- Thread starter
- #21
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
There are very few things that will incite me to violence. Saying the Princess Bride is stupid happens to be one of them.
-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
Are You a Cruel Writer?
- Thread starter DragonOfTheAerie
- Start date
There are very few things that will incite me to violence. Saying the Princess Bride is stupid happens to be one of them.
I guess so. But like I said isn't it needed to have that gritty feeling to the story? Maybe not if your writing about party for the king, but what about a war? I would think so.
Has anyone tried having a gritty theme, while still having a happy ending? I'm shooting for that, but we'll see how it turns out.
- Thread starter
- #23
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
It's possible to set a gritty tone for the story without cheap, unnecessary killing and violence. Death, is, yes, often necessary to a gritty tone...but I think there's a right and a wrong way to do it.
Recently, i read a book (which i've quit now) that tried to maintain the gritty atmosphere by constantly mentioning and discussing rape. It was handled in a very flippant and tasteless manner. All the females were constantly threatened with rape, evil characters were shown to be evil by making rape threats. It was distasteful and handled badly, and there would have been much better ways to give that atmosphere. The worst part was i didn't even feel scared for the female characters or angry at the evil characters--it didn't improve my investment in the story or the characters. It was just gross and annoying.
A whole other discussion could be devoted to this. I might start one.
Last edited:
I read a book where an invading tribe of savages attacked a powerful empire, and so a war started. It was very dark, for it had the savages, as a way to pray to their god and show worship, basically mutilate and torture any civilians or soldiers that were unlucky enough to be captured. It's a very gloomy book, and it mentions nothing of rape. (Not yet at least.) I'm seriously having a hard time seeing a happy ending come out of it, more like a justified batman ending. lol.
Anyway that could be a good discussion. You'd probably get a lot of interest and posts.
- Thread starter
- #25
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
I should answer this question myself, haha. Forgot that part.
I think the answer would be yes, I am cruel. I don't regret killing and hurting my characters. I love to think up cruel new plot twists. My body count is not extremely, but still fairly, high. I think i'm crueler in what i do to them when alive than in who i kill, though.
There's plenty of torture, physical and psychological. One of my MCs' love interest commits suicide. My characters lose limbs, eyes, and get scarred physically and mentally. My female MC gets some scarring on her face toward the end (though she has never cared about her appearance). Mental scars are even more prominent--characters with PTSD, characters broken by grief and loss, characters struggling with body image after being mutilated. Characters losing purpose and searching for a reason to live. My world is scary and brutal. Nature is a formidable enemy. Disease, parasites, animals, all kinds of injuries. Stitches and surgeries without any anesthesia or even alcohol.
When characters die, it's not always fair or meaningful. I like to make deaths traumatically painful. Make it count, right? Sometimes the way to do that is to kill them so suddenly you can't even see it coming and you have to look back and reread the passage to see that it really happened. Don't even give them a chance to gasp out a few last words. Just gone in a sentence. In other times the way to do it is to make the reader anticipate it. The thing I hate, though, is that moment when you realize a character will die coming too soon. I say make the readers hope, keep the life hanging in the balance, then tear it away. Typically, deaths in stories are dignified, coming at the end of a fulfilled character arc, and everyone can see them coming. I say take away their dignity. Don't let them die with grace, because death is ugly. I say cut them off before their time. I say have them leave behind family and friends who love them. I say don't spare them because they don't deserve it.
And yes, they don't always deserve it. Nothing is fair, really. My characters are young and shouldn't have to go through the suffering they do, but they survive it anyway.
But. Something i should tell you: I'm a sensitive person. Very sensitive. Extremely so. You wouldn't know it from what i wrote above, but i hate stories full of darkness with no hope or relief. In my own writing I like to balance to darkness with humor, love, comfort and hope. Sparse, perhaps, but it's there. My stories are dark, but it's my belief that you need the darkness to show the light. I would be doing the world's suffering a disservice by shying away from the darkness.
So. I have moments of safety and light. There's love, there's hope. There is pain but there is comfort. There is death but there is new life. There are small joys and moments of beauty to remind my characters that it's still worth it.
