I get it, I get it! We’re all mad. The mess that was 2020 the year that refuses to end, left everyone feeling both very angry and powerless.
Can we lay off with the revenge stories?
When I popped up, briefly, above the extreme stress and tiredness that reduces me to Jane Austen fanfic for reading, I kept having to stop reading space opera on about page twenty when I realized it was all about going and destroying the city/world/person who had done the main character or his group wrong.
Urban fantasy? Every male seems to be a rapist who has it coming, and the newly eldritch woman is going to rip his whatsit up his whatevers for.
Mystery? Well, most of those it’s still all about finding who committed the crime, but let’s say that “getting back at who done it” is starting to get heavy and weird.
And then, for reasons not having to do with that, I fell back on my Jane Austen fanfic escapism. And I found out….
Listen guys, this is stupid insane, but–
For those of you who haven’t read Jane Austen (watching the stupid movie doesn’t count, though the A & E mini series might) there aren’t any real villains as such. The books are “comedies of manners” the comedy being from the fact it ends well, as well as from the fact she pokes fun at stuck up characters.
I think she’d be bewildered that say, Lady Catherine, who is rude and proud but also genuinely wishing to be of assistance, in Pride and Prejudice gets killed in bizarrely graphic ways, or else gets put in an insane asylum for life. Or that the characters’ parents, who granted aren’t ideal, are made into horrible villains and killed in horrific ways. Or–
And that’s why I’m writing this post.
I’m tired of all fiction being built around revenge. Partly, I admit, because there is a lot of it out there. In fact it might be all there is.
And because it’s mindless and angry and it brings up an image of someone screaming while stabbing strangers with a knife.
But yeah, okay, that’s my subjective impression. And why shouldn’t you do that? Revenge is fun right? And the very fact there are so many of these stories being written means there must be a readership for it, right?
Yahbut–
No matter how angry people are, feeding on a straight diet of revenge fantasies will just make it worse and worse and worse.
Okay, so you’re not a missionary, and you just want to make money, what do you care if you’re making people crazier.
Because you’ll train yourself to write very bad fiction. And because a lot of it is very very bad fiction which no one really wants to read, no matter how furious they are.
Particularly because — trust me — it’s disproportionate and worse, it doesn’t make for a good story. Even worse, unless you are an experienced author who knows precisely how to convey how mad you are and how much these evil people deserve their comeupance, revenge is not an easy plot to write.
It seems easy, because it’s a strong emotion. And if you feel the need to see someone being sliced to little bits, and aren’t picky about who it is, particularly if the person being sliced up is entirely fictional.
The problem is that if you’re an inexperienced writer and you’re in the grip of a strong emotion, be it anger or lust or love, you have trouble giving enough clues so that people can feel the emotion along with you. Which is why while reading it I start getting the feeling I should back up, way up, from the spittle-flecked screaming rage.
Look, when I started writing I was told to remember when you start a story with the character crying her eyes out, because when you’re first introduced to a character it’s like someone ringing your doorbell. If someone rings your doorbell, and he or she is crying and saying he lost his/her job, his/her dog died, his/her parent has cancer, his/her boy/girlfriend left him/her, and this is a total stranger, you’re just going to shut the door in the stranger’s face. Or, you know, close the book and never go back to it.
Now imagine you open the door, and there’s a person with bright shining eyes telling you that they’ve cut up the neighbors and put the pieces in a trash bag, and they got their dogs put down at the pond, and they got their adult children committed for claiming there was murder, and the person is bright and enthusiastic and and and–
Yeah. You end up running away screaming.
There are ways to write revenge and make the reader go along for the ride. But you need to know exactly to put in clues for why people need killing, and make the reader enthusiastic about it. And it can’t be clumsy of telegraphed, and the revenge has to be proportionate.
Obviously it can be done, because Dumas pulled it off in the Count of Monte Cristo. Even so, and even though one of my friends thinks it’s the best book ever, I’ll confess it’s one I tend not to re-read.
However something that’s that strongly felt deceives you into thinking you have it and you are getting it across great.
Meanwhile what is happening on this side of the screen is a reader looking at a detailed, carefully described murder rampage and going “I don’t know what tiddly wink players ever did to this guy, but I never want any of that on me.”
And after two books like that, you actually remember the author’s name and never read him or her again.
So….
Revenge plots? Sure, but try not to write them when you’re really really angry or frustrated, or suffering from ptsd of the long 2020. Because you will misjudge how well you’re conveying, and you’ll be over the top and horrify people.
