“It’s got no soul.”

One of the biggest complaints about the speculative fiction fields is that they are silly and trope-filled with no deeper meaning. And sure you could write a science fiction or a horror story with a checklist. But that’s a problem that a lot of beginning writers face, taking the words and giving them mean beyond Merriam-Webster.

For example let’s look at what a few others have recently, the use of woefully common real life traumas, such as rape and molestation, as character definitives. A personal pet peeve, it’s also, sadly very easy to find, especially in the humble beginnings of a horror writer’s literary attempts. It’s easy to take these horrible, painful things and make them into tools for fiction that’s supposed to be about dread and fear.

But without soul it’s easy for a story about a long term molestation victim getting revenge on his or her abusers to have less depth than this sentence. It’s easy for these events to become cliches with as little heart as other descriptors, like “tow-headed”, “hazel eyed” or “golden skinned”.

So the essential thing to remember is; Good fiction is more than just words. In a fully realized story the setting and the characters are every bit as important as the events that occur (which is not always the same thing as a plot, but that is a whole other rant.)

Abuse, for example is a spectrum of behaviors, not one single thing. There is a range of offenses; sexual abuse, spousal abuse, physical abuse, molestation, non physical sexual abuse, incest, neglect, and scape goating (in which the whole family often focuses on one victim). The abusers themselves, may be jerks, or they could be addicts, abuse survivors themselves who think this sort of behavior is normal, mentally impaired, or not mentally mature enough to handle the very adult issues of being responsible for other people.

Even the most common mental disorder linked to abuse, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, not only has a wide range of effects, it also has a wide range of causes. Police, firefighters, first responders and ER workers can all suffer from PTSD just from the things they see in their fields every day. Sometimes there is no abuser at all, and often it is not one or two incidents of abuse, but a lifetime of small events, remarks and outbursts can build into a very complex web of skewed behaviors and interactions that come from surviving trauma.

Brain Structures Involved in Dealing with Fear and Stress

Breaking down these concepts to nothing more than words used to describe and define characters (the abusive jerk father, the crazy molestation survivor, the PTSD homeless vet, the wife beater) strips them of their meaning and it shines a cold and ignorant light on the writer who pens such flat tales. Doing it for shock value, or for a gut-reaction rub off that people have when faced with these words ventures into an area of disrespect, cheapening the difficulties of the millions of people who face these sorts of problems every day.

Good story telling starts with an understanding that words must be more than an arrangement of letters and the definitions attached to them, characters must be more than people, concepts are only a point from which to begin and plot is more than just a series of things that happen.

Michele Lee writes horror, science fiction and fantasy from the relative safety of her haunted house in the oldest section of Louisville, Ky. When she isn’t writing, she reviews books of all genres, spends too much time on Twitter and grows monstrous vegetables. She can be kept track of at www.michelelee.net

Michele’s zombie novella, “Rot,” can be purchased from Skullvines Press.