Violent Fiction Equates to Emotion Over Logic

[gmearns]

The difference between True Crime and Violent fiction are clear; its the difference between logic and emotion. In True Crime novels like ICB, the author depicts the situation or crime at hand the way it happened. Of course Capote adds in some literary characteristics to keep the novel interesting and to evoke some emotion. Emotion is not what is driving the reader's opinion on the novel itself. In a violent novel the entire point of the novel is to bring out the emotion behind the actions and channel all of the readers emotion behind that emotion. While in True Crime, the reader uses logic to analyze the evidence and the suspects. True Crime causes the reader to look in the point of view of the investigator rather than the victim which creates a new, different way to look at a normally emotion situation.

[brian]

I disagree with your logic versus emotion claim. Both true crime novels and violent fiction novels have strong bases in their emotional appeal to the reader. A true crime novel like In Cold Blood, while it stays close to the facts, describes the story in a way that brings overwhelming emotion so you connect more to the characters. If true crime novels compelled people on the facts then readers of In Cold Blood would hate Perry and Dick entirely. That, however, is not the case. Using emotions Capote manages to convince the readers to ignore the fact that Dick and Perry brutally murdered the Clutters and focus on the emotion connected to two troubled boys making mistakes. I agree that violent fiction novels focus more on emotion, but true crime novels have to focus on building emotions to overpower the facts or it would be another run of the mill police report.