Sex and violence
Filed under Writing Journal on September 16, 2004
Tagged: Maiden of Pain
Bet that caught your attention. A recent thread over at Candlekeep is discussing this subject in regards to FR novels. I made a short post, but thought I’d do a longer rant over here. I’m not going to preach (okay, maybe a little). Rather, I’m just going to expand on why I made the decisions I did in Maiden.
I knew that torture would play some role in this novel. It’s hard to avoid when the protagonist is a cleric for a goddess that goes by “The Willing Whip.” This was one of those challenges I spoke about in the Religion post. I don’t approve of explicit content involving sex or violence. That’s why I stopped reading Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, and why I don’t watch R-rated movies.
Yet, in Maiden, I have two scenes of graphic torture. One of them made my wife queasy. What was so different about them that I felt it wasn’t hypocritical to include them?
The only defense I can offer is that these scenes provided key insights into the motivations and beliefs of the characters involved. The first scene is nothing worse than what you would see in The Passion of the Christ, and is an integral moment of conflict for Ythnel as she grows in her faith. The second scene seeks to illustrate the differences of philosophy that can lie behind similar behaviors.
I’ll admit to walking rather tightly along a personal moral line, but I will stand by what I wrote. The story wouldn’t be the same without it.
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