As a reader, I generally take my crime fiction with its meat cooked to a rosy glowing pink. Medium rare, I suppose.

As a writer, though, the question of the violent content drives me batty. How much is enough? How much is too much? When do I cut a scene? Do I cut the entire scene? The bottom line always comes into the deliberations. Will the reader throw my book across the room in disgust? Will he or she never want to read another book authored by yours truly?

Violence, of course, has been a part of our stories forever. The Old Testament has some choice moments. The old pulp noirs penned in the 1950s I've read are saturated in blood. John D. MacDonald's early noirs are nasty, at times. Read Cry Hard, Cry Fast from 1955.

When I was in grad school, Harry Crews at the peak of his powers was my favorite writer. His books are hard living, hard drinking grit lit. Try A Feast of Snakes about a rattlesnake round-up that goes south fast. I just finished up reading James Dickey's lyrical backwoods potboiler, Deliverance, and he wrote it in 1970. Dickey taught at my writing school, so the violence in my fiction stems, in part, from my higher education.

Intolerant readers will just skim or skip the lurid paragraphs until the main story picks up again. Does violence, like sex, do little or nothing to propel the plot? Then why include it at all? It builds suspense, I suppose.

One thing I've noticed is the older I grow, the less interest I have in the violent scenes. It's like been there, done that after I've read so many books over the decades.

Ed Lynskey
@edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles and Quiet Anchorage