Violent writing: when should you worry?
BY LORI KURTZMAN
Copyright (C) The Enquirer
Matt Deger looks like a guy you’d let baby-sit your kids. Clean-cut, rusty-haired, affable. When the University of Cincinnati junior speaks, it’s with ease and intelligence. No red flags here.
Or are there?
Consider this: Deger once turned in a college writing assignment in which he described a brutal killing. A dismemberment. It was a fiction piece for a creative writing class, and the assignment was to write about a villain.
Deger figured the quickest way to vilify a man was to make him a murderer.
In the wake of Monday’s mass killings at Virginia Tech, much has been made of the writings of shooter Cho Seung-Hui. A classmate posted two of what he said were Cho’s screenplays online: One featured a 13-year-old boy insulting and provoking his stepfather until the older man snaps and kills the boy; the other follows three teens who fantasize about murdering a teacher who rapes students.
Cho’s writing was so disturbing that the English major was referred to the university’s counseling service, said Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the Virginia Tech’s English department.
“Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things,” Rude said. “But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”
Just what makes for disturbing writing, though? What sets off alarms?
‘Not a perfect window’
Copyright (C) The Enquirer
Matt Deger looks like a guy you’d let baby-sit your kids. Clean-cut, rusty-haired, affable. When the University of Cincinnati junior speaks, it’s with ease and intelligence. No red flags here.
Or are there?
Consider this: Deger once turned in a college writing assignment in which he described a brutal killing. A dismemberment. It was a fiction piece for a creative writing class, and the assignment was to write about a villain.
Deger figured the quickest way to vilify a man was to make him a murderer.
In the wake of Monday’s mass killings at Virginia Tech, much has been made of the writings of shooter Cho Seung-Hui. A classmate posted two of what he said were Cho’s screenplays online: One featured a 13-year-old boy insulting and provoking his stepfather until the older man snaps and kills the boy; the other follows three teens who fantasize about murdering a teacher who rapes students.
Cho’s writing was so disturbing that the English major was referred to the university’s counseling service, said Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the Virginia Tech’s English department.
“Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things,” Rude said. “But we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”
Just what makes for disturbing writing, though? What sets off alarms?
‘Not a perfect window’
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