Author Commentary: Part 10 of And in the Dark They Are Born
"What we show, what we say, it all matters."
Author Commentary, Part 10
NOTE 1: SPOILER ALERT; please read Part 10 before listening.
NOTE 2: At time of recording, this newsletter was called The Em(erald) Dash.
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July 8th, check! Well personally I agree with your approach to the rape scene, Garrett - if it doesn't add anything to the narrative, the reader's mind can fill in the gap just as effectively. Strange, though, because I started thinking of some movies where it IS graphically depicted (The Accused, Last Exit to Brooklyn) and I'm not sure where the cutoff is, why it adds to the one medium but not to the other? Maybe because movies are sensory and "temporal" - they simulate the experience of being there in real time and the ability to extrapolate is limited, whereas books are entirely cerebral and can be put down and picked up again at our discretion.
I read an article recently about "Frodoing" your character, which is basically where you conk your character on the head in the middle of an action scene, then cut to the aftermath - and I realized I had done it in my novel! 🤣 Yours was an active choice though - different, but I think it's a totally valid device in many situations, part of trusting the intelligence and imagination of your readers...