You’ve heard the common writers’ joke – be nice or I’ll kill you in my next book? That’s a thought to keep you warm on a cold night, but it doesn’t always work out.
I’ve never been able to write someone I hate into my stories. I’ve written about painful or confusing situations, I’ve used personality traits of people I’ve known and sometimes portrayed a confrontation or emotional moment that happened in real life. But I’ve never explicitly written about a person who I believe wronged me on some level.
And it’s not that I haven’t tried. Plenty of my stories have involved someone getting a figurative house dropped on him, but I still can’t bring myself to let even a throwaway character serve as a stand-in for some asshole in my life.
I don’t do it for them. In fact, I will freely admit to fantasizing about the untimely demise of former bosses or romantic partners or some sleazy guy at a bar or certain politicians or the jerk who cut me off in traffic or someone who had the audacity to disagree with my comment on a social media post. I’m a vengeful person.
But not in my writing.
My creative time is me time, and even when I’ve considered inserting a real-life nemesis into a story as a corpse or a buffoon, I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want those people in my head and they absolutely aren’t invited into my writing, which is my sacred space, psychologically, if not religiously. I wouldn’t let any of them cross my physical threshold, so why would I want them around when I’m having fun creatively? Talk about sucking the joy out of life.
And my reasons are not entirely altruistic. I enjoy picturing my nemeses as static characters, all black to my white. Fictionalizing them would require me to see the world through their viewpoint, give them a few redeeming qualities. I’d have to – gag! – emphasize with them, even as I planned to drop a stone gargoyle on their heads.
And frankly, they don’t deserve my understanding or my time.
Writer Elissa Altman wrote about revenge writing on a recent article for Lit Hub. In her case, the real-life villain appeared in Altman’s real-world memoir, Poor Man’s Feast, so there was no fictionalizing. The character was not a stand-in, but a depiction of an actual person. Because Altman righteously hated this woman’s guts, the writing was neither fair nor balanced.
Though the depiction of the wrongdoing may have been entirely accurate – particularly from Altman’s POV – it was also one-sided and, in Altman’s terms, “bleating, flailing, and a mass of enraged, disconnected run-on sentences.”
I can relate. I have journaled about exes and bosses and former friends, and rage-filled bleating is a fairly accurate description of the prose. That is why it’s in a journal, not in a story.
To her credit, Altman reached a state I have no interest in pursuing, in which she could write about this person “as the textured, complex character she actually is.”
Aw, hell no. I’m a writer, not a saint.
But I agree with Altman’s point about the writing, and that’s why I don’t use my real-life assholes in my work.
Revenge writing in memoir is never, ever a good, or valid, creative intention…Revenge writing smacks of desperation, of the writer’s back being up against a wall and their coming out swinging. It is a shivering, panting dog that will do anything for a bone; it is out of options.
And like any revenge, the aftermath is a letdown. The boss you kill off in your murder mystery will never read your novel. Nor will the ex who receives a humiliating literary comeuppance. And even if they do, if you’ve done your job well, your enemies will never recognize themselves in your writing at all. Altman suggests that literary revenge might result in repercussions, emotional or legal, but let’s be real – the most likely outcome is that your anger will dissipate into the ether, with your intended target none the wiser, or better.
In the end, all you’ve done is invite the worst people in your life into your head. You – and your writing – deserve better.
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