Writing Hate-Confessions - Fiction Guide: How to Write Flawlessly and Always Succeed at Writing

The Hate Confession of the Century

That’s a great and heartrending scene from Episode 3 right? It is wonderful in how it is shot and how it is written and acted and what not. Ep 3 was a great movie. The novel was even better if I’m honest. But there’s something about the simple ‘I hate you!’ scenes that…. bother me. I don’t know why. I do love it but one must be clever as too many authors tend to do just that.

For an example of a clever deviance here’s Dragonheart which came out a few years before Ep 3’s scene where Einon confesses his hatred for his former Master.

Since I was a ‘wee lad’ I’ve loved the scene from Romeo and Juliette when I first saw it. Here it is;

“A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me: I have it, And soundly too: your houses! This gentleman, the prince's near ally, My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt In my behalf; my reputation stain'd With Tybalt's slander,--Tybalt, that an hour Hath been my kinsman!” Romeo & Juliette, Scene III, Act III.

It is a speech that has resonated across the ages I think. If you pay attention to the most recent Golgorathiad chapter you’ll see that there’s what I term an ‘inflection’ of this speech within it. They aren’t exactly alike but there’s an element of it in there. Here’s the speech from that story:

“Doomed is the house of Nestor, doomed! For when I arrived hither in friendship and the kingdom was in danger all welcomed me, and now that thou believes the danger attenuated ye cast me out? I say to thee that thou art one and all cursed and all men shalt hold thee up as the worst of men! For where wert ye when thy noble father and I battled with the beasts of the north?”

This is the manner in which one of the heroes addresses the House of Nestor, which has rejected him and cast him out after he helped to save their kingdom. Obviously inspiration was drawn from what happened to Themistocles and to Scipio Africanus. The former was the one responsible for having saved Greece from Persia (as

Josh Tatter

will likely remind everyone every chance he gets there was also of course Leonidas) but that said Scipio was the greatest hero of Rome until the time of the Civil Wars and his reward was exile despite his steady statesmanship and military prowess.

These are tragic and heroic figures who have everything stripped from them and curse those who have banished them. Do they say a simple ‘i hate you’? Nope, they go all out historically pronouncing their disdain for those groups that have punished them unjustly.

This is the way so to speak when writing.

You could do the ‘I hate you’ tastefully, I mean Lucas did it with Vader at the end of his Episode 3 movie. But I would strangely caution against this, and say if you’re writing Mythic Fiction to go the extra way and to make it that much more verbose and eloquent.

Why? Because why not?

Okay, so how do I do it?

I know this must be what you’re asking, my dear Padawan Learners. The how is by reading plenty of Shakespeare. No joke he was a master at roasts and also professing hatred between his characters, in particular the plays of Henry IV, Richard II and also Macbeth are quite good with quotes where characters profess their dislike for another.

A character ‘cursing’ another is as good as him or her confessing their undying hatred against another.

How you do this is you have the character ask; ‘why have you done this to me?’

The reason you set things with a negative action, and then the affected party react by asking ‘but why?’ is because it expresses their shock towards the one who is wounding them.

This creates a moment of emotional vulnerability. It is important precisely because it conveys to the readers the direness of the plight that currently faces them. It establishes a moment of tension, of weakness.

The next moment will make or break, but when the one guilty of the crime does not pull back from this, and the victim sheds his moment of weakness, his victimhood and pronounces his condemnation of the first man.

It won’t always work like this, sometimes you have fury that is there from the beginning. In such cases it should have the same result; the declaration of war and hatred to the one who has infuriated him.

Why must you learn these sort of scenes? Quite simple; they are useful to know and master, for literature that follows in the traditions, tropes and ideas of the Medieval and Ancient period. These stories deal with real drama, not the fake sort seen in soap-operas and the like.

Now as to the exact counterpoint, don’t use cusses if you can avoid it. The reason I don’t advocate for them is simple; I’ve tried them before I wrote on substack and they had almost always resulted in a bit of complaining from my listeners or readers (yes I read my stories to them). Always they said ‘well wait there’s cusses?’ or ‘huh so she f-bombed’ or something to that effect or with the French ones; ‘why did he say go eff off? or shut the eff up?’ (this is the rough translation).

The reason is that cusses seem to tear people out and the minute they start to question, the spell is broken (it might be different for you so try experimenting). But the simple ‘I hate you’ works and yet there’s something there that isn’t always appropriate.

