When I wrote my 6th novel in the Enoch Wars series (Hell’s Frankenstein) I deliberately made it more exaggeratedly violent, gruesome, gross, disgusting, disturbing, and all-around horrifying.
The reason:
I knew it would be the shortest of the books.
And so I wanted it to be the most memorable — but in a creepy & disturbing & I would say heinous way to make it absolutely clear what evil looks like.
For example:
One of the scenes in the book has to do with a zombie eating a group of children in order to “power up” to open a portal to hell. And, a full seven years before everyone outside of Q anon was talking about adrenochrome due to the movie Sound of Freedom came out, I was playing with the theme of evil (in this case a zombie) growing stronger, younger, and more powerful in direct proportion to how much terror-prompted adrenaline is in their victims’ (children especially) blood at the time they consume them. Between that and what I write about in the 9th novel “Serpent Seed” — also touching on themes a full year or two before the mainstream caught on, but that I have been studying for nearly 30 years now — in some ways I argue, in my totally biased & irrational opinion, my novels are turning out to be spoiler alerts…
Anyway, back to the writing lesson:
It was already a disturbing, disgusting, gut-wrenching scene to write in 2016.
But after Willis started crawling the earth four years later?
I don’t know I could write that scene or story.
In fact, I remember asking my publisher Greg Perry if I should edit that scene. That it was way too disturbing, even for Enoch Wars. And that maybe, just maybe… I took it a bit too far. But I will never forget what he said in reply, almost dismissively, as if I had just asked the dumbest question ever conceived:
“No. Let monsters be monsters.”
He was, as usual, correct.
And so I left it in.
But it’s an even more disturbing scene to me now post Willis. And this is the case even though I used a technique I learned from A Clockwork Orange (the movie) I learned in a film class back in 1995. That technique being to “blunt” and make horror and violence a bit more palatable by putting an almost cartoon-like spin on it. In A Clockwork Orange, for example, when Alex is being forced to watch films about violence and rape, Kubrick made the victims have almost clown-like hair or exaggerates the goofiness of their surroundings, etc.
They come off as just bizarre details to the uninitiated.
But I suspect it was deliberate, probably to try to appease the censors.
Whatever the case, I used it in Hells’ Frankenstein.
I don’t want to give the punchline away, but I like to think it ultimately worked as intended.
On the other hand:
The 9th novel (Serpent Seed) was the only book in the series written after Willis was born. And it had a huge impact not only on the story, but also the themes and emotional content I poured into it, that would never have been in there otherwise. As a lots od parents know, having a child totally changes the way one looks at the world. And it is reflected in that book vs the other eight.
Same with my late dog Zoe.
She was dying as I wrote and did the first round of edits on Serpent Seed.
And there is an epilogue (about a dog) that I deliberately waited until after Zoe passed until I wrote it. Literally the same week, while mourning her death, I poured it all into that epilogue. That epilogue would not have had the same impact had I written it a decade earlier, a year earlier, a month earlier, or even a week earlier.
The point of all this?
I am not sure there is one point.
But I will say this:
There is a scene in the movie Sideways where the character Mia is telling Miles about her approach to wine tasting and enjoying. She doesn’t just think about the wine. She thinks about the people who picked the berries and bottled it. How many of them might be dead by the time she drinks it. And she is cognizant that a bottle of wine is a living, breathing entity that will taste different on the day you open it than if would if you opened it on any other day — past or future.
That is how writing works.
What you write today would be totally different if you wrote it yesterday or tomorrow, a year ago or a year from now, a lifetime ago or towards the end of your life. This email would not be the same if I had written it yesterday, or if I waited until next week.
Would it be better or worse at another time?
No idea.
And neither will you with your writing.
All you can do is release the Kraken and write.
The good news is, God invented editing.
And editing can save many an email, sales page, article, book, or, yes, novel.
All this applies to my email methodology in the paid Email Players newsletter as well.
More on that here:
Ben Settle
