Veive
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- Posted: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 05:05:49 +0000
This is a friendly reminder brought to you by Veive's incoherent rage. I do know that Limyaael wrote a rant on raining s**t and not letting it stink, but I haven't read that one in a while and I hope this will be different.
So I was on this other forum, right? And this girl was like "Oh, hey, we're talking about violence... that reminds me of my novel."
This is what she said:
In Angel 2306, Sam and Tia die from an explosion, Angel is tortured since age forty-four to ninety-seven (age three-to-four to seventeen in human years)--which includes having special and rather dangerous liquids being painfully ejected into her body via needles, Sara is captured and tortured (she's fifteen), a bunch of civilians get massacred as the aliens invade their city of Spire searching for Angel, Matthew and Sara are fighting people at age fifteen, Matthew gets hurt a lot (not as much as some others, though), severed and decapitated alien body parts fill the majority of a house, Angel gets raped, Angel gets captured by the aliens, Sara kidnaped by her abusive father, Angel is painfully connected to a giant machine and then later painfully disconnected from said machine...a lot of other stuff. But you guys don't really care, so I'll just shut up...
So let's take a look at this.
Tons and tons and tons of violence, trauma tossed on characters, etc. And notice that not one of it is a description of self-inflicted emotional pain. There's no discussion of logical consequences. nothing.
And I've been looking around and, really, this is a problem with a lot of novels. Even published ones (y helo thar, Mercedes Lackey!)
So let's get some stuff straight about trauma.
1. Trauma does not give you a story.
It's all well and good that you want to toss a bunch of s**t on your character and have them suffer and try to recover again and again.
But that's not a story. Recovery can be a theme. It can be a major plotline, or motivation. However, until you start having that plotline and you start introducing things other than just a character suffering, you have nothing but authorial flagellation. Just like authorial masturbation, authorial self-flagellation does not produce good writing.
I'm looking at that mess up there and wondering whether the person actually has a story under all that suffering.
2. Trauma does not give you good characters.
Yes, it is fun to hurt your characters and see how that changes them. However, you cannot drop repeated anvils on your character's head and expect it to substitute for good characterization.
Now, understand that traumatized characters and characters who have been through hell are pretty damn fun to write about-- mostly because if they've gotten through, they've probably turned into a neurotic son-of-a-b***h. But you have to understand that there has to be a character concept somewhere among there. If you turn out another b*****d-With-A-Cold-Shell-and-Attachment-Issues, you're not creating a character no matter how crappy his past is.
You have to know who your character is before he or she is traumatized in order to know who they are afterwards. If you have no concept of character, you're just trying to beat up a rubber man. It will show. We won't care that he's been raped every day for five years by his big brother.
3. The concept of trauma varies on who is experiencing the event.
I consider a psychotic episode of mine to be extremely traumatic. I'm still suffering from the effects of it. However, I tell other people-- and I've even met some people who have been through similar things-- and they shrug. "Not that bad. It's over," they say.
Do I doubt that their experience was as severe as mine? Sure I do, because nobody likes to believe that they're a wimp. But the truth is this: different things will make different people suffer. I don't consider break-ups to be a particular time of suffering, but a lot of people do.
Traumatic is relative. Woman #1 and Woman #2 will probably suffer in the same vein after being raped, but they won't be identical.
4. Excessive trauma makes us roll our eyes.
I know, I know, you've probably heard this one before.
But here's my question:
Exactly what is necessary?
I'm not asking what's necessary to make sure your characters suffer. I'm asking what the bare minimum is for your story to seem realistic, for it to get off the ground. Now, you don't need to use that bare minimum, but you should at least take a good hard look at it to see if it isn't more appealing.
George R. R. Martin certainly does not use just the minimum suffering. His characters honestly go through hell. But it works because he doesn't pile the s**t on them. He has a lot of characters and he lets them all influence each other; every character doesn't get raped, get limbs chopped off, and have their father executed in front of them all in the same book.
Play it light. I'm saying this both because of the believability-- after a while we start wondering why you keep making stuff happen to your poor characters-- and because too much trauma is desensitizing to the reader. Also, when a character's had a really bad month and he's been raped repeatedly, tortured, had one arm broken in five places (and it looks like it'll always be messed-up), had his family killed in front of his eyes, and broken up with his girlfriend, it's pretty damn hard to convey him convincingly while still managing to have him actually function.