Try using words like ‘Curse you!’ or ‘Doom’ or ‘Pox’ ‘Plague’ among many others. When I have a character confess his or her hatred I often use these words. In French if you pay attention to the Lettre de Gallia Newsletter I set up, you’ll notice I use the words ‘Maudit’ (Damn), ‘Condamner’ (Condemned), ‘Plaie’ (Plagued) among many others. The reason is simple; I want each moment like this to be unique.

The more each scene where a character confesses their hatred to another is, the more powerful it’ll feel. And the more powerful and evocative a scene is the more inspiring it is to the reader and more moving too.

So now that you know what words to use, try also writing it in three sentences. Why three? Because this forces you to stretch the moment out. So I might say ‘A Plague on the house of Nestor!’ okay that’s sentence #1 now for the second sentence, how might you do it?

I would try something like ‘May you’, or ‘You shall’ or some such term, to follow up the first sentence as this one is worsening things with a curse. Curses in classic lit were powerful things. They often showcase what a character wishes for those he is opposed to. He expresses disdain, hatred and fury as well as indignation at the betrayal or the spurning or otherwise the actions of his ‘foe’.

So you might get ‘You shall rue this day! Each one of you shall rue the moment you ejected the glorious

Phisto Sobanii

from your midst!’ Though bear in mind if it was the real Phisto he’d use the word ‘Retard’ (he’s kind of hilarious that way). But the thing here is that we’re going for a more archaic English and French so ‘retard’ is off limits as are most modern cusses.

So we’ve two sentences. Now for the hard part, the third sentence so the solution I sometimes go to is the curse itself; ‘Your sons and daughters will endure the unendurable, their homes will topple, their spires collapse and the foundations of their homes dug up and thrown into the waiting seas!’

Naturally I’d normally chop this up rather than use commas. You get the point though. The idea is to show the character proclaiming like in R&J the exact fate wished upon the other characters.

Or you might get; ‘Ivanhoe that knave! He hast ruined me, may the heavens reject him and may he be cursed to wander forever!’

This is more specific and more direct against the one person (in this case one of my favourite literary heroes Ivanhoe). Knave is a very old insult, I also like ‘cur’ from Robert E. Howard’s stories, or ‘chien’ in Frnech. But you also have ‘he has ruined me’ is the proclamation of the character to the heavens above how he has been poorly treated.

But though you can mix in a Medieval vulgarity don’t forget to add at the end something like ‘may the heavens abjure him’ or something which is calling out to the world around him, and then you get the exact fate wished upon him (in this case presumably by the Templar Knight or King John who reject Ivanhoe).

So in this situation you’re seeing something of a formula of sorts of mine one which goes as follows; Exclamation - Call to the World - Rejection - Curse.

If you pay attention to Golgarothiad, Olympnomachi and others you’ll see this formula pop up on occasion. Here see for yourselves;

And the exact Chapter from Golgarothiad;

The formula when characters get angry isn’t one you have to follow exactly, I sometimes vary it around so you might get the ‘curse - exclamation - call to the world’ and so on. It just seems to flow well, and feels archaic.

I will be of course varying it some more soon, probably by employing things like Scipio’s words when he’s exiled as an example of what to do; "Ungrateful country, you shall not even have my bones," or for the Latin; "Patria ingrata, ne ossa quidem habebis,"

The reason? Why not.

Because if one is to do it more briefly in a single sentence this is how you do it. ‘Ungrateful Country’ is a great term, and one that fits perfectly with the situation so that you have the ‘accusation’ (which I use), you shall not even have my bones.

Now this last bit is an affirmation that he gave his life and youth over to Roma, only to be disgraced in old age by jealous rivals and a nation that saw him as of no further use to it. It had behaved perfidiously so he tells it that it won’t have his bones.

This is how you really proclaim your hatred, without doing so.

The idea is to do so briefly when you do it with the ‘one sentence’ approach like this. Can you employ it in fiction? Absolutely.

So I hope this was educational. Just because a character might easily say ‘I hate you’, or ‘Damn you’ you can always be creative. I will on occasion use it once a story or every few chapters, but then try to be cleverer and more verbose. When using the 3 sentence approach I’ll then shake it up with a ‘1 sentence’ approach next.

It’s just more fun. How do you approach these sort of confessions? Let me know in the comment section.

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Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!