Dark Adventures

That sound you might be hearing right now – of munching, swallowing, and occasionally belching – is actually me, gorging myself on a very large piece of humble pie.
In a previous blog entry I mentioned that planning is a good thing – and I still stand by that - but as Sally mentioned it’s not a very good idea to plan to the nth degree, and sometimes characters have to take you places you didn’t plan for.

And so to Chapter 14 where something has happened I didn’t expect. The story has taken a turn for the grim. Its actually going down a very dark path I had not envisaged – “why is that surprising?” you might ask for a book that’s a historical-horror-fantasy, but when the scene is a torture scene, and the torturers are in fact the good guys, then yeah this is a dark path indeed.
Without giving away too much, the scene lasts a good three thousand words (but remember this is a first draft, so it might turn out shorter) and while I’m not entirely comfortable writing it (it is quite graphic), it is blurring those boundaries between morality and the fight between good and evil - which I didn’t expect from something that is in essence an old fashioned swash-buckling adventure (though populated with daemons, angels and vampyres).

Whether or not the scene will actually make it through to the final draft – who knows? But it does add to the characters in a way that I never believed possible before. It actually makes you sympathetic (to a degree) for the most despicable villains you can imagine and questions the morality of our “heroes”. And if writing can evoke strong emotions, and even greater questions about right and wrong, then isn’t that a good thing?

Post script Friday 13th:
It appears I’m not the only writer of swash-buckling adventure that is travelling down a dark path with their characters at the moment. Sarah and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 last night and those characters are definitely going through dark changes, morally and physically - makes me feel like I’m in good/bad company afterall.