Showing posts with label Suspense Magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suspense Magazine. Show all posts
Dennis Palumbo on the Cover of Suspense Magazine’s Summer 2021 Issue
Check out Dennis' essay in the magazine about how writers address the reality of COVID in their works-in-progress: Pre or Post Covid That is the question... Here!
Dennis Palumbo's Essay "Is Your Psycho Killer Just...Psycho? " Featured in Suspense Magazine September- October Issue
As some of you may know, I'm a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in creative issues. But I also write mystery fiction, both short stories and novels. Which means I also read a lot of mystery fiction, and have for many, many years.And since I believe good crime fiction holds a mirror up to society -- exposing both its flaws and triumphs, dangerous excesses and moral ambiguity -- it doesn't surprise me that many contemporary mysteries and thrillers feature ever-more-violent criminals, ever-more-psychotic murderers, ever-more-deranged serial killers. As our world threatens to tilt into chaos -- social, economic, and political -- our crime fiction seems to traffic more and more in the realm of the psychologically-disturbed culprit, the villain whose heinous crimes appear totally random, totally senseless.
Which means, for today's mystery writer, I believe it's also a time to step back and reflect on how truthfully -- both in terms of believable narrative and real life itself -- a crime story villain is portrayed. In other words, is your psycho killer just ... psycho? Does your villain display the verisimilitude that all good fictional characters require -- or is he or she just crazy? Mindlessly, conveniently crazy?
Ray Bradbury once said, "There is only one type of story in the world -- your story." In other words, all writing is autobiographical. No matter how seemingly removed in time and space from the reality of your own life, you're writing about yourself. Even your impulse to tell a particular story arises from an aspect of your interior world.
Case in point: My series of mystery thrillers (Mirror Image, the debut novel, and Fever Dream, its sequel) feature a psychologist who consults with the Pittsburgh police. This character, Daniel Rinaldi, is Italian-American, was born and raised in the Steel City, and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. As did I.
Of course, my crime novels are works of fiction, so there are definitely points at which Rinaldi and I part company. For one thing, he was an amateur boxer in his youth. The other, even more obvious difference, is that Daniel Rinaldi is a lot braver and more resourceful than I am. Most of the dangerous situations he finds himself in would have me running for the hills!
So Daniel Rinaldi both is and isn't me. As therapists, he and I are similar in our theoretical orientations and manner of doing therapy. His best friend, a paranoid schizophrenic, is even based on a patient at a private clinic with whom I was especially close. But, though we share these and other personal similarities, as a character Rinaldi clearly represents a fantasized version of me.
As do, I believe, all characters brought to life by their literary creators -- even those that seem totally removed from who we think we are. I'm speaking here about the writing of villains. Particularly those that are portrayed as crazy, psychopathic, criminally disturbed.
I can't tell you how often I've read thrillers in which the author's depiction of a "psycho" killer is pure boiler-plate: unconvincing, unmotivated, without psychological depth or realism. Why is this? Especially when the writer's other characters seem more rounded, realistic, subject to the usual panoply of feelings and motives?
In my view, it's because these writers are denying Bradbury's tenet about writing, which is that -- however disguised -- it is inevitably autobiographical. By that I mean, crime writers often see their monstrous, unstoppable killer as being "out there" somewhere, beyond the realm of normal human behavior. A caricature of evil out of a child's nightmare.
Or, even worse, they often conjure a conveniently "crazy" killer who commits the crime merely because he's crazy. Merely to horrify the reader. Merely as an excuse for gratuitous and graphic depictions of unspeakable acts. Merely as a bad guy heinous enough to have us rooting for the hero to finally stop him. In other words, the boogie-man.
I've often had writing patients, working on a violent crime thriller, complain that they just can't get inside the head of their villain "because I'm not like that."
Do you feel that way? Do you believe that because you're a nice, kind, truthful person, you can't really create a lying, vicious killer? A ruthless blackmailer? A greedy kidnapper?
Well, if so, I beg to differ.
