I think overly-happy and overly-grim fiction each make people feel better about real life -- in both cases, I think it's "see, life could be like that," for better or worse. To me they are just flip sides of the same coin. Although as a reader, I find the overly-happy just makes me dissatisfied.

As a writer, I constantly have to guard against a tendency to be too nice to my characters. You see, I like them! They're such lovable little figments! I want them to be happy, with sunshine and puppies! But it's not a story unless there are challenges and conflict, and happy endings are more satisfying if they're dearly bought, so I keep asking myself What Would Joss Whedon Do?

That said, in my own work I'm all about the happy ending. But that's just me.

I like happy endings, too, believe it or not. But I rarely finish anything.

DH says he's a cynic, and that a cynic is a disappointed idealist. I suppose that's what I am. I think that's why I've liked Joss' and Tim's work so much. They give us an earned happiness, sometimes even an unearned joyful time. But almost immediately, with no warning, comes a gut punch, a reminder that life is full of both light and dark, and that you can't have happy sunshine and balloons and fairies and not have the death and dismemberment, the pain and the fear and the sorrow.

I didn't decide to write that way, but my longest pieces have that dark turn in them. I want happy endings. I think I'm just afraid to trust them, that there's always another darkness lurking behind the bunnies and flowers.

Deena, as Amy says, the simplicity of the language is what makes your piece so devastating, what gives it the ring of truth. (((Deena)))

I like drabbling things I wouldn't or couldn't do. I don't think I have the chutzpah to sustain it over more than a hundred or so words, but the places I absolutely will not tread in life are ... well, why be off limits in fiction? What is the mind for, then?

It's of the frame of mind that people with rape fantasies want to rape/be raped -- which I thought was pretty poorly regarded. But I've heard "how can you think those things?" as if the crime lay in the mind.

As a writer, I constantly have to guard against a tendency to be too nice to my characters.

Go nonfiction. Real people are so much easier to be mean to. They give you so much cause.

Go nonfiction. Real people are so much easier to be mean to. They give you so much cause.

Eh, I'm a fiction writer. It's the only way to have a head full of imaginary personalities and still be sane.

Go nonfiction. Real people are so much easier to be mean to.

Yes, but unlike fictional characters, real people can hunt you down and sic dogs or lawyers on you.

Yes, but unlike fictional characters, real people can hunt you down and sic dogs or lawyers on you.

They can go right ahead. Act a fool, get a chapter. That's my new motto.

They can go right ahead. Act a fool, get a chapter. That's my new motto.

t predicts massive influx of lurker email in Allyson's box