Violence: A Writer's Guide

by Rory Miller

  There is a solid core of professionals who do the job well, long term, with great restraint and professionalism. Consistently, in this group you will find very deep, committed, long-term relationships. Nothing is hidden (including limits— once in nineteen years has my wife said, “I don’t want to hear any more. This is bad.” On only one subject.)

  I don’t know whether the high-end professional chooses or creates the relationship that allows him or her to decompress and focus on real life and function or if the good relationship allows the high-end professional to keep going.

  A professional will bring different physical and emotional skills to an episode of violence as well as a completely different mindset than a non-professional. An amateur wonders if he can beat Chuck Norris. A professional wonders how he will beat Chuck Norris.

  Physical skills will come from training and then be tempered and refined from experience. A lot of training, especially at the introductory stages, is not at all the same skill that needs to be applied in the field. A prime example is shooting on the range-- static, good footing, good lighting, ear and eye protection, safety monitors, unlimited time.

  A real gunfight is almost exactly the opposite in every particular. Not because the basic skills are wrong, but because they are incomplete. That goes for almost all training—martial arts and even police academy and BCT (Basic Combat Training, military “basic”.)

  You need to know what your protagonist has been trained to do. Too many characters seem to be trained in ‘everything’ or the authors hand wave as if Special Forces or S.E.A.L. training included everything.

  Emotional skills are another matter. Dealing with stress is both a talent and a skill. Some people are wired differently. I found out early that fighting is not something I take home. Even after my one shooting, no bad dreams, no shakes or flashbacks. But I had a much harder time with whining. I did, for a while, have a recurring dream of an infinitely long hallway with cell doors every four paces and a different criminal in every cell whining, begging or demanding something, “Officer, what time is it?” “Officer, what’s my release date?” “Officer, will you sharpen my pencil?” “Officer, my baby needs heroin.” That last—pregnant junkies would often beg for drugs, and always say “it’s for my baby.” That always bothered me.

  Humor, especially dark humor is one of the most common and most disturbing (to outsiders) ways to stay sane. As one friend put it, “You’re either going to laugh or cry. If I start crying I don’t think I’ll ever stop.” Humor has to be controlled- as necessary as it can be for the professionals, when families or reporters overhear it can destroy careers.

  Many professionals rely on faith. Not necessarily a particular faith. They deal far too often with a fact that almost all of society is designed to deny:

  We are all going to die. There is no way around it and no way, other than suicide, to even control it.

  That’s a hard truth to wrap your head around, and if it seems easy you don’t understand it yet.

  At one level of faith, a belief in an afterlife or that there is a plan is a huge comfort. It makes a harsh, bleak truth less harsh, maybe less bleak. Maybe it’s not true.

  At another level of faith, professionals take comfort in tangible things-- their training, their experience or their team—so that they can believe that they won’t die this time. It gives them the courage to go in, the belief that, sooner or later, they will be rescued if captured.

  There is also a level of faith, what may be the definition of faith itself, unique to the men and women who deal with the possibility of death as a profession. How much information and preparation would it take for you to risk your life? To the professional, the answer is obvious: “As much as we have time for, and then we go.”

  You will never have enough training, information or skill to be perfectly safe. The operation, the mission, will have a definite window of opportunity. The ability to go in, without the possibility of knowing the outcome, defines, to me, faith. It is the hallmark of the professional.

  From my blog:

  What Do You Think You're Doing?

  What is worth killing for? What is worth dying for?

  Believe it or not, those are the easy questions. The kindergarten version of this particular meditation. Whenever you think of self-defense or think of fighting, those questions are part of the equation. They have to be, because trying to work out your moral and ethical issues when someone else is trying to expose your inner workings to the cold air is ... inefficient.

  Those questions are easy to ask and easy to answer. Too easy, because they are asked and answered from ignorance and comfort.

  First thing, there are no absolutes, no trade-offs, nothing clear. It is never, "I will die to save ten children." The world doesn't work like that. It becomes, "I will risk dying for the chance of saving, maybe, some or all of the ten children." Risk and chance. You might not die. You might not save anybody. Or you might die and save nobody (an aside to the professionals- dead people don't save anybody.)

  But it's not even that. That's still too clean. Because it might not be dying. When you think, "What would I risk dying for?" Take time to ask, to substitute paralysis and blindness for dying. Waking up in the same prison cell every day for the rest of your life. Waking up screaming from the same nightmare periodically, forever. Remember that dying also includes orphaning your children...

  (And that's the other side, what got me thinking about this today. When you pull the trigger you may shift a human being from being to not-being, turn a person into a corpse, erase a history and turn it into meat- but you are also creating orphans and widows, who will become what they become in response to your action which may be decided and finished in the space of a breath.)

  If those are off the table and it goes well for you then civil suits and legal entanglements and blood-borne disease are all out there. Or the face of someone who flashes before your eyes periodically, clutching his throat and trying to scream. Memories.

