It's occurred to me on the bus home tonight (I was too lazy/tired to walk) that I love dirty literature...not that kind of dirty literature! (although I'll be honest and say I'm partial to that too...)
To be precise filth, squalor, decay and rust. Mouldering stonework, water stains, reeking cess pits, disease and depressive situations. I love corruption and fallen empires and particularly faded grandeur there's just something about it that I love to imagine and embrace. Let the pervasive stink of those horribly downbeat locales wash over me.
I find them the perfect origin for characters to wallow in and rise above.
The only time I like a utopia is when I have the option of bringing it crashing to its knees. Looking back over the vast majority of things I've written in the past I see a great deal of oppression and suffering. It's not a nice setting I like to create by any stretch of the imagination.
But that's the weird part of it. To me, there is a great deal of beauty in the perverse and ghastly. At least when it comes to literature. The things I describe are not the sorts of things I want to see happen today in the world, this is strictly imagination based.
Having said that, suffering as a literary concept intrigues me. I want to hurt my characters, to truly make them suffer and bleed. I want to break them and see them come crawling through on bloodied palms before giving them the reward they need.
Through suffering and pain comes true character in fantasy literature. The noble lord on his shiny charger...that's the kind of character that I'd have gutted and used as a latrine by some filthy brigand as soon as possible.
My characters will have to earn their place in the world, or be snuffed out by it.
However, I suspect I need to find a balance between relentlessly miserable, and something which is also entertaining for other people...
Phill
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