Visions of Hell

A while back I'd had a talk with an editor I worked for back in the days when I cared enough about the world to write about it. He'd been wondering what I thought of some horror stories he'd sent over.

Each was a bad attempt to be clever...not because the idea was bad or the premise was cliche' but the skill to pull it off was simply not there.

You simply can't fake everything...least of all when you want to do a story about "Hell" like these stories tried to do. Be it literal or philisophical. Everyone has had misery in their lives and some a lot of depression...but that's not quite Hell. It's a term so loosely thrown around that it's like calling a person a "Genius" instead of being honest and just calling them "Talented'.

I'm not saying that their is a defenition of what Hell is exactly...but you sure as hell know it when you see it...or feel it as the case may be.

Story wise only two men I know of repeatedly took the Dante' like trip into Hell and came back with pages of blood. These are Jim Thompson and Peter Rabe. Their not horror writers and Rabe is pretty unknown outside of pulp crime circles.

Read Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me" and you'll not only be dissapointed by every Serial Killer movie EVER MADE after reading it...but you'll wonder why you've never killed a person. For the American Psycho crowd this could be a dissapointment...but for those who like intimate stories where a character feels real...you'll enjoy it many times over...for a diffrent reason each time.

Rabe's "Kill The Boss Goodbye" is about the best example you'll read about self destruction. Now I don't mean in the Sid and Nancy or Teen Goth/Punk/Industrial/Big Band/Polka Band Premise for a Song kind of way but in that natural way we all have. That lil voice that wants to destroy as much as create. Only in this tale the method to the madness is not only sickly delibrate...but the ultimate form of revenge. Very much a "Destroy Yourself and Take The World With You" kinda story...only with a very calm, poetic, and lovingly tragic absolute evil.

One really has to read these books and many of their others ( along with a generaly healthy reading habit) to see why these two stand alone. Their visions of Hell are not the kind that evolve out of personal taste or stylized visions...they are simply those few examples of things we wish were not true...and more so wish were not around the corner waiting for us to slip up.

I went through a period where Jim Thompson was one of my favorite authors. I even own his bio. I think he was a genius, not merely talented. :p:

Reading his bio actually sort of made his books give me more of a stomach ache. There are only one or two hard-to-find things of his I have not read, but I never quite get around to them now.

Don't you hate it when people whose job it is to judge your writing ask you to judge theirs, and not for a project you edit. I never know how to handle that. When I did some writing for White Wolf, I had an editor who would ask me about his writing. And it was almost uniformly awful. Now this would have been fine if he was submitting stuff for my projects. But he would read me passages from stuff he was editing and ask for my opinion. I finally gave him some clear ones and never got paid for the last thing I wrote for them. Doh!

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Originally Posted by AmeliaG

I went through a period where Jim Thompson was one of my favorite authors. I even own his bio. I think he was a genius, not merely talented. :p:

Reading his bio actually sort of made his books give me more of a stomach ache. There are only one or two hard-to-find things of his I have not read, but I never quite get around to them now.

Don't you hate it when people whose job it is to judge your writing ask you to judge theirs, and not for a project you edit. I never know how to handle that. When I did some writing for White Wolf, I had an editor who would ask me about his writing. And it was almost uniformly awful. Now this would have been fine if he was submitting stuff for my projects. But he would read me passages from stuff he was editing and ask for my opinion. I finally gave him some clear ones and never got paid for the last thing I wrote for them. Doh!

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Giving an honest opinion can be so double edged. I mean, you want the person to know what you think but do they really want to know?

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Originally Posted by AmeliaG

I finally gave him some clear ones and never got paid for the last thing I wrote for them. Doh!

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That's childish the point of self destruction...if you can't take the honest truth about your own work then you'll never improve. For him to take out his frustations by not paying you just shows he's more into the idea of being a good writer than and actual writer.

Can't take critiques personally in any way...it's too limiting when you're trying to improve and learn.

I've had to read a lot of stupid crap in my time. I've found it usually goes over better if you give them a couple of specific ideas on how to fix it at a time, rather than overwhelming them with a complete list of everything that's wrong with it. They'll eventually stop asking you for help, or come to the realization on their own that the story isn't any good. If it's a close friend, I would have to be honest with them, but for most people, I wouldn't bother.

When I read the topic, I was thinking of Doom3.. I'm such a fanboy :<