couple of years ago, I started to notice something about my writing students.  Specifically my female writing students.

They're too nice.

Not just too nice to each other in workshop, though that certainly can be the case, but too nice to their characters.  They go out of their way to keep their characters out of trouble.  Some of them have so much trouble letting their characters do evil, speak evil, that they will literally turn their plots inside out to avoid the ugly stuff.  Case in point: one student of mine wrote a story in reverse order--literally backwards--to let her protagonist avoid saying or doing anything bitchy or cruel.  In the four semesters she studied with me, she never let her characters cause problems for themselves, or others.  And she wasn't alone.  Most of my female students--the ones who don't write vampire fan fic, anyway--have some difficulty letting their characters be bad.

Is it a "lady writer" problem?  Perhaps.  But I think it's also a Midwestern problem.  It's what we're taught from birth: Be nice.  Play nice with others.  Don't rock the boat.

Which might be fine in life.  But in fiction, niceness is death.

Playing nice does not make for good writing, and most especially it does not make for good reading.  Where would we be if if Captain Ahab had decided to turn the other cheek, if Humbert Humbert had seen a qualified therapist, if Dracula had stayed home in Transylvania and not bothered the neighbors with his insatiable thirst for human blood?

After I started noticing this issue in my students, of course, I started noticing it in myself as well.  Where were my troublemakers, my angry young women, my larger-than-life nasty bitches?  My mother might be proud to have raised a "nice girl," but my babies--my fictional ones--needed to have a little bit more bite.

One might say that Erzsebet Bathory might be taking this desire for badness a bit too far.  She's about as far a cry from the nice Midwestern protagonists of Icebergs as you can get.  She's vain and selfish and cruel as hell, and what's more, she's completely indifferent to the sufferings of others. 

But oh my God, was she fun to write.  That might seem like a strange thing to say about a woman accused of being the world's most notorious female serial killer, but it's true. 

I've finally learned what the bad girls have known all along: being bad, at least in fiction, is much more fun than being good.

Comments

[Jennifer]

But I think it's also a Midwestern problem.

I would agree.

And I bet this book was fun to write! Can't wait to read it.

[churlita]

Awesome post...And so very true. I haven't taken a fiction writing course since the 80's. I bet you do get overloaded with Vamp fiction (ugh). When I was in school at Iowa, all the stories were about young (good) kids from small towns who move to college towns and get corrupted. Snore.

So excited to read your novel.

[babelbabe]

can't wait to read your bad girl : )

[TLB]

Thanks all. The countdown begins...

[churlita]

I went into Prairie Lights to see if I could reserve a copy of your book. They hadn't ordered any yet, so they told me to come back in about a month. However, Paul was so excited about it, that he gesticulated wildly. I thought you'd want to know that....

[TLB]

WOW! Wild gesticulating from Paul Ingram. I am truly honored...