And right now? Trust me, the market for revenge is saturated. And maybe this is just me speaking, but maybe, just maybe other people feel the same way.
What I really want? I want to go away into a story that is interesting, and where people sure, do some bad things (even Jane Austen wouldn’t have a story if everyone were kind, and never proud or evil or whatever) but where people also have a good side and good things and good people can also happen.
Escapism doesn’t need to be happy go lucky to sell. I recommend the Prince Roger series by Weber and Ringo for an example of escapism. The characters go through hell, and they’re surely not pattern books of behavior. But they come out the other side still human and still retaining good qualities, and still trying to do the right thing. And even when they confront the people who were the final architects of their fate, their idea is to neutralize them and punish them, but not endless, graphic, psychotic revenge obsession.
So– For this reader, right now?
Give me some escapism. It’s not that I don’t thirst for revenge. It’s that it’s very hard to write, and like in the real world it’s likely to get out of control.
Mad Genius Club 
36 responses to “Vengeance”
“Revenge is a sucker’s game.” – David Xanatos, Gargoyles
I’m just going to leave that here.
Well, Prince Roger came extremely close to committing terrible vengeance against his father after he saw what happened to his mother.
Fortunately, he stepped away from that.
yes
My mom was just reading aloud to my daughter, and it was the chapter of Little Women where Jo is writing sensational fiction because it pays well, and gets reminded by Professor Bhaer that such fiction drags people down*. So this is a similar vibe to that.
I don’t think the universe is trying to tell *me* something, because I don’t do revenge fiction, but it’s an interesting coincidence nonetheless.
*In context, it would be more like hanging out with nihilists and violent anarchists than with writers of exciting stories. Just so that nobody thinks I’m picking on writers of fun and adventurous things to read. 😉
A good and properly done revenge story is great escapism.
The problem is, it has to be “good and properly done.”
Most of the people writing revenge stories these days, I wouldn’t trust to write the instructions to pour piss out of a boot on the heel.
You do not want to sit down and bleed on the page — as indeed, some writers had have heard recommend, but that’s unwise. You want to bleed into the inkwell, add other ingredients, and transmute the blood alchemically into ink.
Aesthetic distance is essential.
When my dreams turn violent, and especially with revenge rather than just chaos, I know I’m not getting enough exercise. It’s a warning to me. And while I do enjoy a good revenge tale once in awhile, they’re usually maudlin at best, pornographic at worst.
*shrug* Mama Taz? by and large, I’ve stopped “expanding my horizons” where authors are concerned. I mean more than usual. I’ve always done it to a certain degree because I considered most of what was out there, as drivel put to paper not even fit to wipe my ass with. I worked the retail side of it for a little over half a decade. Now I wouldn’t condescend to use most of it as kindling for my bbq pit.
and what I’ve bought recently? this year? 2 were Ringo novels in the Blacktide universe I had, but just didn’t feel like pulling the earcs from my offline drive and the other two were in the last 2weeks. Hells Belle’s by our very own Jonny Bravo [aka Jonathan LaForce] and the latest in the Tinker series by Wen Spencer. that’s it. 4 books. last year I don’t remember buying a thing. I’d have to check. *checks* okay 2 Larry’s, a couple of Faith hunters and a Cedar. All Digital. oh and an older book that I’d read decades ago that I wanted to read again, found on the big used book chain’s website and had shipped.
At this point in life, it’s all derivative of something I love and there are very few authors that I trust anymore to entertain me, or tell a good story. So unless it’s one of them, you included Mama Taz, then I don’t buy anymore
Yeah, I’m reading ‘Storm Furies’ for the 3rd time. After re-reading all the rest in preparation. I must say, her plotting is wide-ranging and intricate. Amazing how it all fits together from the very different viewpoints.
I’m not mad. I don’t have the spare energy to be mad. Call back in 2 months.
I used to see a lot of what I called “Judex” scenarios (a vengeance-seeker hiding in plain sight in a mundane job) on the police procedural Murder In. Now the show is too busy lecturing the audience on how a male-on-female crime of passion is some especially terrible thing called a “femicide.” (Is a female-on-male crime of passion a “viricide?” Asking for a friend.)
When it comes to Montecristo, I tend to skip the bazillion horrifying wrongs that land the hero in the Chateau D’If and start with his escape from same. The “living well is the best revenge” parts of the book (you know pillbox made from a giant emerald, that kind of thing), and the soap opera surrounding the descendants of his friends and enemies are what holds my attention. And I will say that Dumas makes more of a point of the negative fallout from the revenge than most such authors.