For one thing, as a psychotherapist for more than 25 years, I've come to realize that people --common, everyday people -- have operatic passions. That stoic guy bagging groceries at your local supermarket, that helpful lady at the pharmacy, the janitor at your kid's school -- all of them, if given the opportunity to relate their life stories, would stun you with the personal dramas each has endured. The heartbreaks and triumphs, the yearnings and dashed hopes. The hurts and shame and missed opportunities they've obsessed about since high school. The deaths and financial losses and mental illnesses with which their families have struggled.
As I say, operatic passions. Great loves and hates. Maybe buried now beneath years of quiet, conventional living. Beneath years of daily toil, paying the bills, driving the kids to school. But those passions are there, trust me. Otherwise soap operas wouldn't be a staple of broadcasting in every corner of the world, in every culture. Otherwise viewers wouldn't be transfixed (often as a guilty secret) with reality TV, with true crime series on cable networks, with gossip in all its forms.
Which brings me back to the crime writer, and what he or she is willing to acknowledge and explore. And, make no mistake, there's a bottomless well, a fathomless sea, a boundless horizon available, if you just have the courage to accept all that it contains.
Deep within each mystery writer lies the seeds of every kind of human. From a nun to a serial killer, a corporate tycoon to a migrant worker, a life-giver to a life-taker. If you can feel, you can imagine. And if you can imagine, then the possibilities -- for good or evil -- inherent in that which you've imagined are available to you.
Here's an example, crude but illustrative. Let's say you've always had a secret yearning to be respected. Perhaps this yearning began in childhood, when your siblings got all the glory in school or on the athletic field, and you felt ignored. Discounted. Invisible.
Imagine, then, that your villain -- a terrifying serial killer, a sociopath who murders without remorse -- has felt similarly discounted and invisible all his life. Rejected. Ignored.
Well, if you're this guy, one thing that definitely gets you some attention is leaving a swath of mutilated bodies in your wake. And if you're clever enough to continually elude the police, you probably feel a sense of pride. Of gratification. Of vindication. Now the world's respecting you, even if it's a respect based on fear. You're certainly not invisible anymore. At long last, you're getting the attention you deserve.
Luckily, regardless of how we were treated in childhood, most of us still grow up to be sane, rational citizens. Maybe our feelings are easily hurt, or we succumb too easily to envy or jealousy, but we're probably not going to do much about it. Certainly nothing criminal.
But in our fiction, we get to act out these feelings. As writers, we get to create villainous characters who do all sorts of bad things -- and, I submit, the more relatable their motives, the more terrifying they are to the reader.
The cold fact is, even a psychopath has his or her reasons. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, believed his neighbor was a demon, ordering him to kill through communicating via his pet dog. Mary Martin Speck, a nurse who killed 23 patients, claimed to be doing the Lord's work. Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, felt a need to prove his superiority over those lesser beings trying to catch him.
As I say, the reasons may be irrational, based on delusional beliefs or unfounded grandiosity, but they're reasons nonetheless. At least in the killer's mind.
Which means the brave writer has to visit that mind occasionally. Has to figure out some way to relate to that mind's desires, fears, beliefs, pain, ego.
I recall a group therapy session years ago, when I was an intern in clinical training, in which one of the members got furious at another. Over some real or imagined slight. Regardless, she got to her feet and verbally attacked this second person.
After 10 minutes of vituperative rage and name-calling, the woman finally calmed herself. Then, turning to the therapist who was running the group, she said, sheepishly, "Wow, all that anger and rage ... all that ugly hate ... I'm so sorry. That wasn't me."
To which the therapist responded, "Yes it was. It isn't the sole truth of who you are, of course, but those dark feelings are in there. They're in everybody. They're as real in you as are your other feelings -- your compassion, your generosity, your joy."
As John Fowles once wrote, in his novel Daniel Martin, "Whole sight ... or all the rest is desolation." By which he meant that the totality of the human condition, the entire truth of our experience as people, has to be acknowledged if we're to live authentically. Just as, I believe, the totality of the human condition has to be explored and utilized by the writer seeking to create vivid, compelling, seriously terrifying villains.
