Good old-fashioned injury

[HareBrain]

In a recent thread (which I won't resurrect) someone, I forget who -- OK, it was springs -- pondered whether we tend to go to rape for a female character, or torture for a male, if we want to be horribly unpleasant to them.

But what about injury?

It struck me at the time, and then again more forcibly today, that we don't tend to see much in the way of permanent injury or illness happening to main characters during the story, even though medieval histories are replete not only with disease, but people slicing off noses or putting out eyes or chopping off hands by way of punishment -- and that's all deliberate, let alone the injuries that might befall someone through fighting or general living.

This surprises me, now I think about it, since permanent injury is a big non-fatal threat. Losing a hand made a big difference to Jaime in A Song of Ice and Fire, and though it didn't have quite the same impact, Will's loss of a finger in Pullman's The Subtle Knife made the other dangers he faced feel more real; it made me worry for him more. Sometimes I hear people say "I don't like first-person (past tense) because you know the main character survives, so where is the danger?" I think this shows a lack of imagination as to the other fates that might befall a character, but it's probably a lack of imagination that comes from the fact that authors seem to shy away from doing permanent damage to a character's physical integrity.

If this is so, are we more reluctant to physically lessen a character than we are to have them suffer some psychological trauma such as rape or torture? And if so, why?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Oh, my mc lost a finger, too. But he had everything done to him. I'm like that, me.

I think there is some good evidence of this is some books I've read - What Katy Did, Among Others, Glotka - but it is in a minority. Perhaps it's because it's a legacy impact as opposed to something which could be immediately happening in a story? Ie to show the impact we need to continue on the arc, whereas torture and rape are immediate.

Also, perhaps it lacks the obvious conflict of someone doing it to you?

It's certainly something I'll be thinking about. My characters collectively hate you.

 

[barrett1987]

My main char will chop off his own hand at the end of the second act. Purpose is to highlight how far and how much he'll take to get his wife back. It also gives me a nice way of handing off one of his guns to the younger pov Wyn in the second book. Oh and it comes from a mistake of his, which again is another long running theme.
The guys a badass but his badass headstrong nature actually hinders him alot. I'm sure there is a point in there somewhere lol.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think part of it is the old-fashioned idea that a character can shrug off psychological trauma, or just even the playing field with some good old revenge and be back to normal and in prime fighting condition (and then do exciting active things for the reader to read about).

To my mind, this is just part of the arsenal that the writer can deploy to make their characters more interesting. Leaving aside "issues of diversity" for the moment, one of the main ways to make characters interesting is to make them stand out, and the things that make them stand out may well be impediments to their success. So (with the standard proviso that it's got to be done well) it's a perfectly valid option.

When I wrote the unpublished fantasy novel, I wanted the heroine to be at the bottom of the heap, without the ability to charm (or bribe) her way out of trouble. So she ended up with large facial scars. She sought revenge on the man who scarred her (possibly because she saw it in a play) but came to realise that the situation was more complex than that, and that revenge wouldn't rescue her. This seemed sufficiently original, and nasty without being pornographic, to make the character interesting - and give her a mission to accomplish.

 

[HareBrain]

I think part of it is the old-fashioned idea that a character can shrug off psychological trauma, or just even the playing field with some good old revenge and be back to normal and in prime fighting condition (and then do exciting active things for the reader to read about).

I think this is part of it -- coupled, maybe, with an optimistic belief that we could do the same.

It might be worth pointing out that I wasn't thinking so much of characters who begin a story injured, but those acquiring an injury once the reader has already formed an attachment to them in their non-injured state. (Bran in ASOIF would have been a very good example of this if his injury had happened a few chapters later, and is one of the best examples anyway.) I have a feeling that for a reader to identify with a character, and for that character to then suffer some lack of bodily integrity, is actually more shocking and affecting than for the character to die. Maybe.

This thought-train came from reading something where a villain threatens to put a sympathetic MC's eye out a few chapters in, but doesn't go through with it. It struck me that it would be a much stronger reading experience -- both during the act and for the rest of the story -- if he had, but that this isn't a route many authors take, myself included.

 

[barrett1987]

Side Question: In your opinions, how long should a MC dwell on his injury? Take losing the eye. How often is too often? In reality i'd be aware of it for years but you cant keep referring to it or the reader gets bored.

 

[HareBrain]

Side Question: In your opinions, how long should a MC dwell on his injury? Take losing the eye. How often is too often? In reality i'd be aware of it for years but you cant keep referring to it or the reader gets bored.

I don't know about "dwell on it"; I think the best way is to show how it changes the MC's life in a practical sense. So, having to retrain because of lack of depth perception, having people reacting differently to his/her appearance, and so on. I think you could keep subtly reminding the reader of the injury without making it seem the MC was pitying himself about it.

 

[Mouse]

There are quite a few novels with nine-fingered characters. I don't think authors mind lopping off a finger or two. (Done that one myself, too).

I have loads of injuries in my final YA book. My male MC has his horse fall on him and crush his leg - he spends the rest of the novel walking with a stick. I also have another fairly main character almost getting his arm ripped off and my group of heroes have to leave him behind because he's too badly injured to be of much use. I also have a character in the same novel with only one leg.

In what I'm writing at the mo, there are plenty of mental traumas but no real physical ones yet (one of the characters is immortal, so whatever happens she'll be fine, though I have plans...) but I do have a heroin addict - so when she's going through withdrawals she's got all the nastiness going on and she's got the track marks and the manky veins and whatnot.

In one of the novels I've just read, the MC is covered in scars - and it isn't a fantasy novel so it's not like it's 'cool' or to show they're badass or something.

 

[Juliana]

Moving on to a well-loved movie world, how about Star Wars? Luke and his hand, and Anikin with, well, everything? That's a pretty main stream and well-accepted case of character maiming...

