₦airaland Forum

Royver:
Okay, so I have some spare time on my hands today and i decided to pop into nairaland and see what has been going on. I came across what promised to be an interesting story and i settled down to my oatmeal breakfast and began reading.

The first few lines shocked me to bits.

It described the raping of a helpless little girl child by an obnoxious fellow.

Now, sure, things like this happen in our wicked world and all that but the thing that bothered me is that i honestly didn't see the correlation of that first shocking act to the rest of the story. Please I am not trying to criticize or bring down the writer, far from it and due apologies if feelings are hurt but i decided to say something about ti because I noticed it is a kind of trend on this forum by certain writers and i also wanted to know if i was the only one that feels disgusted and turned off when i see stuff like that at the beginning of a story.

Its not the first time I have been disgusted by stuff like that on this section;

1. There was a story with a very nice first paragraph i was reading. Things were going well for the little girl and her family. Suddenly some assassins came to the house ,killed the father then went on to rape and kill the mother and siblings in front of the little child's eyes, then went on to rape her and turn her into an assassin.

Haba. That was too much in my opinion. Why all the evil, as if stretching your mind as far as it can go? what did the character do to you?

2. Another case of a man and his lady who were strolling down the street then were attacked by assassins(again), the woman was raped and killed in front of the man and the baby in her womb stabbed severally( ), and the man made to watch and then they came for him and he begged and then was gutted like a fish and killed. All because they wanted to steal from them! Shuo!

3. Another child case where the child was gleefully raped by the father, in fact, many stories where the child is gleefully raped by the father and the mother is dead or doesnt care and the child wished someone would come and help but nobody came etc etc etc.

What's with all the extended violence? Or am I reading too much into it? And the strange thing is that for stories that i manage to push past my disgust and continue reading, from the next chapter onwards the story continues as if nothing happened in the first paragraph at all. Why start a love story with so much violence, where is the moral in that? Even an action story doesnt necessarily have to start with someone shocking the hell out of the audience.

There are certain literary bodies that will turn down a story simply for heavy content like that.
There are certain rules that follow(even though strictly speaking there are no rules when it comes to storytelling---stay with me here, I'm ranting )

1. You can't kill babies: or even if you do, make it a one-liner. No one want a description of how the baby was stabbed severally for God's sake. its a baby!

2. you can't kill kids. you even see it in hollywood movies and novels, most times the kids survive and even when they dont the director doesnt create a scene for it. one minute the kid is backing away from the assailant, the next minute the body of the kid is seen(usually face down). they know why the do it like that. Its a huge turn off focusing on how the killer gutted a kid, makes one wonder if the writer is ok emotionally.

3. Same rules above go for pregnant women, no matter how evil they have been.

4. literaly anything can happen for men, but still, why subject the man to inhumane torture and raping and hacking and taunting and killing and pissing on his body( i read this one somewhere too) only because you want to steal his car come on!



Is the idea to garner readers?
Or am I too sheltered and such stuff is now commonplace?

Even if it is true that as writers we are allowed to let our imagination run wild but i think if you want to achieve international acclaim some storytellers need to tone it down a little on the disgust and violence. (unless you want to go the way of Stephen king and even he toned it down after a while)

My spare time is up

p.s This writeup was done in a hurry so pls pardon mistakes and such.
Also pls pls pls no beef intended on writers, just had to express my feelings somehow.




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