Wednesday is a great day. It is the part of the week that allows you to make the best possible changes. This week's article is about writing with social responsibility. The themes writers choose are very important. Check it out here The Responsibility of Theme in Storytelling

Nice article Nicole. I'll have to watch for that while reviewing horror literature. The challenge would be to find evil winning out but the story still having redeeming social qualities. It sounds like the article is geared towards slasher/shock type horror. There are others like Poe or Twilight Zone type fiction that leave us unsettled because we don't know who the victor is.

Hi Alice. :-) You have a very good point about the unknown victor. I'm going to start compiling a list myself. Have a great weekend.

Nice article, and very much to the point (meaning it follows my own reasons for getting rid of TV several years ago, LOL). Historically, stories were about ethics and morality almost exclusively--good won and evil was punished. Or at least those were the kind surviving over time. Current entertainment has a different kind of "training" element, it seems to me, one that numbs us to violence and evil, and justifies using both to achieve "good" ends. That bothers me!

So my question is: if both the market and the audience have been conditioned to emotional "intensity" lately, how can a writer of thematically gentler fiction expect to sell?

Hey, Cheryll. :-) Fighting evil is a very intense activity. Readers (including myself) enjoy being a part of the action. Consider this, evil doesn't win but it can run and hide away from time to time. Love and its goodness always triumphs in some way.

Yes, writers should never serve reality to their readers.

"Love and its goodness always triumphs[sic] in some way." That's right. Say, what did the Easter Bunny leave you this year?

IOW, I disagree strongly with your premise.

Writers should serve reality to readers and they should consider that everyone's reality is not exactly the same. You are what you read, hear and speak on a daily basis. Constant anger attracts a stream of negativity into life and faith in God's blessings will attract His Hope to manifest in a life, too. You can't have both. You will live based on what you let in.

Reading and writing fiction, even horror fiction, isn't about anger. It is about conflict because without conflict, there is no story. And it's often about ordinary people in extra-ordinary circumstances. Horror stories allow the reader to stretch their imaginations. Without our imaginations, we might as well be robots. And that would be a nightmare imo.

Reading should be an experience. Like bungie jumping or riding on a roller coaster. A good writer will take you on a journey no matter what the genre or the subject matter is. As a bonus you get to go home without a long drive.

Excellent response, Alice. Thank you. :-) It is our imaginations that make us human.

Nicole, while I enjoyed reading your article, I am afraid that I have to disagree with most of it. Writers normally have a target audience in mind when they write. There is a place for evil, blood, guts and gore in a book. Granted it shouldn't be in a romance novel per se but it does belong in a book that caters to that particular audience.

Writing responsibly should be just that. If you are writing a romance novel then writing responsibly should mean that there shouldn't be blood thirsty monsters or oceans of blood in it and on the flip side writing responsibly should mean that there should not be gratuitous sex scenes in horror movies that especially have nothing to do with the plot.

Unfortunately today horror, blood and sex is what sells books and in turn sells movies as well. It's okay to write responsibly, but we have to write responsibly for our target audience.

In your article, you write: It is irresponsible to lead someone to a dangerous place, accompany them with dangerous people and then leave them alone to fend for themselves. They must be given an escape route, even for entertainment purposes.

I don't quite sure I know what you are talking about here. Are you talking about a scene where someone runs down an alley and is chased by a couple of thugs and then go to another scene? Or are you talking about the end of a movie where someone may have been left on an island that is full of something like vampires or zombies and that is how the movie ended?

In any event, this is probably where the writer wants the audience to figure out their own outcome, as happy or as sad as it may be. An ending like this or a scene like this allows us to fill in what happened and make our own happy or sad ending and that really what writing is all about. It should allow us to use our imagination and these are the perfect scenarios for just that.

Sadly, gone are the days of such books as The Old Man and the Sea or Slaughterhouse 5 and in come the books about vampires, the devil, monsters and zombies. Most of the hit television shows we watch now have to do with zombies, magic, vampires and other forms of violence. We can embrace it, tolerate it or just ignore it but no matter how you feel about the subject matter, it will always be here.