...[E]ven if murder fascinates, is it an appropriate subject for fiction? Is it perhaps appealing to parts of us that shouldn't be appealed to? Might it excite readers into committing the very crime we're exposing? Why not write nice stories about people with simple problems? Perhaps we could concentrate on the loss of a handbag rather than the loss of a life?
We read novels for different reasons: entertainment, information, to make sense of our lives and to confront things that disturb us. Fiction has always dealt with difficult subjects and the writer's role is partly to confront what is happening within society.
There are many novels that entertain without challenging, novelists who present a genteel picture of a Scotland that I for one don't recognise - good luck to them. But the novel does not merely exist to support the Scottish tourist board. If novelists were confined to writing "nice books" we would end up with the fictional equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters - bland, unchallenging, with no-one we recognise ever appearing - a book full of product placements, a means to social control.
Crime, murder in particular, is a conduit through which we can explore what is going on within our world. When the modern fictional investigator delves into wrongdoing and corruption, he's also exploring the flip side of society, and the reader travels with him or her into places they would be ill advised to tread in real life.
We can pretend we live in a Scotland where there is no crime or violence, but I believe novelists should engage with society.
My extended comments:
Writers choose the fields they do, crime or otherwise, because those fields fascinate them--to the point they don't mind researching or crafting a story until they can become completely and gladly engrossed in it.
...[A]ll fiction is an escape of some kind. Writers wouldn't write fiction and readers wouldn't read it if real world news filled the same void.
The essential difference between fiction and reality is that fiction can be divided into beginning, middle, and end; expectation, action, resolution. Narrative structure provides the how and why missing from reality's most confusing, emotional events. If we know how and why an event takes place, it has less chance of scaring us; it becomes more palatable.
As realistic as fiction gets, it has to be palatable at least by an editor to be published. Ideally it should also be palatable by its intended audience so that audience will read more of the author's work.
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