In cinema, I have a fondness for Death Rides a Horse, although the main point there is that the two vengeful main characters save themselves by saving each other (and occasionally innocents who wander into the baddies’ path). And For a Few Dollars More, although that subplot is more about a guy pursuing a somewhat legitimate career as a bounty hunter to get a shot at revenge-killing a legitimate target with a bounty on his head who happens to have wronged the avenger’s family. (And again, vengeance makes the avenger sloppy and he ends up needing help from a relatively disinterested party).
I haven’t seen everything from the Death Wish franchise, but the high points were Bruce Willis learning to disassemble and reassemble guns using youtube videos and the manual dexterity from his dayjob (surgeon) in the remake, and whichever of the older sequels had Charles Bronson opening a secret passage (behind the fridge maybe?) into his arsenal.
Basically, the revenge component in story-telling is often a pretext for something else, and when the something else is sadistic glee, no es bueno.
I enjoyed the Bruce Willis remake. I was kinda “meh” about the Jodie Foster version. I remember really liking the Bronson original, but have only seen bits and pieces of the sequels.
A fellow I know online who understands movies much better than I do once did an essay where he said that the original Bronson Death Wish worked because it showed the psychological toll it took on the protagonist, and asked without making it obvious the question ‘Uncontrollable street crime is terrible, but is this really how we as a society want to respond to it?’
The sequels on the other hand were just shoot ’em ups of what he described as ‘rather well groomed street gangs’, with the middle-aged Kersey punching out guys almost twice his size and half his age.
Princess Bride has a good vengeance subplot but it’s only a subplot and the question “What next?” after revenge is achieved is raised.
As for myself, revenge is not particularly appealing to me especially when I remember whose domain vengeance is.
The Princes Bride was a masterful piece of writing by William Goldman. The fact that Meathead didn’t screw it up for the big screen is absolutely stunning.
Meathead’s 1980s track record as a director is essentially flawless. His downfall was accomplished in two movies in a row in the ’90s: A Few Good Men (which many people love, but is deeply flawed as a piece of drama) and North, which is justly forgotten.
How do you deal with the apparent fact that He “subcontracts” through mortal instruments…. one of which might be you?
Way I figure it is that chances are that if you are His instrument of vengeance, it’s not going to be for you–it’s going to be for someone else.
I would also point out that, based on the OT prophecies, being used as an instrument of His judgment does not mean that you’re in the right–see Assyria and Babylon.
To be honest, I had never considered the possibility. Seems very improbable though so I’m not going to worry.
I think Inigo’s plot works mostly as how it contrasts with the main plot. It’s also not a hot revenge in some ways (and does almost get him killed because he lets it go hot rather than cold and calculated.) And in the end it’s done, it’s right (though mostly as an act of justice.) but it’s also hollow and what carries him through and (hopefully) stops him from going back to the bottle was the success of the OTHER plot.
One of the things I liked about the ending of the game Project: Wingman was how they handled the last duel between the main character and the antagonist.
It has the setup for a revenge story; the guy has nuked your world twice now, and as far as you know, everyone else is dead.
Except the tone they set is one of profound sadness. The antagonist hates you for, essentially, showing him up and is willing to burn the world down to beat you, and spends half the fight ranting about it, until he finally dies, and for nothing.
You get this sense of the incredible waste of the whole antagonist’s arc. He destroyed everything just to win, and couldn’t even do that.
In a way, it’s the mirror of the revenge arc. The antagonist wanted vengeance for his defeat, and ended up losing everything, even if he had won.
The climax of the Bollywood “curry western” Sholay kind of has this vibe. Admittedly, part of the problem is the production’s inept handling of the gory parts and disabled-person martial arts, but my main takeaway from watching the dignified patriarch trample the Hate Sink villain with spiked shoes and then blubber helplessly in the arms of one of the lead characters is that this is all very unseemly.
In my second Western, the hero seeks revenge after a character is brutally beaten and dies from it. He doesn’t take joy in it. But that’s not the main thrust of the story. The first Western has the villain seeking revenge against the MC because of an incident in a saloon that made the villain look bad, but it fails. In my lousy sci-fi novel, I set up a revenge angle with a mutiny aboard ship, but the character doesn’t understand it was forced. At the end of it, the character is stranded on an unknown planet and unable to get revenge. Although, it could be setting up a sequel….
I don’t think I would ever make a gory revenge killing story. Not my style.
