On Obsessive an Character Mistaking Obsession for Romance

 

Leggo my leg!  This date ended seven years ago!  (And, unfortunately yes, I have said this!)

One of the things I wanted to be very careful about with Ambrose was making sure the story never confused obsession with love.

Ambrose does but the narrative doesn't.

That distinction is important.

Ambrose sees himself as a tragic romantic figure. In his own mind, he is passionate, loyal, wounded, misunderstood, and driven to extremes because he has loved too deeply.

Which is, of course, very convenient for Ambrose.

It means he never has to consider the possibility that the problem is not the depth of his feelings.

The problem is what he believes those feelings entitle him to.

It's like they say, there's a huge difference between I have these feelings, you don't, and that's my problem and I have these feelings, you don't, and that's your problem.

This is where obsession can become useful from a writing standpoint.  Because an obsessive character can be deeply convinced of his own romantic sincerity while behaving in ways that are controlling, invasive, or frightening.

The trick is not to let his self-description become the story's description.

Ambrose can say:

I only want her to understand how much I love her.

The reader should still be able to see that what he really means is:

I want her to respond the way I think she should.

Those are not the same thing.

And that gap between what Ambrose believes and what the reader can see is one of my favorite parts of writing him.

Ambrose's version of events always casts him in the best possible light.  He's not intrusive, jealous, passionate, or ignoring boundaries.

In his mind he's fighting for love.

He's not refusing to accept rejection, he's proving the strength of his devotion.

In Ambrose's mind he's not merely the protagonist in his own mind.  He's the tragic hero and everyone else is always the villain in his story.

The woman who rejected him is cruel, the friend who questions is disloyal, the stranger who sees through him is jealous, the goddess who refuses to punish everyone has somehow misunderstood the situation.

Reality itself becomes suspicious whenever it fails to cooperate.

That is one of the clearest ways I know to keep obsession from accidentally reading as romance: allow the other characters to remain full people.

They have their own motives, boundaries, fears, and their own interpretation of what's happening.

Ambrose fails to realize he doesn't get to define their experience simply because he feels strongly.

It seems obvious, but stories sometimes slip into that dangerous territory when emotional intensity is treated as evidence of sincerity.

A character can feel something sincerely and still behave terribly because of it.

But, beneath the jokes is something real.

Ambrose doesn't understand that another person's "no" doesn't require his agreement.  He thinks rejection is the beginning of a negotiation, boundaries are obstacles, persistence makes him admirable.

And because he has built an identity around being the wronged party, every boundary becomes further evidence that he is being mistreated.

This is where the Dark Mother becomes such a useful counterpoint.

Ambrose desperately wants her to validate his version of events.

He expects her to see a wounded lover and recognize some grand injustice.

Instead, she sees him for who he is.

Because she understands something he doesn't.

• Feeling deeply does not make you loving.
• Suffering does not make you innocent.
• Wanting someone does not make them yours.
• And no matter how beautifully you describe a cage, it is still a cage.

Ambrose would undoubtedly object to that interpretation.

He would probably write a poem about it.

There would be commas.

So many commas.

Ambrose and the Comma: A Gothic Tragedy

 

Sir, we're going to have to ask you to step away from the punctuation.

There are many things I expected to research while writing a gothic dark comedy set in 1890.

If you're imagining my researching rituals, folklore, funeral customs, and superstitions by candlelight, I'm sorry to disappoint.  

Oh, I have books on those subjects.  But no candles.  Cat and all.

What I didn't expect was to spend as much time thinking about bad punctuation as I did.  My punctuation skills are very poor but I'll often run it through a checker to make sure I'm doing okay.

And yet, here we are.

Ambrose is one of the main characters in the story.  He's a man of many convictions.  He's convinced he's misunderstood.  He is convinced his romantic suffering is so profound that supernatural forces ought to take an interest.

If it were modern day I'd say he was a person who discovered philosophy behind a three cent gas station by a red neck tweaker who gets abducted and probed by aliens every other weekend.  Of course the only thing worse than being abducted by aliens is being rejected by aliens.