So the next time you begin conceptualizing your crime story's villain, don't be afraid to mine your own feelings. Down deep, below the surface. It's where the motherlode of characterization, and all the narrative gold that results, lies hidden.
Just waiting for you, the writer, to bring it into the light.
***
(This essay first appeared, in slightly revised form, on the "Sirens of Suspense" website.)
Breaking News: Writing is Hard! by Dennis Palumbo Featured in the April/May Issue of Suspense Magazine
Work the problem---don't make yourself the problem.
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| AprilMay2016issue |
"When I write," he said, "I feel like I don't always know what I'm doing. I go over stuff, then I cross stuff out, then I try something else...I feel like I'm losing it sometimes. What does that mean?"
I shrugged. "It means you're a writer."
"But I spend a lot of time worrying, never sure whether or not the damned thing is working..."
"Sounds like writing to me."
This did not erase the perplexed look on his face.
"I don't know about that." He glanced around the crowded room. "I mean, I heard the other day on the radio that we're all crazy."
"Who's crazy?"
"Us. Writers. Artists in general. This shrink was on some talk show on NPR, and he said it's been proven that we're all bipolar."
"I'm confused. Do you mean that because you're a writer you're bipolar, or does being bipolar cause you to be a writer?"
"He said it could be one or the other, but it could be both.What do you think?"
"I think I'm gonna skip the next NPR pledge drive."
Apparently, it's in fashion again: the notion that the creative impulse, with its occasional emotional difficulties, is merely the product of a psychological disorder. It must be, the argument goes, given how much emotional turmoil, stress and disordered mood is often associated with it.
The current favorite diagnosis for artists, particularly writers, is bipolar disorder---what used to be called manic-depression.
In fact, there's a movie currently in release---based on Kay Jamison's influential book, Touched With Fire---that reinforces this very concept. But the idea that writers are of a single and highly neurotic type goes all the way back to---who else?---Freud. Later, in the 1950's, a fellow named Edmund Bergler (credited, by the way, with inventing the term "writer's block") wrote a number of books on the subject. His explanation for the reason that writers write? "Psychic masochism."
Of course, the idea that the artistic impulse is inevitably the product of a psychological condition is not new. History is filled with examples of the tormented artist stricken with melancholy, going on drunken binges, cutting off an ear, and generally behaving---as we therapists like to say---inappropriately. But to infer that some kind of "craziness" underlies creative endeavor, or, even worse, that the impulse to create is itself an indicator of some clinical condition is just plain wrong.
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| Dennis Palumbo |
labels like "bipolar," one thing is clear: Labels exist for the convenience of the labeler. How helpful they are to the artistic person is debatable.
Second, claiming that the creative impulse comes from any one source---whether mania, psychosis or the moon---is both ludicrous and potentially harmful. Ludicrous because it's oversimplified and inconsistent with the lived experience of countless artists. Potentially harmful because it undervalues the mysterious, indefinable aspects of the creative act.
I'm reminded of a quote by H.L. Mencken, who said, "There is always an easy solution to every human problem---neat, plausible and wrong." The tendency to see a writer's creative struggles solely in terms of evidencing a psychological problem betrays a profound narrowness in scope, imagination, and appreciation for the hidden ways of the artistic heart.
The point is, yes, perhaps Van Gogh did suffer from symptoms that we might label bipolar. But what is also true---and certainly more important---is that he was supremely talented. Both facts can co-exist, without one necessarily causing the other.
Which brings me back to that worried audience member. Because the truth is, he's not alone in his concern about what his creative struggles mean. Many writer patients in my therapy practice wonder about the same thing, given the level of anxiety, self-doubt and fear of shameful self-exposure that accompanies the writing of most scripts, plays, essays or novels.
"If I'm plagued with anxiety," he or she says, "doesn't that say something about the quality of what I'm writing? Let's face it: if I was any good, I wouldn't be going through this agony. If this story really worked, I wouldn't be bumping up against so many technical problems, narrative glitches, inconsistencies in some of the characters. Right?"
