FINDINGS: Digging Deeper (Sociopathy and Blue Birds)
Weirdness from the research rabbit hole
The Tough Subject of Sociopathy
All my fictional characters are conglomerates of people I’ve had experiences with or researched. Although in some cases, a character “comes to life on the page.” For conglomerates, I use 3 people at a minimum, including researched.
This is an ethical consideration for me, hailing back to technical-instruction writing days with audience analysis. (So if you feel like you recognize a character, it’s actually NOT that person. Unless I wrote them a long time ago, and it became true later! 🤣)
So, writing about Red, in Roseberry Tea, is a challenge. How many people like Red do I know? There are family stories of a difficult great uncle who married a would-be Hollywood actress before he lost her in CA, just like he lost all his money, again and again. Yet he managed to drive a shiny red truck. Always up for adventure and, by all accounts, a tough SOB. Physical, but not hateful, rather charismatic instead.
Certainly I’ve had run-ins with one or two high-level corporate types that I’ve really, truly worried about. And there’s media, often unnoticed, that a certain percentage of world leaders and innovators are sociopaths. No need to name names here…
Yet my writer-friend, PhD and author of a book on beating depression, who is reading Roseberry Tea, questioned the “flatness” of Red. She was right to point out that I’d treated the villain as a flat character. Perhaps because it was easier to see him killed rather unapologetically.
Yet, as a victim in this semi-cozy piece of fiction, he deserves to be seen. As a writer, that’s informative. And, people deserve to be seen. They absolutely do. So I dug a little deeper in the backstory of his real love for MJ’s hippie mom. He protected her, and they did love each other for some time. What hope might there have been? It must have been hard growing up. What struggles did he have, like realizing he was different? What accomplishments, like going through AA? And what about the murderer in this story—who’s not a sociopath?
There are some things about this story that are flipped. The murderer is not a sociopath. They are wrong; although they are damaged and had reasons. The person most likely to cover up? Is not actually protecting themselves.
Digging in to what seemed like simple genre writing, requires quite a lot. And it makes for fun writing. Fun reading, too, I hope. 🙏
Anyway, while researching I found this rare article written by a sociopathic person about sociopathy. I was so surprised by this research…
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