 Action/Adventure: May 25, 2011 Issue [#4417] |
  Action/Adventure
This week: Injured Characters Edited by: Satuawany  
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Carlisle chose his steps carefully as he crept down the hall. Joe would never hear him coming. But then he had a thought.
Oh, dear! Joe sank his dagger to the hilt in this thigh just yesterday! There is really no way I can be this stealthy so soon, no way I'm not screaming in pain with every other step!
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Adventurers are prone to injury, especially if they get their fair share of action scenes. A wounded character keeps the reader wondering if he or she will triumph. It can add excitement, tension, and an expression of how dire the situation might be. When the writer forgets about the injury, either by omitting it later or having it heal unbelievably quickly, all that good stuff can go right down the drain.
Take Carlisle up there in the "About this Newsletter" section, for example. There are a lot of savvy readers who would be wondering just what happened to his serious dagger wound. Furthermore, keeping the injury can add tension to the scene where he's trying to sneak up on his foe.
Instead of breezing down that hallway, he has the challenges of biting back his pain and dealing with a leg that is not working like it should. The injury should change the entire confrontation. Giving characters added challenges to overcome can make their struggles more powerful, too.
There is, however, a fine line between keeping up with an injury and annoying a reader with constant reminders. For instance, if Jaclyn has a broken index finger, we don't need to hear about it throbbing in every paragraph. When it matters is when it affects the way she does things.
When it's time to gather her clothes up off the floor, Jaclyn might concentrate on using her uninjured hand. When she picks her nose, she might be bringing that broken finger in for the adventure before she remembers its condition. Most importantly, when she goes to draw her gun, she might be forced to use her weaker hand.
Day-to-day updates aren't bad, either. Maybe Carlisle's getting ready to confront Joe one more time, a couple of days after sneaking down the hall led to an empty room and no sign of Joe.
Carlisle stretched, taking note of the pull of muscles in his thigh. He wasn't going to be sneaking down any halls soon, but he thought he could make it a few steps without limping. And maybe Joe would believe the wincing was a series of sneers.
Don't obsess over it, but don't forget. Especially don't obsess over it on your first draft, when the important thing is getting the story out.
Do think about how the character's injury would affect the progression of the story. If you know her finger is broken, and it's in a splint, you know she's going to have to find a different way to fire her gun. Almost assuredly, she won't be able to fire her gun as accurately as she might have before. The nose-picking and the clothes-gathering details aren't going to significantly change plot progression (knock-on-wood), so it's fine if you forget about her finger during those activities---the first time around.
I have two methods for reminding myself of these things, based on the two ways I create my rough drafts. Most short stories, I write with pen and paper, first. After a character's significant injury, I'll put a note across the top of every other page or so. This way, when I go to type the story, I'm constantly seeing that reminder.
Taken from the pages of one of my actual first drafts, written in large, heavy letters:
Don't forget! He is sore. Baseball bat to ribs, upper left arm.
For the rough drafts that get typed from the get-go, I have many ingenious methods of reminding myself of my characters' injuries.
Most boring is the spiral method, which I employ for novels. I get a spiral notebook, decide it's for "notes for this novel" and jot down things like this:
Chapter Four: Danai kicks Caelen in the head. Headache and bump the next day, bump for two or three more days, turning into bruise. Caelen's friends will make fun of this.
The most effective (and also annoying, but that's what makes it effective) is the Sharpie technique. This works best at or near the completion of the rough draft of a short story. That is, when I know I'll be revising the story on the same day---because, believe it or not, I do shower now and then.
Say that once I finish a story, I remember my character's opponent sliced his forearm open in their leading-up-to-the-climax skirmish. The problem is that I managed to forgot all about that when he put on his white shirt to attend that ball.
The Sharpie comes out and "Must bandage Jack's arm!" tattoos the back of my hand. This is great because it means friends and family members (along with the occasional stranger) will ask with some concern, "Who's Jack and what happened to his arm?"
It's a fantastic way of really ingraining on my stubborn mind that I must deal with Jack's injury. And it seems to be only mildly alarming to those who see such notes.
I'm a firm believer that writers have to find the processes that work for them, but hopefully these will inspire you in one way or another. Assuming, of course, that you don't already have your own ways that work much better than any of these.
When you go back in for subsequent drafts, you have a better idea of the story from beginning to end. Hopefully. Surely, we have a better idea of the pacing, and that will help you decide how much reminding is enough.
Once the first draft is done, you can devote a read-through to nothing but paying attention to your character's less notable actions (such as nose-picking; I just can't let that one go) and how their injury might alter those actions. Until you get to that point, find a way to remind yourself. And if you have a better way than Sharpie-on-hand that's just as effective, I'd love to hear it. I'd like to avoid a repeat of the incident when I wrote a story where a vampire attacked a character who happened to share a name with my sister-in-law.
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I had some great stories starring characters whose writers kept up with their injuries well, but I realized they were all on restricted access of one sort or another. I was able to find some other good Action/Adventure items that struck me, though.
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| |  | Hunted (13+)
A man finds himself cornered by three men and takes his revenge on them!
#1501520 by James Angus  |
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As a guest editor, I have no comments to post, but I'll tell you what. I'd love to see more items in which a character's injuries affect the plot---items where the writer didn't forget the character was hurt.
If you email me (amalthea@writing.com) with a link to one or more of those stories by June 24th, I'll gather them all up and give an awardicon to my favorite. Additionally, all items that have a fantasy, urban fantasy, or sci-fi element have a chance of being highlighted in the Fantasy newsletter that comes out on the 29nth of June.
The fine print: Stories can be any length, any rating, but Static Items only, please. Stories should fit into the "Action/Adventure" genre, even if the author didn't add that genre to their genre listings. All cross genres welcome, so long as the story is primarily Action, Adventure, or a combination of the two. If you have any questions, click the envelope in my handle line---Satuawany ---to email me. Stories received after June 24th will not be considered for the awardicon prize.
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