A happy ending? I honestly don't know yet. I'm not that far in the story. I won't promise a happily ever after, of course. Instead i would like to end with no promise of a happily ever after, but hope for a better future, and the knowledge that whatever happens, they can survive it. Yes, life does suck, it's horrible, it hurts like hell, but that's not all there is.
I think the answer would be yes, I am cruel. I don't regret killing and hurting my characters. I love to think up cruel new plot twists. My body count is not extremely, but still fairly, high. I think i'm crueler in what i do to them when alive than in who i kill, though.
There's plenty of torture, physical and psychological. One of my MCs' love interest commits suicide. My characters lose limbs, eyes, and get scarred physically and mentally. My female MC gets some scarring on her face toward the end (though she has never cared about her appearance). Mental scars are even more prominent--characters with PTSD, characters broken by grief and loss, characters struggling with body image after being mutilated. Characters losing purpose and searching for a reason to live. My world is scary and brutal. Nature is a formidable enemy. Disease, parasites, animals, all kinds of injuries. Stitches and surgeries without any anesthesia or even alcohol.
When characters die, it's not always fair or meaningful. I like to make deaths traumatically painful. Make it count, right? Sometimes the way to do that is to kill them so suddenly you can't even see it coming and you have to look back and reread the passage to see that it really happened. Don't even give them a chance to gasp out a few last words. Just gone in a sentence. In other times the way to do it is to make the reader anticipate it. The thing I hate, though, is that moment when you realize a character will die coming too soon. I say make the readers hope, keep the life hanging in the balance, then tear it away. Typically, deaths in stories are dignified, coming at the end of a fulfilled character arc, and everyone can see them coming. I say take away their dignity. Don't let them die with grace, because death is ugly. I say cut them off before their time. I say have them leave behind family and friends who love them. I say don't spare them because they don't deserve it.
And yes, they don't always deserve it. Nothing is fair, really. My characters are young and shouldn't have to go through the suffering they do, but they survive it anyway.
But. Something i should tell you: I'm a sensitive person. Very sensitive. Extremely so. You wouldn't know it from what i wrote above, but i hate stories full of darkness with no hope or relief. In my own writing I like to balance to darkness with humor, love, comfort and hope. Sparse, perhaps, but it's there. My stories are dark, but it's my belief that you need the darkness to show the light. I would be doing the world's suffering a disservice by shying away from the darkness.
So. I have moments of safety and light. There's love, there's hope. There is pain but there is comfort. There is death but there is new life. There are small joys and moments of beauty to remind my characters that it's still worth it.
A happy ending? I honestly don't know yet. I'm not that far in the story. I won't promise a happily ever after, of course. Instead i would like to end with no promise of a happily ever after, but hope for a better future, and the knowledge that whatever happens, they can survive it. Yes, life does suck, it's horrible, it hurts like hell, but that's not all there is.
My book's theme takes place in war. A civil war in fact, between the races of the continent. It's extremely bloody hard and tough, and unlike most books out there, at the starting point of my novel, the good guys are losing. And they keep losing.
Each race of has a leader, six for the good guys, five for the bad. At the moment, only two members of my original six of the good guys still live. My main character is a king, Human. To show how brutal this war is, I had his family killed by the bad guys. One brother was murdered by assassins, one brother in law was tortured to death, and his sister was captured by the bad guys, never to be seen again. Oh, and his other brother is a traitor and a general on the other side.
I had a death happen that was totally unexpected, no one saw it coming. One of my original leaders was captured, and brought to within the neutral zone of a city sieged by the bad guys. He was brought up to the walls, where the defenders could see, but not act. They executed him right there, in plain sight. I have it where at any moment, anyone could die, so be prepared for the worst.
My MC didn't want to be king, but no one was left alive in his family, so he had to take the throne at a young age, commanding a war in which his parents had fought in, grandparents and their parents. He had to decide who died and who lived, and that takes a toll.
I let humor balance the darkness, and the friendship between the soldiers, which I really delve into as the story progress. I love jokes and witty comments, so I let some of my characters share my opinions and readiness for a joke.
