Writing Ugliness

Inspiration can come from anywhere. I mean, literally anywhere. I've got a new project going that arose out of a conversation I had with my friend Kelton. He joked that he was killing me, we had this super weird conversation about torture, and thus The Blood Oath was born.

I've never written a fantasy piece before. I've recently gotten into Brandon Sanderson, who writes epic fantasy but yet fantasy hasn't really pulled at me as a genre that I would write. But, Kelton writes quite a bit of fantasy and the premise of The Blood Oath really wouldn't fit into any other genre. This piece has some firsts for me and writing fantasy is one. The other is writing in omniscient POV. It's also a bit different because we're writing this together and while I've written pieces with other people before it's always gone like this: I write a chunk, and then they write a chunk. With this piece and its POV, Kelton and I sometimes are writing every other sentence but it provides a lot better cohesion of characters and events. But I would say the biggest first for this project is the ugliness that it contains.

I've always been a bit torn about how much ugliness to include in my stories and I've never really written a story about characters who are truly jaded and involved in deeds that aren't right and good. One of the two protagonists, Hanilov, is a street gang member who aspires to become an assassin. He doesn't care much for anyone, he enjoys inflicting pain, and he's an overall jerk. The other protagonist, Esterlyn, comes from a race that is very violent and barbaric and yet she determines to be different.

Without giving spoilers to the story, there is a lot of bloodiness in the way Hanilov treats Esterlyn. He attacks her, tortures her, and almost kills her quite regularly. There are also several instances of his forcing himself on her. Kelton wrote the first bit of it and I was surprised by its intensity and gore. My initial reaction was, this is disturbing and we shouldn't be writing this.

How far should you go when writing ugliness? There's no need to be over-the-top, but you shouldn't sugarcoat either. The reality is there are people out there who do what Hanilov does every day. It's ugly and yes frankly, it's disturbing. But it should be disturbing. When something disturbs us it is able to move us to action. The second part to it is that without ugliness, there can be no beauty. The ending of this story (which I am not going to spoil, sorry) would not be the amazing and beautiful ending that it will be without all the ugliness that precedes it. The depravity from the fall that is showcased in characters like Hanilov is in all of us. It's only a matter of whether we let it take over or not. It's important to know, though, that it is there. Otherwise, we cannot guard against it. And the knowledge of it allows our ugliness to be redeemed into beauty by God.

Don't be afraid of the ugliness!
~Clarissa