  Even dying isn't what we think, not what we've been told. Some give up, sure. But the noble and heroic death, the manly eyes slowly fading as light passes and a look of satisfaction passes to the cold pallid lips...

  There's pain and fear and thirst and screaming. But that's not the worst. The worst is being beaten- you gave all you had, everything you were and it wasn't enough. As your body slips closer to death, whether bleeding out or under blows you are helpless, utterly helpless. The warrior who wanted to take his stand against the world is mewling, begging and bargaining with god for one more breath of air or one less drop of pain. As helpless as a baby. In that instant, everything you thought you knew, the story in your head of who you are, is shattered.

  This just barely scratches the surface. As you train, as you teach- what do you think you are doing? What are you training for? Living and dying? If only it were that clean.

  The Reformed Bad Guy

  IME, when people change their lives it is almost always an act of will because it is the smart thing to do. "If I stay here, doing this, I will die or go to prison."

  There is a lot of potential drama in that decision.

  I know one man who could make his current annual salary in a few weeks just by returning to a former life and doing a few jobs, but he desperately wants to live up to his wife's desire to see him as a good guy and doesn't want the kinds of people he used to associate with anywhere near his daughter.

  Another who said, "The hardest part is learning how to be angry like a white man." That's his words and perspective. In his early world if you got angry you smiled, made sure everyone was relaxed and went and got a weapon. The idea of expressing anger struck him as tactical suicide. The idea of feeling anger and not acting on it with extreme force was beyond his comprehension.

  He mentally labeled this as 'white' anger.

  Both these men, and many others (including me, most days) miss this life. Most could flip a switch and go back to it in a heart beat, but something else, often children, giv
es a motivation not to... and all are supremely confident that if they had no choice, all the old skills would be in full play.

  Sources

  A very important point when considering your sources is that a paid professional DOES NOT mean the person has any real world experience. A rookie newly assigned to the team can put SWAT on his resume. A cook who has completed jump school and been assigned to a ranger battalion can put “Ranger” on his resume. For that matter, officers assigned to special operations groups are officers first and operators second- many, probably most, are not required to complete the specialized training required of an enlisted man for membership.

  Since the advent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this is less of an issue, but in the long stretch of relative peace between Vietnam and the Kuwaiti war there were many special operations soldiers who were trained and certified but never actually deployed. Always check your sources. If something smells wrong, check deeper.

  The OPIEC Character

  The OPIEC (Ordinary Person in Extraordinary Circumstances) character is a common trope and a good choice in a lot of ways. More readers will be able to relate to an ordinary person than someone who deals professionally with violence. Extraordinary circumstances allow readers to suspend their squeamishness over issues of force and violence.

  The ordinary person thrust into extraordinary situations is a staple of fiction. Honestly, in real life, it doesn’t work very well. In medieval times, an armed and armored knight was a match for an entire village. A handful of armored men with steel weapons were able to stand against and defeat an army of thousands in the Andes. (182 conquistadors against an army of 7000, the Incan king’s elite guards, routed them at a cost of five dead Spaniards and over 2000 dead Incans).

  There is a lot of power for the author if you can present an authentic and immediate experience of violence and the issues that will arise for your OPIEC.

  These are the deficits the amateurs have to overcome:

  -Without training or experience, the protagonist has no idea what to do

  -Without experience or a very unusual personality, the amateur freezes

  -The amateur tends to follow social scripts- they default to Monkey Dance tactics and don’t injure the bad guy

  -The amateur tends to test the waters when they do act—many people hit half force the first time they hit, and then pause to see if it worked

  -Trained amateurs often have fantasy concepts— they are often shocked and freeze when the fight isn’t like sparring

  -Trained amateurs may be shocked by success or failure—failure is obvious, but sometimes well trained people are devastated when everything works fine, and they hear bones or tendons snap and see a big man screaming

  -Amateurs are completely unaware of the context and the aftermath

  Everything on this list are things that predatory criminals rely on in their victims. These are the reasons that violence works so well.

  What To Do?

  How you handle this as a writer will depend a lot on your protagonist and the situation. The most critical aspect of the situation is how much time is available.

  If your protagonist is under a realistic assault it will be at close range, very fast, very powerful and with maximum surprise. That means that the protagonist will not have time to plan. Survival here will be due to instinct or skills trained to reflex. The most common survivor’s mindset is when the fear, panic and surprise somehow turn into a righteous rage “I will make him pay!” and the victim, willing to take damage to give damage, turns into a whirlwind of ferocity.

  If the situation is slower to develop, such as a hostage situation or a school shooting, you protagonist will have seconds to hours to think and come up with a plan. How well the plan works will depend on how well the bad guys have anticipated the possibility.