When I describe a scene, say the woods, I'll describe a slug that is lazily crawling on a rotten branch, before I move on to the corpse next to the slug. I try not to cloud it with too much darkness, but what is war? Suffering and pain, evil and loss, and so I try to put that in to my writing.
I'd like a happy ending, where the war ends and the continent returns to peace, but that could never happen, as things play out.
Anyway good discussion, a little dark. (I probably helped too much with that.) Very interesting.
And if it gets too dark, I say look up a joke.
Each race of has a leader, six for the good guys, five for the bad. At the moment, only two members of my original six of the good guys still live. My main character is a king, Human. To show how brutal this war is, I had his family killed by the bad guys. One brother was murdered by assassins, one brother in law was tortured to death, and his sister was captured by the bad guys, never to be seen again. Oh, and his other brother is a traitor and a general on the other side.
I had a death happen that was totally unexpected, no one saw it coming. One of my original leaders was captured, and brought to within the neutral zone of a city sieged by the bad guys. He was brought up to the walls, where the defenders could see, but not act. They executed him right there, in plain sight. I have it where at any moment, anyone could die, so be prepared for the worst.
My MC didn't want to be king, but no one was left alive in his family, so he had to take the throne at a young age, commanding a war in which his parents had fought in, grandparents and their parents. He had to decide who died and who lived, and that takes a toll.
I let humor balance the darkness, and the friendship between the soldiers, which I really delve into as the story progress. I love jokes and witty comments, so I let some of my characters share my opinions and readiness for a joke.
When I describe a scene, say the woods, I'll describe a slug that is lazily crawling on a rotten branch, before I move on to the corpse next to the slug. I try not to cloud it with too much darkness, but what is war? Suffering and pain, evil and loss, and so I try to put that in to my writing.
I'd like a happy ending, where the war ends and the continent returns to peace, but that could never happen, as things play out.
Anyway good discussion, a little dark. (I probably helped too much with that.) Very interesting.
And if it gets too dark, I say look up a joke.
Last edited:
There are very few things that will incite me to violence. Saying the Princess Bride is stupid happens to be one of them.
Same here. That's when I unleash my R.O.U.S. on them.
- Thread starter
- #28
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
But I don't think they exist...
Even with books set in a war, there is a huge range of possible tones. Sure, it can't be balloons and picnics, but you can have fairly light-hearted adventure fiction, or you can have heart of darkness stuff with death, rape, betrayal, maiming and everything everywhere. And lots of space in between.
On killing and cruelty to characters -
I have to say, Martin is who I had in mind, largely because I have put SoIaF down. Halfway through the last one, I twigged Jon was going to get his, turned to the back, saw I was right and put the book down *BUT*
I probably wouldn't have done that if the other non-Tyrion characters were amusing me. They weren't. My reaction wasn't solely to a diet of death.
Comparatively though, Guy Gavriel Kay and David Gemmell have wrote some wonderful books that would be far less, imo, without a character death. Gemmell in particular has racked up some huge body counts as well, but never while feeling boring.
On killing and cruelty to characters -
I have to say, Martin is who I had in mind, largely because I have put SoIaF down. Halfway through the last one, I twigged Jon was going to get his, turned to the back, saw I was right and put the book down *BUT*
I probably wouldn't have done that if the other non-Tyrion characters were amusing me. They weren't. My reaction wasn't solely to a diet of death.
Comparatively though, Guy Gavriel Kay and David Gemmell have wrote some wonderful books that would be far less, imo, without a character death. Gemmell in particular has racked up some huge body counts as well, but never while feeling boring.
Yes. And with those two, the deaths tend to be momentous. I don't want to comment on specific deaths, or give spoilers, but they tend to be highly significant as opposed to some works I've read recently where death comes about as a result of the fact that the world is dangerous and deaths happen, sometimes meaningless deaths.
Xitra_Blud
Sage
I will, admit, I have cried from some of my character's death scenes, but on a scale of 1-10 of how cruel I am, I'd definitely say I'm a 10.