What no one tells you is how hard it is to do bad writing.  I need to make Ambrose ridiculous but not too ridiculous.  If I make him too polished then his terrible poetry starts sounding competent.

Ambrose needs to write badly in a very specific way.

His poetry had to sound like something written by a man who is absolutely certain he has created a masterpiece.

That distinction is important.

His punctuation became one of the easiest ways to show this.

Let's think about:

My beloved, cruel angel, why, have you forsaken me.

Somewhere, a schoolteacher wakes abruptly from a sound sleep without knowing why.

There is an entire emotional journey happening there.  Unfortunately, most of it belongs to the commas.

The Dark Mother, after being subjected to this sort of thing repeatedly, has opinions.

The comma has done nothing to deserve this.

And really, she has a point.

The hard part is making this feel consistent with Ambrose rather than simply throwing random grammatical errors onto the pages.

His bad writing comes from his personality.  He's melodramatic, he greatly overestimates his intelligence, and he mistakes intensity for meaning.

He is especially fond of words like eternal, forsaken, betrayal, destiny, darkness, soul, and anything else that suggests he has experienced suffering unknown to ordinary mortals.

If one adjective will work, Ambrose believes three is better.

If one exclamation point conveys emotion, then four will convey genius.

And if a sentence can survive without a comma, he considers that a missed opportunity.

This means I occasionally have to write something badly and then stop myself from fixing it.

That is much harder than it sounds.

Ambrose put that there.

Ambrose is proud of that comma.

Leave it alone.

There is something strangely painful about intentionally preserving a grammatical disaster.

I imagine this is how the Dark Mother feels.

She has witnessed wars.

She has watched kings rise and fall.

She has stood at the boundary between life and death.

And now she has been summoned into a rented attic room because Ambrose would like her opinion on a poem titled something along the lines of:

The Dark Mother’s Vengance Upon the Unfaithfull Bride

Yes.

“Vengeance” is misspelled.

No.

Ambrose does not notice.

The Dark Mother does.

Of course she does.

She notices everything.

This is where some of my favorite humor in the story comes from, because the Dark Mother never needs to become silly herself.

Ambrose is doing more than enough work for both of them.

She can remain ancient, ominous, and genuinely powerful while privately observing that the mortal standing before her appears to have declared war on the English language.

I also suspect that somewhere along the way, the Dark Mother develops a particular dread of hearing paper unfold.

There are sounds that become associated with danger.

A branch breaking in the woods.

Footsteps behind you on an empty road.

A door creaking open in the middle of the night.

For the Dark Mother, it is Ambrose clearing his throat and smoothing out a sheet of paper.

She knows what is coming.

The veil has already been crossed.

There is no escape now.

He begins.

O Darkest Mother, ancient, terrible, queen—

She closes her eyes.

Another comma.

The Dark Mother has endured much.

But there are limits.

And the comma, frankly, has suffered enough.

Meet the Dark Mother: Writing a Goddess Who Is Very Tired of This Mortal

 

The Dark Mother has crossed the veil between worlds. Unfortunately, Ambrose was on the other side.

When I began creating the Dark Mother, I knew I wanted her to feel ancient.  More than just old but far older than the concerns of the people who serve her.  A presence shaped by death, prophecy, sovereignty, grief, war, and the strange places where one life ends and another begins.

The Dark Mother isn't evil but she isn't particularly interested in being comforting, either.  She simply is.

The Dark Mother was inspired by several figures from different pagan cultures.  I pulled from the Morrigan, Heacte, and Persephone.  They are all very different goddesses belonging to different cultures and traditions, but they each helped shape something about the character I created.

The Morrigan was probably the biggest influence.  She is the goddess of war.  She is a figure of sovereignty, prophecy, and death.  If you've heard of the Washerwoman of the Ford you know of her.  

I wanted the feeling that when the Dark Mother enters a room, something fundamental has changed.

Hecate contributed something different.  She is the goddess of witchcraft, crossroads, boundaries, and spaces.  I have always enjoyed the image of the crossroads.  It's the place between one direction and the other, where choices have weight and where the familiar world can feel uncertain.