  It is really, really easy, in the comfort of home to say what you will do. It doesn't work out like that. Until you or your character has reached that level, it is a dice roll what will happen. I haven't seen anything that is an indicator. One of the biggest cowards I ever worked with was a 6'4" former Marine. The guy I use as an example of people that always freeze is a gun nut, a martial arts champion and a Tactical Team member. This is why we always watch rookies so closely: until the first big fight you don't know if their instinct is to run away or run towards the fight. Neither do they.

  Fighting Personalities

  A lot of the bad writing is from thinking there is a certain way. Fights are idiosyncratic and very personal. Everyone has a fighting personality. One possible example:

  I'm going to take this guy down. He has a reputation, possibly a weapon, and I want it over quick, but the goal is to take him into custody, not to neutralize him (notice that here I am even thinking in cold, professional language). The plan is to slam into him from behind with full body weight and leg strength at a slightly upward angle, slamming him into a wall and as he bounces off, swing him away, sweep his legs so that he lands face down on the concrete. I'll do a double knee drop, kidney and neck if there's still a little fight... that's the plan.

  I get the hit and he bounces off the wall, but he spins off of it, using the momentum and tags me with a hard hook punch. I'm going to freeze for a microsecond, partially because my plan has been spiked but largely because this guy has just shown me that he knows what he is doing and the fight has shifted from custody of a dangerous threat to survival. I've dealt with that before and will unfreeze before he hits the ground, landing on his feet.

  Part of my particular unfreeze is that I completely stop thinking. My body (hindbrain) has done this hundreds of times. I let my body do it. I'm also, by training and inclination an infighter. I'll shoulder slam him into the wall, preferably keeping him off his feet. Infighters are rare and I usually have the advantage. If he goes for a weapon, I'll slam him hard, using the wall as an impact weapon. I'll also snake a hand up to the leverage point under his nose and twist and extend his cervical spine, using that action to slam his head into the wall if I can.

  If he doesn't go for a weapon, most people don't know how to generate power at super tight range. If he's skilled, he'll be trying to wrap around to hit my upper cervical vertebrae at an upward angle. I want him high, either taller than me or still off the ground, to make that hard.

  If I can get his spine extended and it's a very bad situation, I have practiced short power and will fire a fast, hard strike into his lower ribs preferably with his spine extended away, so that the ribs break easier and preferably on his right side, over his liver. Liver shots suck. It's like getting punched in an eight-pound testicle. Spine extensions, using walls, furniture, corners and ground as impact weapons, close range power and multi-level/non-conscious thinking are part of my fighting personality.

  However, when I get ambushed, hit from behind, slammed into a wall, especially if I take some damage, I have an entirely different personality. My eyes light up, I get this maniac grin. Sometimes I giggle. I usually spin with the force of the first impact and then I want to make a show. Let him know that I am faster, more skilled and more ruthless. I beat right past his pathetic little arms.

  Any way he stands and any way he moves all works for me. He's not only my toy, but he actively helps me with each pathetic attempt to attack. I just beat past his arms until I have his core and toss him in the air (not strength, there are a handful of judo throws that I love for this, but if you have ever used your hips to toss a hay bale, you know the action). When he lands (sometimes badly, but often I come back to my human mind when he is in the air and control his fall a little) I flip him over and cuff him. Casually. He's like a toy, a rag doll. Even when he is trying to fight.

  I know what these states feel like from inside and know the mechanics of what happened, largely due to reports and witness statements. I don't have reliable insight to what it feels like to be on the receiving ends, since bad guys don't write reports.

  The point is that not only do I have two distinct personalities when things
go bad, your characters won't look at, feel about or respond to the situations the same as I do, or anyone else for that matter. No two people fight the same or think about fighting in the same way.

  Recap:

  -Professionals approach violence differently than OPIEC characters

  -Professionals develop skills at reading terrain, dynamics and people

  -Professionals try to avert uses of force and generally have the skill to do so

  -Reformed bad guys reform for a reason and it is sometimes hard to stay reformed

  -Be careful with your sources, including me

  -The OPIEC character has a lot to overcome in order to win realistically

  -People have distinctive fighting personalities

  Chapter 6: Gender Differences

  Here's a big shock: men and women see violence differently. It's bigger than that. We have both socially conditioned and biological reactions to danger and violence that differ. I haven't actually heard anyone say since the seventies that all gender differences are cultural (someone noticed the plumbing was different about then, I think) but there are a lot of very odd opinions out there.

  Here goes. Boys and girls were raised differently. By the time a boy is ready to either start learning to fight or thinking about taking a job where fighting is likely, he has been wrestling and rough-housing for years. This means that most of the time he has been hit, he has it associated with fun, bonding and learning.

  The ‘don't hit a girl' ethic denies women this same chance. There are always exceptions, but for the most part if a woman or girl has ever been hit, she has been hit as a punishment. The hitting gets tied in her mind with shame. This even happens in abuse. A child who has done nothing wrong will still be told she is getting beaten 'for her own good' and that she caused it. That combination of beatings and shame make for an early and powerful association.