Violence: A Writer's Guide

by Rory Miller

  Some of the factors that lead to this disconnect:

  1) Level of violence/personal proximity to death in the world. People who routinely kill their own food and expect that half their children will die before adulthood will have very different attitudes towards life and death than those who don't.

  My mom had 13 pregnancies, six live births and three of us survived to be adults. That's really unusual today. For much of history, that was the norm.

  By the time you were twenty you would have cleaned the bodies and buried relatives- babies and parents and siblings. A larger percentage of the deaths than we can grasp now would have been due to violence or brutal accidents. And the ones that weren't, the disease…

  You wouldn't have known what disease WAS. Without an idea of microbes and contagion, you would only see that death follows death, that maybe the dead want to recruit more dead... and you would try to understand with ritual or superstition or religion or vampires.

  2) Level of (for want of a better word) lawlessness. Before about 1780, there was no such thing as a police force. A king could send in the military if it suited his purposes.

  Sometimes the village men would form a watch, but the primary purpose was fire prevention and stopping victimization was optional... but there was no organization to investigate and punish crimes. If someone killed a family member you had a choice between revenge and sucking it up. You could go to the magistrate or equivalent and ask him to do something about it, but it would be his choice. This is compounded if there were active bands of outlaws or if the people lived on or near a war zone.

  Unless a local lord or king (someone whose primary duty was to enforce social norms and protect the group by application of skilled violence) got involved, the only thing resembling justice was vengeance.

  If you refused to participate in vengeance, you were marked as easy prey and would continue to be victimized. The only safety lay in a willingness (and preferably ability) to meet force with force.

  3) Difficulty of killing: killing well and efficiently hand-to-hand takes some skill and fitness. Peasants rarely had the time to practice. Medieval agriculture or fishing was a daily grind of backbreaking, exhausting toil with no guarantee of enough food. Repetitive hard work forged bodies into inflexibility. Farmers could be tough and strong, but they made shitty fighters.

  The good fighters were the nobles, not because of the leisure time, but because fighting was their birthright and full time profession. Then start tacking on things like a weapon that no peasant could ever dream of affording, armor and a horse that would beggar and starve families just in upkeep, and you wind up with very segregated fighters and non-fighters...and villagers were utterly helpless when the nobles wanted something.

  Until the advent of the gun, especially the revolver. Something that could make a consumptive skinny guy (Doc Holliday) into a force to be reckoned with. Something that made nobility based on skill at arms obsolete. Something that, for the first time in all of recorded history, gave simple villagers and farmers the ability to stand up to people who ruled by force of arms.

  4) That means that a skilled fighter could take anything he wanted with almost complete impunity. A Japanese noble could cut down a farmer, tradesman or merchant for not bowing quickly enough. A man with a sword could take any shepherdess he wanted and no one could do anything.

  And, born and bred in a world where that was normal, no one saw anything wrong with it. They didn’t like it. There was resentment and hatred and fantasies of revenge. But the idea that there was something inherently wrong, that there is an abstract and universal concept of good or evil or even justice, is a very modern idea.

  When you hear the phrase “Divine right of kings” or even “insha’allah” it was a literal belief at the time. As I was told in Iraq, everyone hated Saddam Hussein because everyone had suffered. But Allah put him in that position AND Allah made him who he was. Everyone hated Saddam, hated the regime… but to say that what he did was inherently wrong would be to say that Allah is capable of being wrong. You just pray that God will give the next ruler a more merciful heart and move on with your life.

  5) Violence was, for centuries, the most efficient tool to get what you wanted, and everyone knew it. The rape that naturally followed conquest for most of history was a far easier way to spread genes than raising children. You could pillage food in a day that would take you six months of labor to grow.

  It was not until the combination of free markets and a press that trade became easier and more profitable than conquest. The rise of mercantilism, slowly, made cultivating trading partners a better strategy than conquering, raiding, or enslaving.

  6) The world has rarely been secure. We assume a level of stability that rarely existed in the past. In much of the under-developed world today, saving money and planning for a future doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t work.

  Before banks, money saved could be stolen. When taxes were based on the whim of a noble or the tax collector, a rumor of money meant you would have it taxed, or simply stolen. It was a better strategy to spend it on others who may someday fall into money when you needed it.

  If you are ever in a position to advise people in developing countries how to save and plan for the future, they will be resistant. For many, their future and institutions have never been stable enough to make that a good idea.

  After the advent of banks, it wasn’t much different. What was to keep the person running the bank from simply keeping the money? Even if it was guaranteed by the government, what did that mean when the government might be overthrown at any time?