The Dark Mother exists in similar spaces.  She stands in the thresholds between life and death, justice and vengeance, between what mortals believe they deserve and what their actions have earned them.

And then there is Persephone.  Persephone is the goddess of two worlds.  She's connected to spring and renewal, but she's also the Queen of the Underworld.  There is softness to her mythology, but there's also authority.  Some stories say she chose to eat the pomegranate seeds instead of being tricked into it.

That duality influenced the Dark Mother as well.  She can receive an offering of a grieving widow with genuine understanding, and moments later, terrify the man who has badly misunderstood what he has summoned.

These two things don't contradict one another.

One thing I didn't want, however, was to take any of these goddesses and simply rename them.

The Dark Mother is her own fictional being.

The Morrigan, Hecate, and Persephone provided inspiration, yes, but she belongs only to the world of the story.

When the Dark Mother arrives I want it to matter.  The room feels different, the darkness should seem deeper, ordinary rules should feel uncertain.  The Dark Mother has seen kingdoms rise and fall, has stood on battlefields, has watched generations of mortals disappear into history.  And unfortunately, she has also had to listen to Ambrose read his poetry aloud.

That is where the balancing act begins.

The Dark Mother has a very dry sense of observation.

I genuinely hesitate to call it a sense of humor because I don't think she is deliberately trying to be funny most of the time.

She simply has perspective.

Ambrose does not.

Ambrose believes every inconvenience is a tragedy, every rejection is persecution, and every emotion he experiences deserves the immediate attention of supernatural forces.

The Dark Mother has seen actual tragedies so she knows the difference.

So while Ambrose is delivering a dramatic speech about betrayal, destiny, and the cruelty of the universe, she may be wondering why he has placed three commas in a sentence that requires none.

That contrast allows the humor to exist without making her ridiculous.

This allows the world around her to remain gothic.  The candles can gutter, the shadows can move, something unseen can scrape against the edge of the room, and in the middle of all that darkness, the Dark Mother can look at Ambrose and think:

Surely he is finished.

He is not.

This is important to me because I never wanted her to become the comic relief.

Ambrose is the comic relief.

The Dark Mother is simply forced to witness it.

Her dry observations actually help preserve her authority because she rarely reacts the way Ambrose expects her to.  He wants outrage.  Awe.  Perhaps sympathy.  Or all of the above.

Instead, he frequently receives the supernatural equivalent of a long, unimpressed stare.

Somewhere in a rented attic room in Tennessee, Ambrose clears his throat and unfolds another poem.

Across the veil, the Dark Mother hears him.

There is a very long silence.

Even the candles seem embarrassed.

Not this mortal again.

 

This was not on my Tuesday bingo card

Well. This escalated rather quickly.

My friend recommended I add my story to the 2026 Page Turner Awards.  I thought "Why not?  I've got nothing to lose."

Apparently what happens is this:

It became a Fiction Book Award Finalist.

I am very glad I was sitting down when I found out.  I genuinely wasn't even thinking about it.  I thought it would be "Hey, nice job, but you didn't make it" sort of thing.

From here onward, the judging gets much more savage so I haven't a clue if my book will go any farther.

But honestly?  I'm already thrilled.  A finalist is a finalist and nobody can take that badge away from me.

This feels like a dangerous amount of power to give someone who likes decorative things.

So for today, I am celebrating the fact that my weird little western went out into the world, behaved itself just long enough to impress some judges, and came home wearing an award badge.

I’m also going to be saying “award finalist” at completely unnecessary opportunities for at least the next several days.

“Would you like a receipt?”

“Yes, thank you. By the way, my book is an award finalist.”

“Paper or plastic?”

“Whichever one is appropriate for an award finalist.”

Please bear with me during this difficult time.

On a More Serious Note

I have this mirror.

Some stories haunt our dreams.  Others have a character who will peck away at your brain until you cave and write them.  And others still begin with the certain type of person who desperately needs to discover that even the ancient powers of darkness are tired of his nonsense.

