Today's guest blog is by Emma Kavanagh whose debut novel Falling is published today. A former police and military psychologist who trained firearms officers, command staff and military personnel in the UK and Europe she also has a Phd in psychology.
They say that you should
write what you know. I’m not so sure
that this is an absolute myself, but I do believe that when you know a world,
when you understand it, then your writing of it can come to life, can be real
in a way that would be difficult for someone who hasn’t experienced it. I spent seven years as a police and military
psychologist, providing training to police forces and NATO officers throughout
the UK and Europe, and I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what I write
is fed by what those years have taught me.
I have always been
fascinated by the way in which normal people react to highly stressful
environments. A gun battle, an airplane
crash, and a terrorist attack. These are
challenges that, whilst common fodder for the world of the crime writer, are
quite rare in the life of the average person.
However, for the individuals that it was my job to train, these threats
were worryingly real. What interested me
was the way in which, in situations like this, you see people’s behaviour
change, turn into something you wouldn’t have predicted from them.
I’ll give you a little bit
of the science - don’t worry; I’ll keep it brief. When a person is under a great deal of
stress, the blood flow in their brain changes.
What you see is a decrease in blood flow to the frontal lobe, the part
of the brain that deals with logic and reason, and an increase in blood flow to
the limbic system - the older, far more instinctual part of the brain. What that means for us, in a nutshell, is
that, when you are under stress, instinct and those behaviours that are so well
rehearsed as to be essentially instinctual are in charge.
This is a powerful bit of
knowledge. It is understanding this
basic fact that has allowed us to adapt police and military training so that
the kind of behaviours that we need to see in people when they are under stress
is drilled into them, again and again and again. We make the behaviours we need them to replicate
almost instinctive, so that when the frontal lobe isn’t working so well and
they start relying on the limbic system, they have the right kind of response
just sitting there waiting for them.
My job was to teach this,
to police officers (from PC to Chief Constable), to soldiers and officers,
because the more we understand how the brain works, the better we can predict
and explain the kind of behaviours that we see in life threatening situations. And that is part of the reason why I love
writing, and why I think novels are so critical for us as a society. We very rarely get the chance to experience
in real life the kind of things that we read about in crime novels
(thankfully!). However, the brain is an
incredible learning tool, and it will take its knowledge from anywhere it can
get it. You don’t need someone to hold a
gun to your head in order to learn from that situation - reading about it will
generate the same kind of neural activity (albeit on a substantially reduced
level). What this means for us is that
reading about characters in life threatening situations gives our brains a
template, a way to respond should we ever find ourselves in a similar situation. Essentially, novels can help us learn how to
handle the world and the myriad of people in it.
I’m not very nice to my
characters. These people truly are put
through the mill. They are forced to
deal with horrendous and desperately traumatising situations. They don’t always deal with them well, but
what I do try to do is ensure that their responses - whilst sometimes
ineffectual and downright annoying - are psychologically genuine, based on who
they are as characters and the kind of things they have been exposed to.
Novels are important
because people are able to see themselves in them, to identify with the
characters, their quirks, their talents, and even their failings. And that matters. That matters hugely! As humans we are deeply social creatures. It is important to us that we are not alone
in our experiences, that others have gone through them, have reacted in a
similar way. In essence, that we are
normal.
In my role as a police and
military psychologist, I found day in and day out, that one of the greatest
stressors for the people I was dealing with was the sense that there was
something wrong with them, that they were somehow abnormal, because they had
behaved in a way that they weren’t expecting to when their life was in danger. And often all it took was an explanation of
what it was their brain had been experiencing, an understanding that at that
time their actions were dictated by their biology. That was my job then, to
give people an opportunity to see themselves in a new light, one that hopefully
made more sense to them. And it’s still
my job now - providing readers with a cast of fictional characters, all of whom
are forced to deal with tough situations, all of whom react differently, but
all of whom will hopefully allow the reader to see themselves, and to
ultimately see that they aren’t that different after all.
You can follow Emma Kavanagh on Twitter @EmmaLK
Shots review of Falling can be read here.
FALLING by Emma Kavanagh is published by Century on March 27th, hardback £9.99
