CAN A BROKEN CHARACTER STILL OFFER HUMOR? WHY NOT?
by Diann Adamson
From: Suppose, Lillian Dove Series
I
forced my eyes open. My hands were tied behind my back, my legs restrained. The
room whirled like a beat up, wobbly merry-go-round.
I rolled onto my side and vomited. The
tang and gag of alcohol and bile sickened me.
I
was in a small barn. The air held a hint of manure. Sacks were piled against
the wall across from me. A wheelbarrow. A rake. Pitchfork.
Bucket.
Where was I?
I shut my eyes to steady my swirling. It
was cold. I was freezing. No, I was drunk. Hung over. I knew the chill.
I saw a slippery slope of failure in my
future.
I was drunk, ruined, but alive. Was there
hope?
An insight occurred to me. Of course, I
was alive. Thompson couldn’t kill me. Cole told him not to until I told him
where the memory card was, and I couldn’t have told him because I had no idea
what Kenny had done with it.
Or had I? Did I make something up to get
him to stop? When had he stopped? No memory of that. Nor any memory how I’d
gotten here.
Another insight. If I’d lied in my
drunken state, Cole wasn’t a fool. He’d check out anything I’d said. I’d bet on
it.
Get your wits about you, Lillian. Sober
up.
First, how long had I been passed out?
Hadn’t someone said Cole was going to
ship out product at midnight. Was it Thompson who’d said it? Stone? Kelly? Did
it matter who had said it? What time was it? If Cole didn’t find the memory
card, would he have me killed? If he did find it, would he kill me anyway?
I didn’t want to hang around to find out.
The shed was dim. I lifted up as high as
I could to get a better advantage. A lack of trained stomach muscles and
another round of retching slumped me back onto my side.
I
landed in what I’d already vomited.
I needed to move. If for no other reason
than to have a clean empty space for another stomach attack. Wiggling got me
nowhere but dizzier. I took a deep breath. My nose stung and felt swollen. My
throat burned.
I
pushed my shoes against the floorboard for traction, allowing me to move
without too much wobble in a quarter circle turn. I could see shelves of garden
products: weed killer, fertilizer, smaller tools for hand digging, colored
jars. A garden shed. Not a barn. I was outside someone’s home. Maybe somewhere
with other houses close by.
I
made another quarter turn. It was about all the farther I could go before
another wretch of alcohol discharged. The
wall I looked on now held ropes, chains. And beneath those, a riding lawn
mower.
A sharp pain zinged me. It was so
intense, my legs drew up without needing
command. And then…oh, no. A horrible odor pillowed. I was going to be sick from
both ends! The smell was disgusting. Nauseated, I gagged. Retched.
Oh, no!
Let’s start with
the premise that we are all broken, in some way. Being damaged is the major theme for all the
Lillian Dove series. Yet, while she may
be a little more broken than others, there is also the awareness that we all
have our problems, addictions, habits, compulsions.
Addictions: certain foods, soda, shopping.
Compulsions: like buying another book when we have a shelf-load.
Addictions: certain foods, soda, shopping.
Compulsions: like buying another book when we have a shelf-load.
Not to worry, I’ll
get to all of the books I buy. And if I don’t, I like the feeling of a room
full of books. Some like people like antique furniture, plants, dvds, I like
books. We all have a “thing.”
In the scene
sampling above, Lillian has had something so tragic happen to her she wonders
if she will survive with her sanity intact. Take that level of tragedy and then
place her in a shed tied up, vomiting, and--an onset of diarrhea. Suddenly the
tone lightens. Diarrhea? Funny? Yes, it
can be funny. Embarrassingly funny. Add more? Why not? Add to that situation someone
else being thrown in the shed with her, double funny. So much is at play….suspense,
danger, and a human weakness when having uncontrollable bowels.
As a writer, I need to place my protagonist in the worst
possible scenario, then bring her to a point of fighting back. Lillian responds to a challenge because if she
doesn’t, she will never move forward. Sometimes she reacts from anger. Other
times she counters out of stubbornness. Then again, she has wrangled for those
who couldn’t or because it was the right thing to do.
This scene is another means of showing Lillian’s strength of
conviction. It also inables double the suspense and double the fun. Double the
tragedy, double the embarrassment. Double the victory if survived.
For me, when writing
this scene, I wanted something real; something which could happen to any of us
in this same situation and would instigate more defiance. No matter what is
happening to her body, no matter the embarrassment, or the discomfort for the
other person with her, she still needs to escape.
Nothing happens to me without doubling the challenge.
If a story
is a thriller, horror, or highly suspenseful, a tidbit of humanness can offer a
reader a way to giggle, breathe, digest what has happened, or see themselves more
clearly in the situation. My mother always claimed when it rains it usually
pours. I’ve found that to be true in most of my life-challenging events.
D. J.
Adamson is the author of the Lillian Dove
Mystery series and the Deviation
science fiction-suspense trilogy. Suppose, the second in the Lillian
series has just been released. She also
teaches writing and literature at Los Angeles colleges. And to keep busy when
she is not writing or teaching, she is the Membership Director of the Los
Angeles Sisters in Crime, Vice President of Central Coast Sisters in Crime and
an active member of the Southern California Mystery Writers. Her books can be
found and purchased in bookstores and on Amazon. To find her, her blog L’Artiste,
or her newsletter that interviews and reviews authors go to http://www.djadamson.com. Make friends with
her on Facebook
or Goodreads.
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