So, here’s the question I received last week that I wanted to answer:
“Why do you think it’s so important for your characters to suffer?”
Now, to start off with, I don’t think this is ‘really’ the question they wanted to ask. Still, I’ll answer it as it is first, and then try and parse out the more interesting question it implies. So, why is suffering important? The first answer I could give is simply that characters have to suffer. It’s true for all fiction—stories require conflict, and that conflict begets suffering—it’s the fundamental ingredient of stories. Suffering is the vehicle through which characters grow and change, if we tried to remove it from our stories, then there would be nothing holding our interest or driving the story along. Suffering is what makes characters sympathetic and relatable; it’s the glue that holds characters together over time, linking their first entrance to their final conclusion through their change and growth.
Still, that’s a pretty boring answer, isn’t it? Besides, the way we just talked about suffering was rather broad, and I don’t think the questioner meant it broadly, so here’s a second, (but equally unsatisfactory answer, I think) if we focus in a little more. I often tell people that I write horror stories, which simply tend to have lots of (very, very gay) sex in them. Indeed, much of the inspiration for my stories came from horror and thriller writers like Stephen King and Robin Cook. The suffering in my stories is a particular kind of suffering—it’s suffering-unto-death (Now, not death per se, but radically changing an individual’s personality/memories/minds is philosophically identical to death; go read Part Three of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons if you want a good argument for why). But again, this form of suffering is intrinsic to the genre we’re discussing. Part of what makes horror stories horrible is the threat of death and suffering, so again, there is no real interesting ground to be broken here.
So, the question, as written, appears fruitless. Stories have suffering because that is what makes stories compelling; horror stories like mine have physical suffering and death because that is what makes then horrible. Now, here’s the question I think Anonymous really would like me to answer, which is not about the importance of suffering, but about the eroticism of suffering. After all, suffering in general, and suffering-unto-death are hardly new or strange ideas to writing, but when we eroticize it, some might have the intuition that there is something immoral about that act. How do we reconcile the fact that suffering is wrong, with the fact that we find suffering erotic and pleasurable, either at a immediately or at a distance?
Well, there are three justifications most stories use. The first is revenge, the second is sadism, and the third is masochism. In the first, the victim deserves it, and because they deserve it, we are free to enjoy it as contrapasso. In the second, the victim does not deserve it, but the perpetrator is evil, and we are free to enjoy the eroticism of his evil act at a pornographic distance. In the third, we experience the suffering as the victim, allowing the perpetrator to commit the suffering upon us, thereby releasing him from the moral burden of inflicting suffering upon someone unwilling.
Still, this dodges the question. The justifications we use are merely a second order concern—the first order question is simply, “Why is suffering erotic?” The justifications might make us feel better about these stories, but don’t answer the underlying question, which I honestly can’t answer well. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t have an answer. Why do we find anything erotic, really? Who could even begin to parse out the psychological and historical drives which compel us towards one sexual proclivity or another? The justifications above are in place protect us from the realization that what we desire and sexually enjoy comes at the (albeit hypothetical) cost of others’ autonomy and self-determination. Every story where characters suffer unwillingly and the reader receives erotic pleasure from it is a rape story—there’s no other way to parse it. I understand that. I embrace that, reluctantly. I’m not comfortable with it in every way, and I have some problems with it reaching out beyond the virtual or fictional and into the real, which is why I write stories, and have some personal issues with RP and acting out some of these drives in real life. Of course, that’s just me, other’s are free to do what twiddles their fancy provided it only comes at the cost of their own autonomy and no one else’s (ala John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty).
As a writer, though, understanding and employing these justifications do more to determine how a story will take shape than most anything else. When I consult someone on a commission, the first thing I usually try and figure out is what sort of justification he uses, himself. Does he want a revenge tale? Does he want some master to kidnap him and inflict the change on him personally? Does he want a more traditional, sadistic horror story, with an unknowable, unstoppable villain pursuing the innocent? These three forms help comprise the backbones of the genre—ignore them at your peril.
Bracken's Corner 