C
Chessie
Guest
My WIP features a sister poisoning her brother. Does that count? :insertevillaughhere
Malik
Auror
I have a minor character sentenced to die by scaphism. We don't see it, but it gets explained to him.
Demesnedenoir
Myth Weaver
And stabbed equals dead? Good ol' John Snow, there's no way he would die, too much going on with his parentage. I'm an Arya fan, so I'm still good, LOL. You go, girl! And I can't stop reading now, gotta see where and how the books and HBO deviate, it's a fascinating classroom on story-telling.
The thing is, lots of people hated the Red Wedding, but it was so damned obvious... idiot get what idiot deserve in Rob's case. LOL. Medieval marriage politics is no place for love. In most cases, the deaths were horribly logical.
The thing is, lots of people hated the Red Wedding, but it was so damned obvious... idiot get what idiot deserve in Rob's case. LOL. Medieval marriage politics is no place for love. In most cases, the deaths were horribly logical.
>It's possible to set a gritty tone for the story without cheap, unnecessary killing and violence.
I think the converse is true as well. It's possible to have characters die without necessarily writing a grimdark type story. Some deaths can be done elegantly, movingly, even comically. It all lies in the hands of the author.
But I don't get too emotional. Oddly, I have, to a degree, with animals. I have a young girl who appears a few times in my novel, and I gave her a Roman war dog (they are both orphans, of a sort). Very early in developing her plot line I arbitrarily decided there's no way I'm killing this dog. It felt cruel.
OTOH, there's another place where I slaughter a whole mess of animals--basically all the four-footeds who would travel with an army. The sacrifice is necessary in the plot, and I try to handle the scene with some sensitivity. I don't show the actual slaughter. But it did make me feel ... uneasy? Unsure? I know I revisited the scene a few times to make sure I really did feel it was needed.
OTOOH, I have a couple of tertiary characters who keep dying and not dying during rewrites. They just aren't important enough to kill, and not important to leave alive either. They may wind up being written out entirely. Authorial limbo.
For me, all must bow to the great god Story. Characters may live or die, but always in service of Story.
I think the converse is true as well. It's possible to have characters die without necessarily writing a grimdark type story. Some deaths can be done elegantly, movingly, even comically. It all lies in the hands of the author.
But I don't get too emotional. Oddly, I have, to a degree, with animals. I have a young girl who appears a few times in my novel, and I gave her a Roman war dog (they are both orphans, of a sort). Very early in developing her plot line I arbitrarily decided there's no way I'm killing this dog. It felt cruel.
OTOH, there's another place where I slaughter a whole mess of animals--basically all the four-footeds who would travel with an army. The sacrifice is necessary in the plot, and I try to handle the scene with some sensitivity. I don't show the actual slaughter. But it did make me feel ... uneasy? Unsure? I know I revisited the scene a few times to make sure I really did feel it was needed.
OTOOH, I have a couple of tertiary characters who keep dying and not dying during rewrites. They just aren't important enough to kill, and not important to leave alive either. They may wind up being written out entirely. Authorial limbo.
For me, all must bow to the great god Story. Characters may live or die, but always in service of Story.
- Thread starter
- #36
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
Was I the only one who googled that and now needs mind bleach?
- Thread starter
- #37
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
I feel far more sympathetic toward animal characters than human characters, lol. I can't stand reading about animal cruelty, especially when no one questions it.
A comical death? Um...how would one pull that off? But overall I agree.
Malik
Auror
The beautiful part, IMO, is that I never use the term scaphism. They don't have the word for it; it's just what they do. So they tell him how it's going to go down. It gets a little dark.
If I did it right, you feel for the guy when they're dragging him away, even though he's a schmuck.
TheKillerBs
Maester
I have no problem with killing characters. Generally, if I think I can get away with it, I'll kill someone off with no further thoughts. What I don't do is torture, psychological trauma, etc. I might maim on occasion, but even then I'll think long and hard about it.
And killing the dogs is a big no-no. Or the owls.
And killing the dogs is a big no-no. Or the owls.