5. Senseless trauma is boring.
Like most endings to novels, having your characters suffer should be something that is unpredictable and yet completely inescapable. There should be reasons. There should be a rhyme to it, something that makes sense. I know that real life doesn't always work like that, but when you're talking about a war in which a character is tortured, it shouldn't be because they just picked up a random chick on the street and thought "let's torture her!". There should be a reason. Even if it's not a particularly brilliant one, it should make sense.
And the reason should have something to do with an action of the protagonist. Even if it's something as simple as "choosing to defy the dark lord" or "choosing the safety of his own family over his pride", there should be some input of your character into the equation. Even if one side is clearly "in the right", there is no one-sided conflict, at least in their perspective. Even Hitler could justify his Holocaust.
It should make sense. Please.
6. There needs to be recovery eventually.
Well, actually, there doesn't--- if the trauma happens during the story and it's NOT the main focus of the story. Or if there's no recovery just to make a point.
What you shouldn't do, in this case, is to toss s**t on the character ten years before the story and expect everyone else to still sympathize with him.
7. Shared trauma should not lead to healthy, loving relationships.
It can lead to things like companionship, like almost all shared experiences with which strong emotion is associated. However, if your characters hook up just by virtue of the fact that they were tortured by the same person, I'm wondering whether they're honestly all right in the head.
Think about it. Would you have two women who were raped get together just because their rapist was the same person? Uh? This is not healthy. This is not loving. This is [******** up and weird. Don't do it without acknowledging that it is ******** up and weird.
8. You cannot gross all of us out. Please don't try.
This strongly resembles the final point of my "Shut up and write" rant. Essentially: Do not stick something in the story and expect us to cringe and squeal and wince. If you stick in a gruesome death scene just because you want to see how much grossness you can fit in, if you spend an hour coming up with the worst possible way to die by sword, if you base your story around that--- I hope that somebody gives you a good, hard spanking.
You can't gross us out. Don't try if it doesn't fit with your story. There should be no coy authorial giggling.
This is different, of course, if you are Simon R. Green and if your gross-out moments actually make sense based in the world and based in the surroundings and the story. But if there's no reason for it-- especially if it doesn't fit-- you need to shut up and sit down and coo over that idea in private.
Don't wank off to your own ideas in public. Thanks.
So I was on this other forum, right? And this girl was like "Oh, hey, we're talking about violence... that reminds me of my novel."
This is what she said:
Quote:
In Angel 2306, Sam and Tia die from an explosion, Angel is tortured since age forty-four to ninety-seven (age three-to-four to seventeen in human years)--which includes having special and rather dangerous liquids being painfully ejected into her body via needles, Sara is captured and tortured (she's fifteen), a bunch of civilians get massacred as the aliens invade their city of Spire searching for Angel, Matthew and Sara are fighting people at age fifteen, Matthew gets hurt a lot (not as much as some others, though), severed and decapitated alien body parts fill the majority of a house, Angel gets raped, Angel gets captured by the aliens, Sara kidnaped by her abusive father, Angel is painfully connected to a giant machine and then later painfully disconnected from said machine...a lot of other stuff. But you guys don't really care, so I'll just shut up...
So let's take a look at this.
Tons and tons and tons of violence, trauma tossed on characters, etc. And notice that not one of it is a description of self-inflicted emotional pain. There's no discussion of logical consequences. nothing.
And I've been looking around and, really, this is a problem with a lot of novels. Even published ones (y helo thar, Mercedes Lackey!)
So let's get some stuff straight about trauma.
1. Trauma does not give you a story.
It's all well and good that you want to toss a bunch of s**t on your character and have them suffer and try to recover again and again.
But that's not a story. Recovery can be a theme. It can be a major plotline, or motivation. However, until you start having that plotline and you start introducing things other than just a character suffering, you have nothing but authorial flagellation. Just like authorial masturbation, authorial self-flagellation does not produce good writing.
I'm looking at that mess up there and wondering whether the person actually has a story under all that suffering.
2. Trauma does not give you good characters.
Yes, it is fun to hurt your characters and see how that changes them. However, you cannot drop repeated anvils on your character's head and expect it to substitute for good characterization.
