Gratuitous Violence

I've been reading a lot of suspenses and thrillers lately, and I've come to the conclusion that there's too much needless, graphic violence in a lot of them. Maybe it's just because I've read one right after the other; maybe as I take a hard look around at the world we live in, I'm wondering if we've become so jaded that violence has to be more gratuitous, more graphic, more, well, violent, to catch our attention.

Whatever the reason, I'm declaring a moratorium on those books. I don't watch gory movies, and now I'm not reading gory books.

The thing is, you don't have to beat people over the head or bathe them in blood or terrorize them via the character to write a good story. This stuff strikes me as the easy way to make an impact. Meticulous research, a tightly-woven plot, believable characters whom we can relate to . . . why bother with all that WORK when you can do a half-assed job but throw in lots of ick and gore and make an impact on your readers?

The books that stick with me after I've finished them -- even the suspenses and the thrillers -- are the ones that are tightly written, tightly plotted, with great characters and great prose. A few well-chosen words can send a chill down the spine that's far spookier and more powerful than experiencing someone's torture on the page.

To each his own. For people who love the gory, gratuitous, graphic books, by all means, keep reading them. I just think I'll look for my reading material elsewhere. Rachel11:22 AM