Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-6822927-20180814171052

I’ll admit, I’m the kind of guy who enjoys playing around with clichés. When I saw the rules, I felt somewhat challenged.

I have been thinking about doing a Jeff the Rip-Off type story which actually works to deconstruct this character archetype.

Often people portray them as being abused therefore they go insane and become evil murderers, with some odd feature which sets them apart, like Jeff’s face. Gore is often used for shock value.

However, something these miss is that in real life, why someone could become a serial killer has many varied reasons and there are many different methods used by serial killers. Case in point, compare Jack the Ripper with the Axeman of New Orleans. Neither one has been caught or identified, yet they were completely different. Jack butchered prostitutes in white chapel and seems to have eaten part of a kidney, while the axeman raided peoples’ homes and butchered them. He stopped when everyone played jazz. There’s also the likes of Dean Arnold Corll, who abducted, tortured, raped and murdered 28 boys. Don’t look up what Albert Fish did to one little girl. You don’t want to read the letter he wrote her mother. Trust me.

My idea is to set up what looks like a Jeff the spin-off then quickly begin subverting and deconstructing the genre, pointing out how serial killers don’t need a tragic backstory or anything to do their crimes. Some are just bad people.

I haven’t worked out everything but I have some ideas on what to do. 