One of the Scarlet Pimpernel novels is Vengeance Is Mine!
If it strikes you as a quote, and the context is significant, why, yes, the fuller quote is made during the climax. . . .
I figure these ‘Vengeance, Bloody Vengeance’ stories must always have appealed to someone given how popular they were in Norse sagas for centuries.
Or they reflected how society operated when Rule of Law frayed, and how people passed down stories about “horrible warnings.”
True. The old sagas did emphasize how one killing usually lead to many more for years afterwards. They may have functioned as much as a warning of what could happen if you decided that someone ‘needed killing’.
“Revenge is fun right?”
No. It is not.
Revenge, properly done, is a chore. A messy, difficult, unpleasant, nasty, and bothersome chore. It sucks. It sucks away the time you’d have to, you know, live a good and proper life, caring for those you love and providing for them. It is, in nigh every case, a terrible waste of a life, if not two lives.
If I were to write a vengeance story, and I am most certainly not going to I tell you now (not a fan, it would suck, and I like happy endings too much to bother with it), I’d start it with happiness. Bliss. Take your bucolic pretty scene of family, of peace and contentment and joy, of promise and future growth. Take that scene and hold it. Make it perfect- don’t let it overstay its welcome, don’t stray into saccharine, give it the gist and let the reader’s mind take over. Don’t overexplain. Make it good.
Now take it away.
Don’t go right into dripping rain tawdry dirty boring noir amatuerness. Make it lesser, but make it balanced. Sadness need not crash upon a soul forever. Time doesn’t quite heal all wounds, but you get used to being less than what you were. You adapt. You get by. Things change, and you’re not quite or even close to that place you were, but you’re making it through, day by day. And sometimes, well, that’s enough.
Now introduce a splinter. Tiny thing, an annoyance. It hurts, but you rip the bloody thing out and move on with a dab of superglue to keep it from leaking. It’s not a mountain, nor even a mole hill, but it’s there and you don’t like it.
Now start escalating. Aggravate the living heck out of that splinter. Metaphorically speaking. Don’t make it all consuming, that’s going overboard again.
Make it insistent. Make it real. Make it something that needs to be addressed.
It’s not hot emotional vengeance. It’s a dirty, annoying, unpleasant job that needs to be done. It’s not for personal satisfaction, that ship has long since sailed. It’s taking out the trash in a leaking, smelly bag and then mopping up the mess.
You don’t want to do it. But it’s your job to do. You might be bad at it, at first, but you’ll get better. The job is your responsibility, and the sooner you get it done and done right, the sooner you can get back to your new normal, which isn’t so bad really even if it isn’t that picture perfect moment in memory.
Intersperse real life with the job. Challenges, setbacks, successes, and wild wooly strangeness that comes into lives every now and then. These are to let the pace of the plot breathe and keep the reader from being overwhelmed.
When the climax finally comes, you are beyond annoyed but not incandescent with rage. Finish the job, clean up your mess, and get back to that normal life that is looking better and better all the time, even if it still isn’t perfect.
Dust your hands off, head back home, and crash your buddy’s party to sit back with a beer and watch all the stupid drunk shenanigans of your friends trying to argue Enlightenment philosophy from their opposite sides… badly. Whilst loud music blares in the background and somebody has to save the pool from being vomited in and… The noise of everyday life, whatever that may be. Normal. Sometimes difficult, sometimes boring, sometimes special.
But bringing back normality is always the goal. The “vengeance” was just a filthy, annoying task to be done. Nothing more. Now, you have a yard to clean and dishes to do and work in a couple of days. A normality without several things in it. Several good things gone- but also one bad one, too.
That’s enough.
Andrew Vachss made a good thing of authoring books based on his need for revenge. As an attorney in NYC (aka Mos Eisley Spaceport on the Hudson River) specializing in representing children, he saw how beastly people could be to children, and vented part of his rage at these people through his novels, particularly his “Burke” series. While I enjoy them (I grok the need for revenge all too well—I’ve “got a little list” of my own that’s about the size of the old NYC phone book) they are not for everybody. They’re very, very bleak, and noir enough to make Mickey Spillane look like Dick, Jane and Sally.
That said, although I understand the need for revenge, I am also the living avatar in my real life of what TV Tropes calls “pragmatic villainy.” If I had been approached by the OAS to kill Charles de Gaulle, like the Jackal was in that wonderful novel, I’d have asked: “Okay, let’s say I do this. You say that the people of France will sweep out de Gaulle’s treacherous rabble. What makes you think that will happen?” I’d also have pointed out that while I understood and sympathized with their rage at having been betrayed, I’d think they’d do better to go after the spineless, gutless politicians before de Gaulle, who had kept kicking the can down the road and filling the pieds-noirs with false hope that the situation could be saved.
