4/30

I’m newly interested in a gender aspect I haven’t considered: the dichotomy of the character’s quiet brutality with how she conducts herself. I wrote Dani to be near-perfect to others because I wanted her to be devious, concealing sadism with a caring facade. When I began this project I wanted her to be a traditional movie psycho on the inside, killing because she finds it fun. However, as I also wanted this to be a research opportunity, I learned that female killers are rarely motivated by violence itself; more often there is a tangible gain. For a while I was fine with just having Dani be an outlier, but now I’m considering a new angle: Dani’s manufactured quality is not a result of her inner beast; rather, the inverse is true. The pressure of expectations is subconsciously transmitted into a personal monster, and Dani can’t remember what came first. This requires an entire rewrite of the character and some of the script and allows me to make Dani more human. I can include personality and flashbacks, bringing Dani into a main character role again, rather than a member of an ensemble. She still isn’t sympathetic, and her spree can’t function as a revenge fantasy against society, because I don’t want a satisfying, neat end. I think that a story of someone essentially pummeled by the world around them abandoning her the last shreds of her humanity and killing not those who wronged her but just those who were close more tragic than my original senseless-violence plan. Further, it’s harder to distance yourself from Dani if you know she was made a monster, not born.