Now, understand that traumatized characters and characters who have been through hell are pretty damn fun to write about-- mostly because if they've gotten through, they've probably turned into a neurotic son-of-a-b***h. But you have to understand that there has to be a character concept somewhere among there. If you turn out another b*****d-With-A-Cold-Shell-and-Attachment-Issues, you're not creating a character no matter how crappy his past is.
You have to know who your character is before he or she is traumatized in order to know who they are afterwards. If you have no concept of character, you're just trying to beat up a rubber man. It will show. We won't care that he's been raped every day for five years by his big brother.
3. The concept of trauma varies on who is experiencing the event.
I consider a psychotic episode of mine to be extremely traumatic. I'm still suffering from the effects of it. However, I tell other people-- and I've even met some people who have been through similar things-- and they shrug. "Not that bad. It's over," they say.
Do I doubt that their experience was as severe as mine? Sure I do, because nobody likes to believe that they're a wimp. But the truth is this: different things will make different people suffer. I don't consider break-ups to be a particular time of suffering, but a lot of people do.
Traumatic is relative. Woman #1 and Woman #2 will probably suffer in the same vein after being raped, but they won't be identical.
4. Excessive trauma makes us roll our eyes.
I know, I know, you've probably heard this one before.
But here's my question:
Exactly what is necessary?
I'm not asking what's necessary to make sure your characters suffer. I'm asking what the bare minimum is for your story to seem realistic, for it to get off the ground. Now, you don't need to use that bare minimum, but you should at least take a good hard look at it to see if it isn't more appealing.
George R. R. Martin certainly does not use just the minimum suffering. His characters honestly go through hell. But it works because he doesn't pile the s**t on them. He has a lot of characters and he lets them all influence each other; every character doesn't get raped, get limbs chopped off, and have their father executed in front of them all in the same book.
Play it light. I'm saying this both because of the believability-- after a while we start wondering why you keep making stuff happen to your poor characters-- and because too much trauma is desensitizing to the reader. Also, when a character's had a really bad month and he's been raped repeatedly, tortured, had one arm broken in five places (and it looks like it'll always be messed-up), had his family killed in front of his eyes, and broken up with his girlfriend, it's pretty damn hard to convey him convincingly while still managing to have him actually function.
5. Senseless trauma is boring.
Like most endings to novels, having your characters suffer should be something that is unpredictable and yet completely inescapable. There should be reasons. There should be a rhyme to it, something that makes sense. I know that real life doesn't always work like that, but when you're talking about a war in which a character is tortured, it shouldn't be because they just picked up a random chick on the street and thought "let's torture her!". There should be a reason. Even if it's not a particularly brilliant one, it should make sense.
And the reason should have something to do with an action of the protagonist. Even if it's something as simple as "choosing to defy the dark lord" or "choosing the safety of his own family over his pride", there should be some input of your character into the equation. Even if one side is clearly "in the right", there is no one-sided conflict, at least in their perspective. Even Hitler could justify his Holocaust.
It should make sense. Please.
6. There needs to be recovery eventually.
Well, actually, there doesn't--- if the trauma happens during the story and it's NOT the main focus of the story. Or if there's no recovery just to make a point.
What you shouldn't do, in this case, is to toss s**t on the character ten years before the story and expect everyone else to still sympathize with him.
7. Shared trauma should not lead to healthy, loving relationships.
It can lead to things like companionship, like almost all shared experiences with which strong emotion is associated. However, if your characters hook up just by virtue of the fact that they were tortured by the same person, I'm wondering whether they're honestly all right in the head.
Think about it. Would you have two women who were raped get together just because their rapist was the same person? Uh? This is not healthy. This is not loving. This is [******** up and weird. Don't do it without acknowledging that it is ******** up and weird.
8. You cannot gross all of us out. Please don't try.
This strongly resembles the final point of my "Shut up and write" rant. Essentially: Do not stick something in the story and expect us to cringe and squeal and wince. If you stick in a gruesome death scene just because you want to see how much grossness you can fit in, if you spend an hour coming up with the worst possible way to die by sword, if you base your story around that--- I hope that somebody gives you a good, hard spanking.
You can't gross us out. Don't try if it doesn't fit with your story. There should be no coy authorial giggling.
This is different, of course, if you are Simon R. Green and if your gross-out moments actually make sense based in the world and based in the surroundings and the story. But if there's no reason for it-- especially if it doesn't fit-- you need to shut up and sit down and coo over that idea in private.
Don't wank off to your own ideas in public. Thanks.