As for what HB said about character maimed after we've met them or before, and going back to ASOIAF, look how much more impact Jaime's hand has on the reader than Davos' fingers, which were long gone by the time we meet him.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Could it be that, although this is an axiom that I have no way of backing up, that every human being has had some experience of psychological trauma of some sort to some degree. And then therefore it is easier for an author to get a reader's empathy for a character via that route as we can imagine that better?

Disability via injury is there but less common, (certainly today compared to earlier periods, I'd argue), but what is interesting is how many have positive frames of mind to cope with it, from matter-of-fact ignoring it and focusing on doing everything just as normal to some even seeing it as a badge of honour (i.e. want to see my shark bite anyone?)

Of course I generalise, for every Tycho Brahe, (who had a nose for every occasion, and I feel probably enjoyed showing off his duelling wound and scaring the squeamish.*), there is someone terrified to leave their house in case they are labelled freaks.





* But then he was 'the richest man in Denmark' at the time allegedly, and probably did anything he wanted.

 

[HareBrain]

I have loads of injuries in my final YA book. My male MC has his horse fall on him and crush his leg - he spends the rest of the novel walking with a stick. I also have another fairly main character almost getting his arm ripped off and my group of heroes have to leave him behind because he's too badly injured to be of much use.

Good going, Mouse. I'd expect nothing else from you.

Maybe it's just me that's reluctant to maim characters then? Could this whole thread have been just a roundabout way of advertising what a nice guy I am?

 

[Hex]

Lois McMaster Bujold also has characters to whom it has already happened. In The Sharing Knife, Dag (one of the mcs) has only one hand. He doesn't obsess over it but she does make it clear that it's an important part of his life and it changes the way people respond to him, and so on. She talks about the hook he uses, in the POV of the other mc.

There's a section where his other hand is hurt (I can't remember how) and it's impossible for him to do most of the things he's used to doing. He gets very frustrated and cross.

Plus a "stronger" reading experience might also be a horrifying and offputting reading experience.

EDIT: I want to be a nice guy too. I'm not sure I could face permanently maiming one of my characters. Well, all right, I probably could, but I'd want a very good reason. In triplicate. And dance.

EDIT2: Gosh. Who knew VB had a shark bite...?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Injury is *so* under-rated.

I still remember my 6ft tall welder uncle fainting after he cut his finger.

And violence will usually have a lasting impact on the person.

EDIT: IMO there's a danger that we've come to under-estimate it, specifically because in so many films where the "hero" can take every injury in their stride. Plus most of us will not experience it commonly in daily life, so it's too tempting to look for more extreme violence to provide suitable mental scars, when a writer doesn't have to go that far at all.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

'Atta girl, Mouse. I do it a fair bit, too. Injure and maim. Maybe we're just dark little bunnies and are there to give balance to Hex and Harebrain.

Actually, another side of the coin is the mental injuries that are often overlooked. That really irks me, when something awful happens and everything's okay in the end. Grrr.

 

[barrett1987]

Side Point for Mouse
If you want to 'punish' the immortal then i can't think of anything worse than solitary prison for eternity. When there are people who heal fast, can't die. Prison is a great end punishment. Though it can only be used at the end of the book i guess.

 

[HareBrain]

Plus a "stronger" reading experience might also be a horrifying and offputting reading experience.

True, but that's why it's good to do it to a character the reader's already come to love too much to stop reading.

To use a TV example, remember that Tufty the Squirrel road safety film that only got shown once? The one where he gets caught up in the chain and spokes of that motorbike, and we see five minutes of him crawling along the roadside, howling and shivering and throwing up with shock, with his tail ripped off and half his skull torn away exposing his brains? That was pretty harrowing for a five-year-old, but we all kept watching because we wanted to see the little guy pull through, even though none of us slept for a month.

 

[Hex]

I don't really like being upset so much by books, but since I can't think of one where it happens (that I don't already hate, sorry Jaime and Bran -- as soon as he fell off the tower I stopped reading), maybe I'm wrong.

Thanks for reminding me about Tufty the Squirrel. It gave me nightmares until I was 30. Do you remember the competition afterwards where you had to identify the stretch of road where he was maimed, and they'd do possibilities every week on Blue Peter just before they told you how things were going in the Blue Peter garden? And the prosthetic tail they made for him with a toilet roll tube and double-sided sticky tape?

They don't do television like that for kids any more.

 

[The Bluestocking]

To use a TV example, remember that Tufty the Squirrel road safety film that only got shown once? The one where he gets caught up in the chain and spokes of that motorbike, and we see five minutes of him crawling along the roadside, howling and shivering and throwing up with shock, with his tail ripped off and half his skull torn away exposing his brains? That was pretty harrowing for a five-year-old, but we all kept watching because we wanted to see the little guy pull through, even though none of us slept for a month.

I think I won't be able to sleep tonight. I cannot un-see that horror in my mind's eye

 

[Hex]

Yep. You need to watch HareBrain. He has one of those imaginations...

I read this:

To use a TV example, remember that Tufty the Squirrel road safety film that only got shown once? The one where he gets caught up in the chain and spokes of that motorbike...

... but we all kept watching because we wanted to see the little guy pull through, even though none of us slept for a month.

 

[Susan Boulton]

People never really get over an injury/trauma, be it mental or physical.

On the outside they appear ok, getting on with life etc. But inside it is still there. It can show at any time, both in behaviour and attitude.

Just watched the Tom Hank's film, Captain Philips, and for once the main character reacts after the horror in a manner that is, 'normal'. Total physical and mental shock.

Just read the book, The real Tenko, by Mark Felton, for some research I am doing. It certainly opened my eyes to what the human race can do to one another and what individuals can endure and actually survive.