the dark side of fiction writing : electric chair research
link: I Witnessed What Should Be the Last Electric Chair Execution, by David Raybin
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even for these little short sketches, i have to do research. when they say, “write what you know,” i always take that to mean “write what you know about people and their desires and their lies and their loves and their desperation” etc etc. i don’t take that to mean “only write about Boy Scouts who like Weird Al and are bad drivers and who put eggs on their cheeseburgers.”
and so i always find myself writing about things i know nothing about. when i started writing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, i quickly realized i didn’t know anything about Continental Air Defense, the Cold War, planes, bombs, not even the Air Force — ranks, procedure, how they talk to each other. i felt very lost. i had a lot of people help me create something viable, but even the final product suffers from my excessive ignorance.
i’m not afraid of ignorance, as it’s an opportunity to learn. growing up we had a Will Rogers poster in our house downstairs that said, “Every man is ignorant, only in different subjects.” this has become very freeing for me. there’s things i’m really good at, and things i know nothing about. and it’s okay to not know about them. i can’t know everything. and being an idiot is really freeing. comedian John Mendoza said, “it’s nice being stupid. people go, ‘what are ya, stupid?’ and i go, ‘yeah’.” when you can admit you’re ignorant, you’re not afraid to ask questions. you’re not afraid to look stupid when you know you already do.
and then i can learn about things. and i like learning. it’s fun.
one of the things i love most about being a filmmaker and author is that i do get to learn so much about so many things. i’m terminally curious. and i don’t have to become an expert. i just have to learn enough to write about it in a way that my mom feels like i know what i’m talking about. she’s a smart lady, so that’s more challenging than it may seem.
i will say, it does wreak havoc with my amazon ads, though.
there is another downside. the dark side.
even if my story is redemptive, i have to learn about the choices that led to the fall in the first place. even though my story may be a comedy, the context is typically serious business. to tell a story about the preciousness of life, i have to learn about the reality of danger and death.
the story i published Saturday, “Pastor on the Row”, is a great example.
whatever their conversation, the context is Death Row, the last few minutes before a convicted man is executed. however many smiles they share, i must research a context that is full of terror and death, many times anger, hatred, and darkness. while my story doesn’t focus on the actual execution, my research would have to encompass a full range of data — what happens before, what happens when they come to get him, what do they say before they execute him, and when do they say it, and where, and to whom? there’s so many questions (i.e. i am so ignorant), i don’t even know which question to ask to get me started.
initial searches land me on the wikipedia page for “Electric Chair” and pages with description of the mechanics of the chair itself. at some point i’ll find a term to expand my research tree, or the name of a convicted person whose story i can read about. bit by bit, my knowledge increases. at some point, i feel confident enough to write something that will at least feel realistic, even if it is still riddled with holes, assumptions, misconceptions, and ignorance.
in these short sketches, the threshold of acceptable ignorance is admittedly low. no one should read “Pastor on the Row” and believe it accurately depicts something that could actually take place in that fashion (even a skim of this article about Alabama execution protocol will quickly show i’ve taken a liberty or two). but i don’t think anyone will care much about that. trying to extract factual data from one of my stories would be a bit like trying to understand the Higgs-Boson particle by reading Genesis chapter 1: kinda missing the point.
and so finally, the link.
i came across the article below, which happened to be about an event in Tennessee. it’s the type of gem i hope to find when researching; it contains lots of little details and terminology that can sprout branches in my research tree.
i post it here because it’s well-written and a compelling read. it’s a side of the law, of life, that almost none of us get to see. i’m up for sharing anything with you that gave me eyes to see something i’d never otherwise get to experience.
Scripture does say to be “ignorant of evil”; there are some things better left unknown. but i think this article provides a sober context for capital punishment, regardless of how i might feel about it politically, morally, spiritually.
I Witnessed What Should Be the Last Electric Chair Execution by David Raybin