  7) The idea that all people are equal, or even that all people have some value, is a very modern concept. Not just what we today call racism, but the idea that anyone outside your tribe or not related by blood was fair game, non-human, was common in much of history. This belief still drives and promotes much of the violence in modern tribal societies.

  Those are some factors. The one opinion that I will share is that the more peaceful a society gets (lenient punishments and ineffective/unarmed enforcement) the better being violent works, the more it pays and the easier it is to get away with.

  A thought experiment:

  If you believed that there was a good chance your children would starve tomorrow, and no one was going to help you, what would you be willing to do?

  Would you steal? Rob? (If you don’t know the difference, robbery is stealing by force or the threat of force.) Would you murder? Would you get together a band of friends to pillage another village—even a village that might be worse off than yours?

  Would you prostitute yourself? Would you prostitute one of your children to feed the others? For some reason that question brings up deeper soul-searching than the almost glib answers to the theft and murder questions.

  If this situation of near-starvation was never going to end, if it was a constant (or seasonal) threat, you are an adaptable human—how long would it take you to come to terms with your decision? How long does it take you to convince yourself that your life of robbery, murder or prostitution is correct, even noble?

  And do you then teach these attitudes to your children?

  In modern times, only addicts are really in this mindset, but before current social safety nets and the extreme affluence of the modern age, many people lived here. For millennia.

  In one of the colonial reconstructions (in Virginia?) they showed the jail cell. It was about ten feet by ten feet. It was the only jail cell for the entire colony. One of the tourists commented that there couldn't have been much crime back then. The tour guide said, no, it's just that people weren't held for punishment. The penalty for every felony was death by hanging. The cell was just a place to hold people while the gallows was set up.

  Recap

  -When you write a twelfth century rogue, the character will slit throats without thinking or hesitation. He will care more about not getting messy than having nightmares. He won't try to hide evidence because no one will look.
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  -When you write the twelfth century damsel, bodice ripping isn't romantic-- it is the prelude to a rape, something that she has probably experienced from those more powerful with no consequences since she was a child.

  -When you are thinking about a violent person living in a violent time, they would do things that are unthinkable from the comfort of our places and times, do them with ruthless efficiency and be completely okay with it.

  Chapter 16: The Final Rant

  What bugs me about fiction and movies?

  Almost every damn detail.

  The heroes fight people that no one would fight for reasons that are pitiful to funny to unbelievable. Then when they do fight, they fight stupid and the more bad-ass the character is, the stupider he fights, almost the opposite of the real world. They avoid weapons and ambushes and those are how real fighters get the job done and stay alive.

  The inexperienced person that hires them says, “I’m coming along and you can’t stop me.” Trust me, if you hired me to kill ten people I can sure as hell stop you from following. Or I can slap the shit out of you for being a whiney amateur who will get the person I’m supposed to rescue killed because of your combination of stupidity and arrogance.

  They play up guns like they are easy to use (as if just telling someone to shoot the zombies in the head will suddenly make a high school kid pull off something that Olympic medalists have failed to do under stress) and then either play up the damage (people getting knocked down from handgun bullets) or play down the damage, ("It went right through the shoulder, I'll be fine.")

  I haven't used much bad language yet, but the willful ignorance in those scenes makes me want to puke.

  They approach fighting as if it was a sport-- do a training montage and get in shape and you can hold your own. Experienced sport fighters get blown over and blindsided when it's for real because they have no idea what to expect. That's assuming they don't just get shot, like champion Alex Gong.

  I freakin' hate the 'knockout' where you get hit in the head and go to sleep for a little bit and are just fine, as opposed to the days of dizziness and puking and giddiness and the bad coordination and the very real possibility of going blind and all that from a shot that wasn't hard enough to make me lose consciousness.

  And I hate, hate, hate when an author uses the same level of emotional power for a life-threatening situation that they use for an emotional issue. "Does he really love me?" Is bullshit angst. "Will I live to see my children again?" Is fear. An author who doesn't know the difference gets my absolute, undying and total contempt.

  Authors and script writers try to take something that, at its heart, is a dirty and dangerous job and try to make it noble. It has a lot more in common with driving a garbage truck than it does with riding a white horse.

  Anyone see "Jail Break" the TV series? T-Bag is the average criminal. Yep. Clearly the writer's worse nightmare but he would barely blip my radar. The only reason they don't get away with as much in a real prison or jail is because almost the entire pool of potential victims is just exactly the same. So they got one detail right, and made it seem special, an aberration.

  There's more, but that should be enough of a rant for now. That's why I keep reminding y'all that I'm not your target audience and try to stay away from advice on that.

