Writing Violence

It makes my students laugh when I casually mention how fun it is to kill off a character.

But the truth is, I struggle with writing violence.

I once wrote a short story in which a cowboy did NOT get into a bar fight. He clearly should have.

There's no big fight scene in SPOTD, just a lot of running away from danger and (spoiler) one well-thrown punch. What kind of superhero avoids the epic battle?

Last November I wrote a scene where a character goes off (into the woods) and returns injured. I didn't write the scene where the injury takes place, just the reactions by the other characters when she stumbles back into camp. And I don't have any great desire to change my approach. Since then, I've been revising heavily and working more on the original chunk of the series, so I haven't written past that particular injury. I don't even know if the character survives. I only know that she's been languishing away these past seven months. It would have been more merciful to finish her off right away, I suppose.

So my attempts at violence have sometimes been weak.

Then again, the original Lio and Lamb opening, from the middle volume of the series, begins with an instigating act of extreme violence that shadows the entire novel. And that novel is, essentially, a murder mystery. It is full of killings.

I guess I'm all over the map.

There is one place I won't go, however.

I've been so frustrated lately with television shows that break audience members' hearts by offing the characters that they identify with most. And it's one of Matt Bird's rules to avoid that, as he specifically states in Law #6 of Writing for Strangers: "It's very hard to get audiences to care about any hero because they're afraid of getting hurt." To paraphrase: Once you earn the audience's trust, don't betray it.

So here's the deal. I promise not to kill off Lio or Lamb. Even though their names allusively suggest that it could happen (à la Jesus/Aslan, sacrificial lambs), this will not be a "heroes sacrifice all" story.

I make no promises for the others, however. After all, sometimes it is fun to kill off a character.