More or less, that's how this one came along.

I have lots of ideas but not as much time to write them so I leave myself detailed notes.  The newest idea is a Southern Gothic dark comedy set in a fictional town in 1890 Tennessee.  It follows a rather self-important individual named Ambrose who believes the supernatural world is intensely invested in his grievances.

Unfortunately for Ambrose, the supernatural world has other things to do.

The story is told through the eyes of a Dark Mother Goddess who Ambrose keeps on attempting to summon.  She's ancient, powerful, feared, worshipped, and 1,000% done with this mortal who has somehow mistaken her for his personal revenge department.

The first summoning might have been an accident.

The second suggested arrogance.

By the seventh, she realizes that she has quite the recurring problem.

The supernatural creatures in this book are frightening.

Ambrose is exhausting.

And that distinction is important.

So, why am I writing this?

Beneath the gothic atmosphere and the comedy, there is something much more personal beneath this story.

I have escaped an abusive situation myself.  I'm not going to name him as I don't believe he's worth the energy.

I don't plan on turning this book, or even this post, into a detailed account of what happened to me.  This manuscript isn't about me.

One of the oddest things about abusive and controlling relationships is the enormous mythology the abuser can construct around themselves both past and present.  They become the tragic hero, the misunderstood genius, the victim of everyone else's cruelty.  Every boundary becomes persecution, every consequence is betrayal, and the person who walks away becomes the villain.

Them:  "You are such an asshole."

Me:

Sometimes it's the only way.

And sometimes the only reasonable artistic response is to hand that person a candle, lock them in the haunted attic, and let the old goddess stare at them like:  "Oh, for the love of Zeus.  Not this one again!"

This is where the humor in this story lives.

The joke isn't abuse.

The joke isn't the person trying to escape.

The joke is the towering and yet very fragile ego of someone convinced that heaven, hell, the ancestors, the dead, several ancient deities, and the entire spirit realm must all validate his version of events.

Where the Money Is Going

There is another part of this project that I feel is very important:

Any and all author profits that I receive from this book will be donated to organizations helping people affected by domestic violence.

I don't want this story to only benefit me.  I'd rather take it and redirect it to whatever good comes from it towards helping people trying to rebuild safter lives.

There is something wonderfully appropriate about that.

A story about an abusive man's desperate attempts to reclaim power ultimately helping people escape abusive people.

Ambrose would absolutely hate that.

The Dark Mother would approve.

A Serious Note

For as many jokes I may be able to insert into this story, real-world abuse isn't funny and leaving an abusive relationship can be complicated and dangerous.

There's no one single or correct to leave.

Not everyone can do as I did and just leave immediately.  The fact that both my neighbors were heavily armed, that I knew a lot of the police, may have been what helped save me.  Sometimes a person has to quietly make plans over weeks or months.  Sometimes they can leave and return several times before they are finally able to stay away.  There are so many factors that can make "just leave" a very unhelpful thing to say.

If you do need help there are many numbers you can contact.

If you're in the USA like I am the National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-7233, or by texting START to 88788.

If you are a man in a domestic violence situation please reach out here.

https://mensadviceline.org.uk/

For all international readers: Please visit Lila.help to find a trusted domestic or gender-based violence organization in your country.

A note about digital safety: An abusive person may monitor phones, computers, browser histories, location services, phone bills or online accounts. If you believe your device is being monitored, consider accessing these resources from a safer device when possible.

And if someone you care about is living through something like this, one of the most valuable things you can offer is a place where they can speak without being interrogated about why they stayed, why they went back, or why they didn't recognize the danger sooner.

Sometimes survival is messy but it is still survival.

When “A Man” Really Means “I”: Hedging in Character Voice

 

Behold, the writer’s natural habitat: somewhere between a strong sentence and this shrub.

I'll admit I did this one a fair amount for a certain character when writing The Malpais Bride.  It's also due out this October!

Hedging is one of those sneaky little writing habits that can slip into your manuscript so quietly that you don't even notice it.

In writing, simply put, hedging is language that softens, qualifies, or creates distance from a statement instead of making it directly. 

