Advice on Writing Controversial Stories?

[Zachadoodle]

Right now we live in a political environment that unless someone bans automatic rifles, there's bound to be some fear of writers with mental conditions writing controversial material. These include topics like violence, sex, drugs, dark themes, depression, and a whole lot of others. So action film and horror film writers are under scrutinty for the fear of terrorists with hidden ulterior motives disgusing themselves as screenplays. An example of an ulterior motive being disguised is the Parkland Shooter's drawings of him murdering his fellow students. The Columbine Shooters hid ulterior motives in saying their murder plans were a joke. Now when people have gallows humor they kind of assume out of fear they mean it literally... Which is oddly scary.

My question for you all since perhaps you're more experienced and have dealt with worse, is how did you all manage to write such dark macabre stories while having to deal with all the legal work and fears your local town had of you as a writer trying out Horror and Action films?

In a way I'm kind of surprised Stephen King made it far as he did considering these fears people have.

 

[JimS2]

I'd say it's very case by case based depending on the story, rather than taking a more general approach, but could you be more specific to what your story is about? You mentioned some real liffe shootings in your post, so I am guessing it will be compared to those likely?

 

[Zachadoodle]

1. I wrote a story about a blue collar working committing suicide after being overworked and stressed out from paying bills. That is controversial in of itself.
2. I wrote a slasher film involving high schoolers being trapped in a house by a demonic force similar to Evil Dead. Pretty controversial
3. I wrote an action film about a guy being hired by police to kill criminals and that is very controversial.
4. A guy who dies but is brought back to life to slay demons

These stories are not going to work it in this modern climate. These films have been done before. Examples:

1:

2:

3:

4:

I wrote stories similar to these four throughout my childhood. A lot of these stories are pretty negative. I don't know how someone as myself dealing with mental issues can convince people that these are just films. Today is just simply not like the 1980's to early 1990's. Like my parents are afraid of me because of the stories I wrote. I'm a bit of a goth too. I am currently writing more positive films now.

I think for the third one I was doing concept art of one of the villains holding an automatic rifle with a ton of tats and piercings since the villain of the film released everyone from federal prison to fight for him kind of like what Bane did in Batman. The fourth one I basically was trying to draw out, and mind you this was when I was in high school which made it disturbing to the public when people were doing gas station robberies, I made a sketch of a guy with stock images of the hero hiding guns in his clothing trying to get some concept art of it and erroneously uploaded it to the internet.

I think at one point I was worried about self-defense since I'm like very boney and was worried about being taken advantage of so I was kinda wanting a gun to protect myself from being mugged on the streets and that was unpleasant in the midst of all of this.

Essentially people thought I was being anti-social with schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder with all of this dissociating as my characters, or that I was depressingly writing a cry for help.

I'm honestly just autistic with adhd but not too many people recognized that. I just find it sad that people think I am my characters when I try to clearly tell them I'm not. People get lost and frustrated easily when I communicate to them.

As a result of all of that I ended up throwing away every copy I have of those stories and scripts and made things that were more kid friendly and cheerful since dark dramatic tragedies weren't really going to work for people in this modern climate. My psychiatrist is afraid of me and so are my parents and they don't know what any of this stuff is. I tried explaining it to them and instead of them thinking that I was an artist they thought I was disassociating as those characters and believing something weird and creepy about me.

It's useless explaining to people that you're an artist when they think you're too dumb and crazy to be one and too dumb and crazy especially to make work with deep and philosophical themes. As a result of all of that they read what you write and assume you're lashing out like an animal on paper. I didn't like that and people would not even try to visualize the slightest bit of what I tell them but would read what I say with scrutiny. Like how would you like if you wrote a scene like this:

Bob
"Hi I would like to buy some ice cream."
Ice cream clerk
"Sure here's some ice cream that'll be 2 dollars."

And then you show it to your friend and you're not in the mood for ice cream and he randomly starts telling you how much you want to buy ice cream right now? Weird crap like that.

Essentially things like quotations marks when used in sentences have no meaning when being read medically with scrutiny from people like a criminologist would.

And after a while I picked up on how people read me and it's in this disturbing disorganized speech sort of way.

And telling people to not be afraid I'm just a regular guy with autism doesn't dissaude people from assuming anything negative about me. I don't know what to do about it. People are just afraid of me period. And the last time I wrote a story like any of that was 5-7 years ago. Like I remember telling a relative these stories and he called all of them the same? Like what? All of them are the same?

Still though I can tell how people read me. It's in this scrutinzing selective way of glossing over things. It isn't from left to right trying to visualize what's being read. It's more defensively like how I can use what's Zach saying against him.