Do you mean DeGaule or Vichy?
Charles de Gaulle angered European “residents” of Algeria after he agreed to grant Algeria its independence.
They believed that Algeria was part of France and de Gaulle “betrayed” France by granting Algeria its independence.
Vichy France is another matter.
The thing was, Algeria had been legally part of France since the 1800s. A lot of the pieds-noirs had ancestors that had lived there for several generations. They had no other homes, and had been loyal to France.
Unfortunately, the Muslim majority of the population had never been made to feel like they were part of the “French” thing. They were treated badly enough to shock American troops who were there in WWII (and a lot of them were Southerners who were quite used to Jim Crowing blacks) and after WWII, they wanted changes.
The French mishandled things (surprise surprise) and soon they had a full-scale uprising on their hands. By about 1960, the French had been at war somewhere or other (WWII, Indochina, Algeria) for over twenty years, and the average Frenchman in “Metropolitan France” (France in Europe) was sick and tired of war. The treasury was hemorrhaging money, the conscript soldiers the French were using weren’t generally very enthusiastic (sounds familiar, no?) and the whole thing was unsustainable.
One of the few types of books I refuse to review are vengeance stories. Maybe if there is some other element in it, but not if it is solely about vengeance.
I write book recommendations. Vengeance (other than going on and becoming a success despite attempts to screw you) is sterile and (in real life) a trap. I cannot recommend that.
I wouldn’t necessarily say “the best” but it is my favorite. Partially because of the way Dantes pursues vengeance: it isn’t indiscriminate or bloody, it’s pointed, shaped for each individual person and their reasons for betraying Dantes to prison. Danglars’ greed, Mondego’s insecurity and jealousy, Villefort’s ambition and fear. Had any of them repented or made different choices, his vengeance would have come to naught. And he didn’t bring in other people who had no fault. Other people’s choices–Noirtier, Valentine, Morrel, Maximilian Morrel, Caderousse, Madame De Villefort, Debray, Madame Danglars, even Mercedes, determined their fate. And when he realized he overstepped, he stood down.
Note that he also didn’t send Haydee to speak to the Assembly about Morcerf, he merely didn’t stop her. As far as I know, he never even knew what she planned.
For me, it’s just a fascinating glimpse into French history that I imprinted on early, and I don’t understand half the references and allusions made in it, but the fact that he was able to bring like twenty different subplots and connections to a satisfying conclusion–while writing serially!–was just amazing.
It isn’t so much a “revenge plot” as it is a “Good triumphs. Evil is vanquished” plot. For me, at least. I think the issue with a lot of revenge plots that fall short is there is no satisfaction of good triumphing. The person pursuing revenge is just as evil as the person or group they are trying to avenge themselves against.
“Can we lay off with the revenge stories?”
Oh, yes please. And the “everybody does it” stories too. Everybody does NOT do it.
In my series I have a continuing thread regarding bad guys. They always lose, and while the MC may be sorely tempted to take vengeance on them, he chooses the higher path. Because otherwise it would be stupid.
In fact I have a whole character called Guruh the Wolf of Vengeance. She’s a werewolf.
After denuding her entire world of necromancers and the demons they raised, she followed them down to Hell and continued her revenge. For eternity she raged and slew through their legions, destroying all. Her name is whispered among the damned, even by the Dark Ones, lest she hear it and come to destroy the speaker.
All completely pointless.
You can’t kill a demon, it is already dead. You can’t have your revenge on them, they’re already in Hell. All that happened was they sucked you into Hell with them.
The story of her return to the world and slow recovery was a lot more fun for me than all the “and then they all died, the bastards” stories I keep seeing blurbs for at the bookstore.
Revenge avails thee naught. She would know.
One of the novellas I’m currently working on is a revenge story, sorta-kinda. The protagonist is part of the prosecution team in a huge war-crimes trial — but for him, justice isn’t just something abstract, but very, very personal. He’s there to make these guys pay for what they did to him and his — but his being part of a legal system and knowing that he has to work within those procedural rules does help curb some of the excesses that a revenge story is prone to. Still, at the end he does take a certain savage glee in watching the top-level baddies dance at the end of a rope — and and a grim satisfaction in knowing his role in making it happen.