electric mist

bringing the dark & twisty

I once wrote a thriller so dark and twisted that when readers responded, they told me they had slept with their lights on. (One suggested I get therapy.) This wasn't a slasher type of thing, but a psychological thriller (which I never showed anyone in L.A. because I was later embarrassed by how dark it was -- which is dumb, I think now.). Since then, I've written -- and become known for -- the romantic comedy and now the action comedy (which is going out soon, according to my agent who seemed pretty psyched.) I haven't gone back to the dark and twisted place to tell a story. Until now.

Lots of stories can be written about pure evil or bad guys doing bad things, but I wanted to explore something scarier -- what about when someone is so angry, they are seething beyond sanity... and they're right to be angry? And what if the actions they take are so deadly wrong, and they know it... but they know that taking those actions will be the only way lives are saved later? Would you kill a dozen people if you knew absolutely that a thousand would be able to live?

This interested me, in finding that character. In drawing the audience from the outside (the sympathy with the victim) to the inside (the sympathy with the perpetrator), in blurring those lines so that you at once are horrified by what the person might do next, and yet, secretly, you think they're right (and how that makes you feel about yourself in that moment.)

This is what I'm working on. It's a dark place, and twisted, and in some ways, difficult. In other ways that I'm too worried about to explore, it's easier, far easier, than comedy.

Posted by toni at February 27, 2004 07:42 PM