Loving Your Monsters
During the AWP conference in March, I attended a great session about ‘Writing the Monster.’ The panelists were from all genres and backgrounds, and their work was vivid and thought provoking. There were a ton of take aways from the discussion, but a few have stuck with me, especially as I go about writing my own monster.
There are literal and figurative monsters. The fear of the ‘other,’ the unknown, the monster inside us, meaning our emotions, desires, and fears. Cultural and religious norms influence what and who we see as monstrous, what fears we have as we navigate through life.
Literal monsters many times reflect social and cultural fears. They embody extremes in human desires or needs. They take the brunt of our hatred and give us a safe place to express those emotions.
But how do we, as writers, avoid simply repeating cliches, rehashing tired tropes that don’t serve the story or the growth of our characters?
One of the panelists, Aureleo Sans, suggested we give our monsters moments of gentleness and wonder. She speaks from a life of ‘otherness’ and translates this into her work.
It is easy to build a creature so grotesque, so monstrous, that it loses its impact. We, as readers, have already suspended our disbelief to engage in the story. But if the monster we fear is revealed to be nothing but a caricature of that fear, we can quickly lose our investment in the story. The monster becomes no more than the author in a sheet, masquerading as something terrible, while we can see the zipper in their costume.
There is also the risk of being heavy-handed with the morality of our story. If the monster is absolutely bad - and conversely, the hero absolutely good - then what is the purpose?
A monster, be it a human, a beast, or something more metaphysical, needs to balance the hero. It is a dark reflection of the protagonist. We need to be able to see ourselves being the monster, sympathizing with it in some small way, so the eventual defeat of the beast is bitter-sweet.
I wrote monsters into Archer 887 and now Vanguard. Literal monsters, in the case of The Hunter, and figurative ones: the alien, the unknown, the fear of self and of change.
The Hunter quickly became one of my favorite characters. He’s alien, relentless, seemingly unstoppable. He was once human, but maybe isn’t any longer.
But he also gets annoyed. Gets injured and exhausted. He’s doing something objectively bad, but maybe it’s also for the greater good? And he, like all good heroes, gets tossed out of his arena and finds himself suddenly no longer the most powerful, the scariest, or the most feared. He’s vulnerable, yet I do not rejoice at his defeat.
Instead, I wonder what will happen next. How will he and my other characters navigate this world where what they feared has become something they relate to?
You can find Aureleo Sans and her info here.
The post image is by solo_leveling_club. You can find them on IG here.
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Anna