Secrets, Lies and Our Book

Two threads of awareness have converged inside me recently regarding something more that our book needs from us.

First, in different posts (most recently in this post of Mary’s) we have all come to the conclusion that while there may be autobiographical aspects to our characters, they need to be individuals separate from ourselves with their own identities and stories.  All the better for the quality of our story.  (To say nothing about being better for the privacy of our lives!)

Second, I have become increasingly aware that fiction writing is about creating emotional experiences for the reader.  And in fact fiction is often about creating *difficult* emotions for the reader.  All happiness, joy and light is just plain boring.

I was a late “convincee” to the second principle.  I like my romance novels and their fairy tale endings.  They are an escape from my real life world as a psychotherapist where people are plenty emotional, thank-you very much, and share heart wrenching, traumatic and difficult stories with me on a daily basis.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my work and derive great satisfaction with helping people heal their wounds.  But at the end of the day fairy tales are just fine with me.

So this week the universe took me by hand and led me to just the right romance novel. I was reading a novel where the protagonist and her sister did some pretty hurtful, dishonest things.  Things involving secrets and lies.  Secrets that harmed others.  Lies!  Big, fat, damaging lies!  Yes, the protagonist kept a big secret from everyone.  Yes, the sister lied to the protagonist.  And the combination of these secrets and lies created a five year, painful odyssey for everyone.  Horrors!  (I may have given too much of the story away, but I want to give a nod here to An Heir of Deception by Beverly Kendall.)

Now, since this is a romance novel, it of course ended happily.  But I was struck by how much I was drawn into the story as a result of these secrets and lies.  And the story kept floating back into my mind during the day, and even the day after I was done reading it.  A bit unusual for me.

Hmm.  I guess the story was interesting.  And it was interesting because of the secrets and lies.  Hmm.

So this past week-end on our writer’s retreat when Mary suggested we really “bump up” the story for our characters, I was open to this in a way I hadn’t been before.  (Don’t think I’m going all altruistic here.  It was Mary’s suggestion so –  Ha! – her character gets to do the dirty deed!)

But now I got to think up a dirty deed for mine.

Karen

Photo credit:  Pinar Yanardag via Flickr