Wrong. You're bumping up against technical problems, narrative glitches and issues with some of your characters for a very simple reason. WRITING IS HARD.
This isn't to say that writing isn't often accompanied by anxiety, manifesting in a dozen different ways, from sleepless nights to procrastination to substance abuse. And these psychological aspects ought to be addressed. But these symptoms---and the self-recriminating meanings we give them---are not the reason that writing is difficult. Because whether or not a writer suffers from these symptoms, in small measure or to a crippling extent, the reality is that telling a good story with intelligence, emotional truth and narrative complexity is hard. Really, really hard.
Let me put it another way: what I sometimes tell my writer patients, and what I'm trying to stress here, is that an artist's job is to create. When you create anything---whether a script or a novel, whether painting a landscape or writing a song---you're bound to run into problems. Problems inherent in the doing of the task. So your real, pragmatic, fundamental job is to work on these problems. Solve the difficulties. Answer the nagging questions.
In other words, I believe you should, as a creative person, work the problem, instead of making yourself the problem. You and your psychological issues aside, problems with your work are inherent in doing that work.
Case in point: one of my friends is a Buddhist monk, whose composure and equilibrium is, in my experience of him, a model of psychological well-being. He's also a poet. The last time I spoke with him, he complained about this long poem he was laboring over. "Man," he said, "writing poetry's a bitch."
Note that he didn't say anything self-recriminating about his talent, his character, his work ethic, or his puny place in the pantheon of poets. He didn't see his struggles and artistic frustration as evidence of a failure in himself. Or a reflection of his neurotic insecurity. He merely stated that writing poetry is hard.
So, once again: when you come up against some difficulty in your writing, work the problem---don't make yourself the problem. You may have issues to be addressed, but the difficulties of writing are inherent in the task, not a reflection of your failings as either a person or a writer.
Remember, writing is hard. Writing anything is hard. Especially if you're trying your best.
Which reminds me of an old Hollywood story. Years ago, back in the days of the studio system, a roomful of contract writers were going crazy trying to solve an Act Two problem in a script they were doing. After a week of teeth-gnashing and garment-rending, a new young writer was brought into the room. In a matter of minutes, he hit upon the solution. To which one of the exhausted old veterans mumbled, "Sure he solved it. He didn't know how hard it was."
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Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (MY FAVORITE YEAR; WELCOME BACK, KOTTER, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist and author of the Daniel Rinaldi mystery series. More info at www.dennispalumbo.com (link is external)
Suspense Magazine Reviews Story Merchant Client Dennis M. Walsh's Nobody Walks
Every once in a great while, a true crime is written that pulls at the heartstrings, while it also provides a tale of suspense that will be remembered for a good long time. This is that story.
The complete and utter anguish of a family that loses a son and brother is the subject that this author takes on. Being a criminal defense attorney, Mr. Walsh valiantly tells the story in true ‘Technicolor,’ of his youngest brother’s death and how the family came together, stayed within the law and were able to bring the killers to justice.
It was 2003, when Christopher Walsh was found in a storage locker stuffed into a trash can. As most often happens, the murder investigation slowed down and almost came to a standstill. It took seven long months for the authorities to file charges, and many years to get the case to trial.
When the body was first found, Dennis Walsh announced to one and all that he would keep his brother’s murder alive and not let it become a cold case. And truer words had never been spoken. As the story unfolds, readers see that the Walsh family was close, but unfortunately the father—once a policeman—left the force and got involved with the underworld along with the rest of his sons, except for Dennis. It seems that Dennis was the only son who did not turn to an unsavory path that would make him a criminal. Perhaps that was fate working, considering Dennis took the job of solving his brother’s murder upon his shoulders, and went from suspect to suspect asking questions, becoming one with the jail birds and the people who put them there, without breaking the law.
This is a very heart-wrenching story of a family that made sure justice was served, and readers will find themselves rooting for Dennis from the very beginning.
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