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In my story I have a character, who transitions very quickly from being a somewhat disturbed (he suffers from a form of PTSD as well as suicidal tendencies) but very passive individual to an efficient and coldblooded killer.
Now even though he personally doesn't believe in using violence at the beginning of the story, he's been trained in both armed and unarmed martial arts since he was nine and he has the technique down, but he's never actually won a fight because he lacks the conviction to really want to harm anyone (even in a training setting where no one's in any real danger), he always backs down or hesitates when he has the upper hand.
So when something does eventually snap inside of him and he wants to go on a murderous rampage, he has the skills to do it. Of course, when he actually does start killing the first few times, he panics and things get messy.
That beings said, he does go from being a nonviolent individual to a hardened and horribly efficient killer in a very short period of time. I'm wondering if you would buy this explanation, because he has to fight several experienced warriors during the course of the story. I really don't want to add any sort of training/mentoring arc and I doubt there would be enough in-story time to train him to the skill level he needs without messing with the pacing.
This got be thinking about how to make skill development believable in general. I've read plenty of books where characters learned things they didn't know anything about (sword fighting, reading and writing, magic, ect.) far too quickly, and it didn't feel real. The stories that usually do skill development really well, tend to be the ones that have it as a major tenant, such as apprenticeship and school stories where the development of a skill is tied to a coming age/internal growth very strongly.
But I'm more curious about how to handle it in a story where that isn't one of the major focuses, and a character just needs to learn a skill because it will come in handy at a crucial moment. How do you do that without slowing down the story too much, while still making it feel organic? Or how do you make a character already good at something without them coming off as a prodigy and make it clear to the reader that they did and do work hard to be as good as they are?
Now even though he personally doesn't believe in using violence at the beginning of the story, he's been trained in both armed and unarmed martial arts since he was nine and he has the technique down, but he's never actually won a fight because he lacks the conviction to really want to harm anyone (even in a training setting where no one's in any real danger), he always backs down or hesitates when he has the upper hand.
So when something does eventually snap inside of him and he wants to go on a murderous rampage, he has the skills to do it. Of course, when he actually does start killing the first few times, he panics and things get messy.
That beings said, he does go from being a nonviolent individual to a hardened and horribly efficient killer in a very short period of time. I'm wondering if you would buy this explanation, because he has to fight several experienced warriors during the course of the story. I really don't want to add any sort of training/mentoring arc and I doubt there would be enough in-story time to train him to the skill level he needs without messing with the pacing.
This got be thinking about how to make skill development believable in general. I've read plenty of books where characters learned things they didn't know anything about (sword fighting, reading and writing, magic, ect.) far too quickly, and it didn't feel real. The stories that usually do skill development really well, tend to be the ones that have it as a major tenant, such as apprenticeship and school stories where the development of a skill is tied to a coming age/internal growth very strongly.
But I'm more curious about how to handle it in a story where that isn't one of the major focuses, and a character just needs to learn a skill because it will come in handy at a crucial moment. How do you do that without slowing down the story too much, while still making it feel organic? Or how do you make a character already good at something without them coming off as a prodigy and make it clear to the reader that they did and do work hard to be as good as they are?