Why Writers Kill

By AnnetteDashofy

While coming up with a topic for today’s blog, I asked for ideas from my “street team” on Facebook. The fabulous Dru Ann Love asked why we write murder mysteries. Why not a mystery without a murder?

Considering we named our blog Writers Who Kill, I thought this was the perfect subject to write about.

I have read a couple of mystery novels in which no one died. To be honest, I kept waiting for the body to show up. Maybe I’m a little sadistic, but I was disappointed when, at the end of the book, the missing person turned up alive and well.

(Just to be clear, I’m only sadistic where fiction is concerned. In real life, I always pray the missing will show up unharmed and weep when they don’t.)

But I digress.

As a writer, I’ve never attempted to not kill anyone in my long fiction. Short fiction? Absolutely. But to sustain the tension for an entire novel, the stakes have to keep rising. How can you raise the stakes any higher than the threat of a life lost? In thrillers, failure usually promises many lives lost.

Fear of being killed. Fear of losing a loved one. And a demand for justice when a life is taken. Those are the biggies to keep the characters driven and the readers turning the page. At least for me.

Another question from my street team, this one from Fran Joyce, involves the other side of the homicide equation—the killer. Fran wanted to know about their guilt and how I decide whether the killer is overcome with guilt or devoid of it. This one offers a lot of variables, which, for me, is what keeps it interesting.

I’ve created killers who were vicious and cold-blooded. I’ve also created killers who are every bit as sympathetic as their victims. In fact, several of my favorite characters in my books have been the so-called villains.

My writing may have been influenced by a favorite early 1970s TV show, Alias Smith and Jones. The western comedy revolved around two outlaws who attempt to go straight. The premise is spelled out in the opening narration of the pilot episode:

Into the West came many men. Some were good men and some were bad men. Some were good men with some bad in them. And some were bad men with some good in them. This is the story of two pretty good bad men.

When I create a villain—or a hero for that matter—this passage, decades later, still plays in my head. I don’t want a character who is completely good or completely evil. They’re no fun to write.

Another quote (and I don’t know from whom it originated) says, “every villain is the hero of his own story.”

So whether the killer is heartless and feels completely justified, or whether the killer is consumed by guilt for his actions, I want him to have a motivation that the reader can relate to even if they can’t forgive.

Dear readers, what about you? Do you need a murder in a mystery novel to hold your interest? And do you prefer a villain you can despise? Or one who tugs at your heart a little?