Writing violence
Hello dear readers!
Today I want to discuss some of my thoughts on writing violence. I’ll try not to get too graphic, but if this topic makes you squeamish, proceed with caution.
Dustin wrote an article quite a while back about how people tend to react to violence, especially in the context of a medieval setting. You can read about that here. But what I want to discuss today is how you, the author, choose to approach violence in your own writing.
Violence is absolutely nothing like Hollywood makes it out to be. Movies and often books take a lot of the realism out of violence to make it more palatable for audiences. A character gets shot or stabbed and keeps on trucking. They get patched up in the next scene and they’re good to go. A character gets into a brutal fist fight, they may or may not show up with some minor bruises and cuts in the next scene, maybe a little sore, but overall able to keep on going like it was no big deal. This is not how things work in the real world.
I work in healthcare. Thankfully I don’t work in the emergency room, so I don’t have to see things right immediately after they happen, or deal with trying to put people back together. But, I do work in physical therapy and I have helped people rehab after gunshot wounds, stab wounds, surgery, car accidents, traumatic brain injuries, and more. I can tell you recovery it is nothing like Hollywood makes it out to be.
A lot of time, people don’t want to deal with the realities of the aftermath of violence, which is why in books and stories we tend to sort of glaze over that part. Which isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. It’s an incredibly mentally exhausting place to be seeing or dealing or thinking about those kinds of things all the time. Ask any LEO and I’m sure they would agree. Lots of times we read stories to escape reality, not get slapped in the face with it.
Which leads me to the crux of the issue. How do you want to depict violence in your work?
For me, the first thing would be to try to decide who your audience is, what type of story are you telling, and the setting. Is it a story for children, young adults, adults? Is this a fun and light hearted adventure story? Is it gritty and dark? Is it a medieval story where violence happens up close and personal or is it more modern/futuristic where violence can occur at more of a distance because of guns or blasters. To paraphrase Rory Miller “the more of a distance we can kill someone from, the more civilized it feels.”
Consider how you would portray violence in a a book for children or young adults versus say, how violence is portrayed in Game of Thrones (GoT). I would encourage you to make sure that your depiction matches your theme, your mood, and the overall message of your book.
For example, Phil is working on the manuscript for the first book of his Neversleep Scrolls series. There is a point in the book where someone is getting choked. I read the book and offered feedback on this scene based on my initial reaction, but after giving it some consideration, I backtracked a bit. Phil isn’t writing GoT, and he doesn’t need that level of violent detail in his book. It doesn’t match his style or the mood in his book. One thing I appreciate about Phil’s book is that he doesn’t use violence just for violence sake. It’s not gratuitous. His story has violence in it, but it isn’t overly graphic.
This is something I’ve been considering a lot the last few days. And while Phil’s depiction of violence isn’t necessarily a realistic, it also doesn’t necessarily have to be. There are lots of things that get written into stories that are not practical. But unless you’re writing non-fiction, sometimes that’s ok. If it serves the purpose of the story, in my opinion, it’s ok to blur the lines a little bit. We see two people riding horses a lot in films or in books, but talking to my good friend Kelsey who knows a lot about horses, by and large that’s extremely impractical for long distances and never really happens like that in real life. But it makes for a great visual in our imagination, so we let it slide.
For my part, I wanted A Songbird’s Tale to be more of an adult fairy tale, and I wanted some of those more gritty and graphic elements in my story. There are times when I fudge the rules as well, but I try to do so with some knowledge that I’m breaking them. As an example, Jaren and Songbird do ride Gallop together, but I also made Gallop a giant draft horse in order to accommodate that. Jaren even remarks that it’s harder for horses to carry two people and he doesn’t like to do it often. I tried to have Jaren behave in a way that someone who is familiar with violence would, even if it doesn’t fit our modern ideals of honor and heroism. Jaren wants to stay alive. When he’s outnumbered and at a severe disadvantage, he has to act accordingly, even if this is shocking and uncomfortable for readers.
You see so often in Hollywood the heroes wading through faceless foes, slaughtering baddies and minions left and right, and I don’t see them struggle with the aftermath of that very often. Killing someone is a big deal. We try to ‘other’ these bad guys so we don’t feel bad when they die. Why do you think Stormtroopers all wear helmets and are treated as disposable targets? We don’t care how many stormtroopers die because they have no face and no name. They’re just portrayed as mindless, usually inept cogs in a machine. But the reality of the situation is that there would be a real, living, breathing, human under there, with hopes and dreams and possibly a family. The good guys blow up the death star and save the galaxy, but how many people on the death star died so that could happen? How many of them were there because they truly believed in the empire and how many were there just because they were pressed into service by whatever diabolical means the empire had at its disposal? What about the cooks and janitors? These are uncomfortable questions for an audience to wrestle with, and I would argue they potentially take away from the overall message that George Lucas was going for with his film. So it doesn’t make sense to focus on the psychological trauma that might actually come with ending the lives of thousands and thousands of sentient beings.
As Songbird becomes more human, and less animal, she struggles with the weight of having taken a life. I could have easily have left this out and her go on her merry way without giving it too much thought, but I felt it would be doing an injustice to her character, who is learning what it means to love and to be human. These are stylistic choices I opted for, but that doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for every story and every audience. You can get the point of your story across without gory details and ultra-realism.
The way I see it, there’s a balance. The more bits of reality you can pull into your fiction, the more believable it will be, but I think there can come a point where it can get int the way of your storytelling and you just have to run with a bit of story craft over pure reality. But it’s also good to be aware of what the reality of the situation might be when you’re blurring those lines, so you have a good understanding of how and why you’re breaking them.
For those of you who might be interesting in learning more about the ugly side of violence, I would recommend two exceptionally good books on the topic, both by Rory Miller: Meditations on Violence and Violence, a Writer’s Guide.
I’ll warn you, they’re heavy reads, but they are very eye-opening. I would recommend the first book to everyone, and the second book especially to writers who may include violence in any of their stories. In the same way you can’t un-ring a bell, once you are exposed to some of these things, it can be a little harder to go back to blissful ignorance. But as for me, I would rather know than not know.
Until next time dear readers, consider how a little bit of realism could help improve your fantasy writing, or how a little bit of fudging the rules could help get the message of your story across better. All the best, <3 Tiff
