That's gotta hurt: wounding and maiming your characters

That’s gotta hurt

Why wounding, maiming, and torturing your characters is good

Mike Shepherd Moscoe, Rory Miller, Burt Kemper, Adrian Phoenix

Orycon 34 – 2012

·      It’s about realism in your characters. If they don’t get injured or heal too quickly, it’s not realistic.

·      MM:

o   Jack Devitt kills between 10 and 50 characters per book

o   Mike kills anywhere between 100 and 1000

o   John Henry kills a 1000 and up

o   It’s important that it makes sense, that it contributes to the storyline

·      AP:

o   Author of two urban fantasy series

o   Even though they are powerful characters, they are still emotionally and physically tortured and suffer.

·      RM:

o   Non-fiction writer

o   (works for police department?)

·      BK:

o   Engineer. Professionally, done force protection work, ballistics, etc. Works in the military.

o   Long term emotional, physical and spiritual damage is done to people, and that stays with them.

·      RM:

o   I tend to throw most books against the wall.

o   There’s almost no way to engage in violence that is consequence free.

o   Legs, eyes, ears, fingers, hands: they eventually no longer work the same.

o   In fiction, there is a trope that characters emerge unscathed and unscarred.

o   The patterns for warriors: they tend to keep doing what they do until they die or drink themselves to death.

·      MM:

o   Psychologically, we’re not permitted to kill humans.

o   Until your not psychologically normal.

o   There’s a small fraction that are intelligently capable of distinguish between the times when it is permitted to kill and not kill.

o   The vast majority of us don’t have the programming to do that.

·      RM:

o   Some people who go out and kill professionally, they still have strong family relationships.

·      BK:

o   Women have different adrenaline cycles than men.

·      RM: Male and females have different stress response:

o   Men get angry quicker and let go of it quicker

o   Woman get angry slower (still thinking logically longer), but stay angry or upset later. Crying is a way to release stress.

o   Because of this, women can be trained to fight cold. They can think, plan, aim better, because they are not yet in a stress response.

·      BK:

o   If you’re ambushed and you spend time thinking, you’re going to be dead.

o   If you respond automatically, because your training is instinctive,  your chances are improved. (And specifically, it’s better to turn into an ambush.)

·      MM:

o   The characters that’s just been introduced – if they die, it’s somewhat meaningless.

o   The character that’s lived through three books, that they care about, and who has to make a choice between his life and his wifes, and then dies… that’s gut wrenching.

o   As a writer, you have to make characters that you care about die: it’s got to be serious.

·      BK:

o   Sometimes you have to roll the die and decide what characters to kill. Otherwise, as a writer, you’ll keep protecting them. Roll a die to choose who to kill. Let it reflect the randomness of life. Let the other characters grow as a result.

·      RM:

o   There’s no such thing as the one punch knockout and simple recovery. Anything that will do enough damage to knock someone out will be a concussion or worse: dizzy and puking for days, or repeatedly passing out.

o   If people do pass out, they are people who weren’t ready to fight, and they just fainted from fear.

·      MM:

o   Post-traumatic stress can trigger at any point

·      BK:

o   Societal norms vary within a culture. And characters live in a culture. They don’t commit violence in a vacuum. They do it with support or without, etc. In our society, we’re traumatized by death. In other cultures, they are not.

·      Pet peeves: poorly executed or unrealistic

o   BK: explosions: there’s not normally flames. There’s just a shock wave.

o   RM: use common sense: if you get shot in the shoulder, it’s going to hit something. It’s nearly impossible for a bullet to go through without hitting something.

o   AP: Fight scenes that are fairly brutal and no one seems to get hurt. They should just be laying there and bleeding. Not getting back up.

o   MM: I loved the battle of los angelos. They got the marines right: they didn’t bunch up. They used cover, etc.

§  You get slugged in the nose, and drove the nose bone into the brain. There is no nose bone.

o   BK: Don’t single source. Use medical source, trauma sources, military sources. Double check. Read Rory Miller’s books.