ON PORTRAYING EVIL

The author’s challenge is to represent evil without expanding its acreage — to portray seductiveness without seducing. To faithfully represent darkness for what it is, and yet not darken the minds or hearts of one’s readers — especially if they happen to be children or young adults.

I think the key to walking the tightrope is to spend as little time as possible on the glamor and allure of evil, and to focus instead on its consequences — to give readers a strong sense of the victim’s experience. Not that a writer should necessarily wallow in gruesome details, either — the goal is not to blot out the sun. I simply mean to say that when readers vicariously feel what it is to be on the receiving end of evil, they are less likely to mistake it for being “cool.”