Words and phrases such as maybe, perhaps, seemed, almost, somehow, I think, and I suppose are some common examples.  You might say, She seemed angry instead of She was angry, or I thought perhaps he was lying instead of I knew he was lying. 

Sometimes that uncertainty is what a scene needs.  Other times the hedging sneaks in because we're reluctant to commit fully to what the character is saying.

But there is another type of hedging that can be much more interesting.  Sometimes it isn't the writer that's hedging but the character is.

But there is another kind of hedging I find much more interesting.

Sometimes the writer isn’t hedging.

The character is.

While working on Samuel’s point of view in The Malpais Bride, I noticed that he has a habit of doing something very specific.  When a thought becomes too personal, Samuel's voice would stop saying I.  He would say things like " a man..." and use third person tone.

On the surface, this sounds like a general observation.  Especially for the time period.  Doing this allowed Samuel to notice things and say things without getting emotionally involved.

Except, story wise, Samuel is thinking about his new wife.

What he really means is:

I noticed her.

More specifically:

I noticed she was beautiful.

And suddenly the sentence becomes much more personal than Samuel is comfortable admitting.

That makes the hedge useful.

The Difference Between Weakness and Distance

When editing, it can be tempting to make a list of weak words and remove every instance of them.  That can be rather helpful but it can also flatten your character's voice if you're not careful.

There's a big difference between a writer weakening a sentence and a character protecting themselves from one.

Let's take:

I’m lonely.

It's direct, vulnerable, and rather difficult to misunderstand.

Now let's take Samuel thinking:

A man gets lonely after enough years by himself.

The meaning is almost identical.

Emotionally, however, the sentences are worlds apart.

In the second version, Samuel has managed to discuss his loneliness without technically admitting that he is lonely.

This is emotional hedging: language that allows a character to approach a truth without quite touching it.

And it can tell us an enormous amount about them.

Three Kinds of Hedging

When I come across hedging during revision, I find it useful to ask what kind I am looking at.

Accidental Hedging

This is the variety most writing advice warns against.

Let's take:

She seemed to be angry.

If the viewpoint character can clearly see that she is angry, seemed to be may be weakening the sentence.

Let's compare with:

She was angry.

Or depending on the scene:

She slammed the cup onto the table.

Likewise:

I somehow managed to climb the fence.

Depending on the situation, does somehow actually contribute?  On occasion, it doesn't help.

These may be places where the writer may simply be nervous about committing to the sentence.

Genuine Uncertainty

Not every hedge is bad.

If the narrator does not know something, the uncertainty belongs there.

Someone seemed to be standing beyond the trees.

That sentence creates a very different situation from:

Someone was standing beyond the trees.

The first tells us the narrator can't quite see what they are looking at.

That uncertainty has a purpose.

In that case, the hedge is doing work.

Emotional Hedging

Here's where it gets fun.  It's when the character knows exactly what they mean but they don't want to say it.

Let's take Samuel saying:

A man might miss having somebody around.

Translation:

I miss having somebody around.

~*~

A fellow could get used to this.

Translation:

I like this.

~*~

A man notices when a pretty woman walks into a room.

Translation:

I noticed her immediately and I will not be taking any follow-up questions.

This kind of hedging can reveal embarrassment, grief, fear, pride, repression, cultural expectations, or simply a personality that has never learned how to speak directly about emotion.

Sometimes “I” Is the Scariest Word

First-person narration can feel inherently intimate because everything passes through I.

I saw, I heard, I remembered, I wanted.

But it doesn't mean every first person narrator is emotionally honest.

A character might describe every detail of a room rather than acknowledge why they entered it.  They might explain another person’s behavior instead of admitting how it affected them.  

They might turn personal feelings into universal observations.

People get tired of being alone.

A woman ought to know better.

A man can only take so much.

Sometimes those sentences really mean:

I’m tired.

I’m ashamed.

I’m hurt.

The narrator didn't lie.

But they have stepped sideways around the truth.

The Question I Ask During Revision

When I find hedging now, I try not to immediately delete it.

