Good old-fashioned injury

[TheDustyZebra]

Honor Harrington comes to mind -- she's ended up with a prosthetic eye and arm, albeit nicely technological ones. And it's worse for her, being a person who can't regenerate body parts in a time/place when most people can. It gives her an added sense of mortality.

 

[HoopyFrood]

I prefer a good old fashioned injury. In one novel when I was notorious for rewriting all the nasty things happening to characters, trying to get the right feel (one poor guy died in about fifteen different ways) my main character -- first person, because I'm a first person heathen -- had her little finger cut off. Happened so fast she died realise until she lifted her hand sand the finger didn't follow. She was fairly useless for a while afterwards as she was struck on 'my finger's gone...'

Wheel of Time has a couple of very surprising there-goes-a-body-part. Well they were both prophecies but I missed the mention of the first one and the second one was vague enough that not even the character to whom it happened realised until mid-event. That was especially gruesome. Both took it in their stride though, but it made sense in the wider context.

I think one of the best I read was in the Dark Tower series. Badass ulitmate gunslinger, so someone who rather relies on his hands, loses two fingers at the very beginning of the second book, before things have really even got going, and from a simple...er, wildlife incident, so not even anything major. Just a random accident. With King's strength lying in his character writing ability, he really makes you realise just how everything, right down the simplest actions, is so much more difficult. And the importance of antibiotics.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Injury is *so* under-rated.

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

I think you are right that what we think of as ordinary injuries are passed over too easily in fiction. Modern medicine allows us to dismiss them, but even so we don't always heal completely. I broke my arm near the wrist a couple of years ago (as many of you will remember), and even though I had surgery and they put in a plate, that arm is still weak and the wrist is slightly deformed. And I just don't trust that arm to do things of which it is, actually, capable. I think of it as "wrong." If that kind of medical treatment were not available to a character, for whatever reason, an ordinary broken limb could be a life-long injury. (Not to mention how painful it would be while healing, without pain medication!)

 

[Ursa major]

I recall watching a documentary about a duel (in the 17th or 18th century) where it was explained that even if the bullet didn't kill you by its direct effect on your body, it would have inserted some of your dirty, infection-bearing clothing into your insides, and so there was a good chance that you'd die from that, require amputation, or never be the same again. I assume a sword or dagger wound through clothing would have a similar effect.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Yes, and they didn't have the knowledge to disinfect the wound, or the antibiotics to treat an infection once it started. It was up to the body's natural defenses, which might not be sufficient.

People sometimes died of the smallest things if an infection set in, so you can imagine the chances if someone with dirty hands and instruments that hadn't been sterilized dug a piece of lead out of your shoulder, possibly leaving a few bits of cloth behind.

 

[wendelleg]

Having recently broken an arm, I can tell you that a physical injury also carries psychological effects. Perhaps a rape or torture scene conveys psychological trauma to the reader, but (hopefully) not an experience the reader can personally identify with. How much more effective it is to bestow an injury upon a character that a reader can more easily empathize with ! Making the reader uncomfortable involves them personally in the plot.

 

[sknox]

I had a rotator cuff tear years ago and it affected my ability to do certain motions (especially throwing motion) for years afterward. I very soon began thinking about how easily that could happen to a warrior, what with all the sword swinging, and what effect that would have. I envisioned a fighter trying to fake his way, shortening his swing or simply avoiding certain motions, even lying to himself about how he was doing.

More recently, I sliced my thumb badly. The sensory memory of the blade cutting through flesh is still vivid to me. There again, I thought of how a person would react to being stabbed, the psychological effects lingering long after the physical body had healed.

In short, I agree that injuries, even leaving aside loss of limb, are not well explored by fantasy authors.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

My MC lost an eye. I did get some flack for having two characters with eyepatches but the other wears his to help correct his sparrow eyesight or it gives him a migraine.

However writing an injury or disability is not easy you have to remember it on everything.

 

[The Storyteller]

Good point! Something I have also thought on. It seems to me that developing a serious illness or injury is a very big ordeal to put your character through, because of it's life-lasting affects (not saying the other options do not have these as well). Losing a leg for example; that would be tremendously hard to deal with! And how your character reacts to this and grows could be very interesting development.

I haven't read many books that this happens to the MC, but I do know one where the MC grows from a somewhat meek/weak boy is forced to become a gladiator and eventually becomes very strong and bold, until he is an unparalleled fighter... but then in a later book he becomes crippled, receiving a serious injury to his leg (maybe that whole side of his body?). He can no longer fight the way he used to be able to, and also is no longer considered as handsome as he was.

On one hand, I really liked this because it was not the usual struggle the MC encounters. But there is also a downside; in a way, this also bothered me. He would get into a situation where he would have to fight, and I would hate it that he could not longer be the clever able fighter he was. As a reader, it is exciting and enjoyable when the MC can excel at physical and mental challenges, especially if they have developed these skills over the course of the book(s). If an injury or illness causes them to lose these abilities permanently, it can be frustrating, disappointing, or even boring because the best elements of the action is taken away.

I'm sure there would be a way to still write this effectively, but maybe that is part of the reason so few authors do it? Maybe they prefer traumatic experiences which do not later take away from their MC's physical and mental prowess, or more so only do so temporarily before the MC can make a comeback and be as good or better than ever at their skillsets?