Having mostly ignored Twitter, though I signed up months ago, I happened over to the place to block a hussy who was advertising her “wares” from following me…not that there’s much to follow, mind you. In the process, I happened upon some old, unread messages from authors directed at me and checked out a couple of their novels. Lo, many were quite good. Others were well-written, but too obviously a very visceral kind of horror.

I do not understand people who enjoy reading gore, explicitly violent, and visceral novels–graphic cruelty, gore, sex, or perverse violence. I mean, okay, graphic scenes are part of a book when needed, as is the intimate sex scene…when the story calls for it. But this stuff was uncalled for, in my opinion, because the violence wasn’t an integral part of the plot and story, but rather added for titillating the reader’s senses…if one can call gore and cruelty titillating (which I can’t).

If something happens in the violent scene that is key to the story climax or subsequent crises, then the scene belongs. But does the scene–any scene–belong when nothing happens in it other than graphic incidents, incidents that don’t have any pertinence to anything later in the story?

I don’t think so.

So, when applying the rule of “Cut everything that doesn’t forward plot and story” in writing and editing fiction, why are these scenes populating so many books? Are readers that hungry for blood, gore, and perversion?

I really don’t think so. Those who do aren’t the fiction reading majority, else these sorts of books would top the best sellers lists, and they don’t.

(…And, no, Liz, I’m not talking about Under the Bridge, which is very tame by comparison to some of this stuff.)

Recently:

• Writing Pedagogues
• They Work Very Hard
• Treading the Dangers of Fiction
• Infighting About Grammar & Punctuation
• Scary Writers
• New Novel, Chapter Two
• To the Book Store
• New Novel Amid Chaos
• Raw Gore, Explicit Cruelty, Debased Sex in Novels
• Back from Summer Hiatus