Instead, I ask:

Who is hedging here, the writer or the character?

If I am hedging because I haven't committed to what is happening, the sentence probably needs strengthening.

If the character is hedging because admitting the truth would frighten, embarrass, or expose them, I may want to leave it exactly where it is.

Sometimes I may even lean into it.

Because eventually, if the character changes, their language can change too.

Early in the story:

A man could grow fond of having her around.

Later:

I didn’t want her to leave.

That shift from a man to I can quietly mark emotional growth without the narrative ever announcing it.

The character has stopped hiding behind the hypothetical fellow who has apparently been experiencing all his emotions for him.

Don’t Remove the Hedge. Make It Earn Its Keep.

Like most writing advice, “avoid hedging” is useful until we treat it as a law.

The goal isn't to purge every perhaps, seemed, almost, I suppose, or a man from a manuscript.

The goal should be intention.

If a hedge weakens the prose, cut it.

If it creates necessary uncertainty, keep it.

And if your emotionally constipated nineteenth-century widower would rather wrestle a bear than say, I am lonely and I think my wife is beautiful?

Let him have his a man.

For now.

The poor fellow is doing his best.

When You're Tired of Editing (And the Word “Like” Is Personally Offending You)

After deleting my fiftieth 'like,' I gave the manuscript a thumbs up.  It responded by hiding six more.

There comes a point in every manuscript where the story isn't the enemy anymore.  Mostly.

Instead the enemy becomes a new word.  In my case it was an abundance of the word "like."

You spot the word in every paragraph.  You remove one, only to find another hiding just two sentences later like it's playing some twisted game of literary whack-a-mole.  Before long you're staring at your document thinking, If I see this word one more time I'm gonna walk slowly into the sea.

Editing is an exhausting job because it is asking your brain to do something it doesn't want to do.  The creative side of you wants to tell a story.  The editor wants to interrogate every single comma as though it's committed some sort of tax fraud.

Eventually that all too familiar fatigue sets in.  Bonus points if it's accompanied by a dose of imposter syndrome.

So what is one supposed to do?

We can step away.

There are times the best edit is no edit at all.

Close that document, go make some tea or coffee, start a goose cult.

Stop summoning the dark void from the other dimension!  Don't lick it!  You're not my cat!

Your subconscious will still be plugging away while you're away.

Try changing the mission.

Instead of editing everything at once pick just one target.  For me it was hunting the word "like."  Hunt down one word today and something else tomorrow.  By the third day you're looking for repeated sentence structures.

Breaking edits into tiny little quests makes them feel less overwhelming and keeps your brain from trying to juggle twenty different things at once.

Read it out loud.

You might hate me for this one but I've done some research on it.  Nothing will reveal awkward prose than your own voice.  By talking it out you'll discover sentences that run on for half a page.  You'll find yourself tripping over repeated words.  You'll hear dialogue that sound suspiciously like two robots discussing tax policy.  If you can't comfortably read it aloud, then your readers probably won't glide through it either.

Accept some words belong there.

Not every instance is guilty or need removal.  Sometimes a comparison or dialogue is needed.  The goal isn't to eliminate a certain word from existence but to make every word earn its place.

Remember you're not failing.

Feeling tired or not being happy with your work doesn't mean that you're a bad writer.  It usually means you've been paying attention.

Professional writers have to go through dozens of passes.  Some may spend entire editing sessions fixing one tiny issue across hundreds of pages.

That's not failure.

It's craftsmanship and the stubborn refusal to give up.

Celebrate the victories.

Did you remove ten unnecessary words?

Great!

Did you rewrite one clunky paragraph until it stood up straight?

Go you!

Did you simply open the manuscript after wanting to avoid it all week?

That counts too.

Progress shouldn't be measured only in finished chapters or works completed.

Sometimes it's measured in one less filler word.

And if all else fails, remember this:  somewhere in your manuscript, another sneaky "like" is hiding behind a perfectly innocent sentence.  It's waiting to leap out the moment you believe you've found them all.

That little rascal.