Characters getting injured or hurt, how much is too much?

[mbox]

Yeah...there are limits. Looking at the manga/anime world, there are crazy fights where combatants bleed 10x more blood than their body contains, lose limbs, and keep on truckin'. Kinda silly.
I beat the hell out of my characters. They get injured, maimed and die. There's usually some down time to heal between events, but if not, I describe how exhaustion sets in. Keeping it realistic, telling the reader how the characters are feeling is very important and raises the stakes.
The other thing is keeping track of the effects of hardship. One of my characters loses an arm at one point. It's not just a point of drama, it understandably,, greatly affects his life. The obvious things like fighting are completely different (he cant even use the same weapon), but everyday things...cutting steak at a meal, getting dressed...all these things are now very hard out of the gate. There's a psychological toll.

 

[Nighty_Knight]

Well, I am not saying you do not have a good argument in favor of places like TV Tropes,You are free to disagree, of course. But I will stand by the comment. That place is just more internet fluff. Better to write as if the word Trope never existed.

Erasing tropes wouldn't erase the obvious trends though. In the regard specifically to overused tropes, people would just say cliches, and for tropes used more often for a time or genre, it would just be trends. We ultimately cannot escape that humans tend to think alike. If you read and watch TV/movies/video games, you are probably alread aware of the common trends and recent cliches that are being used in the genre you read/watch/play.

 

[pmmg]

The word does not matter. Call it trope or trend or cliche. Makes no difference.

I am not suggesting such things as those do not exist. I am posting against fixation on them, and giving them more value than they are due. I am advocating for you, and your creative self, and not for someone else's list of things that they have seen already. Thinking, we have found a resource, like some font of wisdom, in a place that can show us all the tropes and all the things that have patterns to avoid, or displease, or to measure against is a black hole for burgeoning writers. Not much different then discovering cat videos on youtube and thinking them great material. A curiosity, but not terribly useful to developing craft and skill. Those, you will more likely find in other places.

Take as you like.

 

[Nighty_Knight]

The word does not matter. Call it trope or trend or cliche. Makes no difference.

I am not suggesting such things as those do not exist. I am posting against fixation on them, and giving them more value than they are due. I am advocating for you, and your creative self, and not for someone else's list of things that they have seen already. Thinking, we have found a resource, like some font of wisdom, in a place that can show us all the tropes and all the things that have patterns to avoid, or displease, or to measure against is a black hole for burgeoning writers. Not much different then discovering cat videos on youtube and thinking them great material. A curiosity, but not terribly useful to developing craft and skill. Those, you will more likely find in other places.

Take as you like.

I do agree with not fixating on them.

 

[pmmg]

I forget how i got here anyway....

Idk, turning away from Frodo and mithril. In the Avenger films, did Loki survive the intense body thrashing by the Hulk due to plot armor or due to the fact that he is a god? I just feel like, if that is to be the true definition, it's too vague to be all that useful. Literally anything becomes plot armor and nothing is left to character choice or developments or worldbuilding.

Loki has plot armor. If the writer wanted him dead, he would be, regardless of his God like status. (Though, maybe it is more like he has 'he still makes us money armor...')

We used to say, in comics, no one stays dead but Bucky and Uncle Ben...but...Bucky is back. So the only person in Marvel without plot armor is Uncle Ben

(And he's probably been back too).

 

[Fyri]

Eh, I disagree still with your understanding of plot armor. I do still understand both provided definitions as thr same, and hold to it meaning it must defy the rules already built into the world.

But I understand where you're coming from. I just find the interpretation too vague to be useful in talking about craft for me, so I will agree to disagree.