  Chapter 17: Random Details

  I’ve tried to organize the subjects in a semblance of logic and order, but in many ways violence is the soul of chaos and there are a bunch of things that don’t fit in discrete areas. And these things are some of the details you might be able to mine to enrich your writing. So here goes, in no particular order:

  -An infighter is someone who prefers fighting at extremely close range, chest-to-chest, chest-to-shoulder, chest-to-back. I sometimes call it halitosis range. Most people feel safer the farther they are away from the threat- so you get punchers and kickers. Infighting finishes things fast and combines damage with controlling the body. It's more tactile than visual. Most people can be taken down by someone who fights closer.

  Physically, that's because it is harder to stay away than it is to close. Mentally it is because there tends to be a fear reaction to things that fight closer than you. The farther away you can kill someone, the cleaner and more civilized it seems. When you run into someone who is willing to kill at biting range it is terrifying for most people.

  -If a woman is pushed to violence, her defaults will be to do damage and to use a tool. When a guy is pushed over the line, his default will be to do techniques that don't do much damage and to do so bare-handed.

  There are cultural variations, of course, but even at the height of European dueling, a man would slap his opponent (empty hand, no damage) to signal the desire to duel. A samurai had a right to instantly cut down anyone who insulted him, provided they were of a lower caste. Within caste, tribe, or group men doing less damage and empty-handed is the norm. It is social violence.

  -Being the ambusher is a great advantage. As she is moving in she has time (if she knows what she is doing) to adjust her own adrenaline level to get closer to her peak, to the zone.

  That's usually a combination of training and experience, but there are breathing exercises specifically for it (autogenic or 'warrior breathing'--in for a count of four, hold for a count of four, exhale for a count of four... repeat. Takes too much time to use in a fight but can be used during the build-up or the approach.) Officers have time to do it when responding to calls.

  There is also an advantage in that the bad guys will be somewhat adrenalized. Due to the tunnel vision and auditory exclusion effects it is very easy to sneak up on people who are already fighting and get in a great position.

  -Instant kills. Most take some time. The only instant kill on a human body is the brainstem, which is hard to reach with a knife. There are a lot of places that shut people down quickly, though. We are getting out of my direct experience here and what follows is stuff I have been trained (primarily military).

  I have been told that kidney stabs make the victim go into shock almost instantly. You can hit the ascending aorta by stabbing down behind the collarbone and the person bleeds to unconsciousness in seconds (I'd guess ten, given that people with their heads cut off try to keep talking for about seven seconds...) A neck break, especially an inward and upward strike with a tool against the first cervical vertebrae is probably the fastest and most reliable (death in a minute or less but paralysis instantly).

  To clarify, when I mention brainstem as the only instant kill, it is the one place where the person goes dead and limp. If you blow a gigantic hole in someone's head and miss the brainstem, heels will kick and there might be something that looks like seizure activity and the body will keep trying to breathe for some time. Not pretty. If the finger is on a trigger, the hand will clench reflexively and fire.

  Hostage rescue snipers train to hit that spot, which means putting a bullet directly in the brainstem. The aim points are the tip of the nose from the front, the ear hole from the side or the first cervical vertebra from the rear.

  There is a system to breaking a neck and it is to twist and bend (with a few exceptions, doing only one just strains the muscles) but the neck is both strong and flexible. The military systems to do a neck break usually involve full falling body weight or (and this is something that a lot of people for some reason forget) using a tool. A shovel or the edge of your own helmet will do damage to the c-spine (cervical spine, the neck) with a lot less effort and precision skill.

  -There is a group, Cane Masters, that both teach fighting with canes and make special hardwood versions with some extras. It's not something I've studied, but I have a friend near Victoria BC who teaches it. La canne is also taught in savate, and some hapkido instructors teach it as well.

  -One of the universal things with shock, whether fear induced, from blood loss or hypothermia, is that people tend to get very stupid and very stubborn about it. Not getting blood stains on the carpet may seem more important than stopping the bloo
d flow…and then they will argue with anyone who tries to question their screwed-up, shock-induced priorities.

  -Tempering is an important artform that can destroy a sword or create something so miraculous that people try to reproduce it for generations. How hot you get it followed by how fast you cool it followed by slowly heating it up again (but to a much lower temperature) makes an amazing blade or a throw away. Katanas were wrapped in clay, thick on the spine, thin or none on the edge, so when they were quenched, the spine cooled slowly, ideally making a tough flexible sword, and the edge cooled quickly, usually making for a hard edge that could take and keep a serious honing.

  -The hand is one of the primary targets in a sword fight. It is in range well before anything else (except sometimes the lead knee) and tends to stop the guy from fighting back when his fingers and sword drop to the ground (only one of my fingers and my thumbs haven't been broken yet in sword training). Bell guards make great punching tools and you can design the quillons to be blade catchers, which is pretty cool. The pommel can also be used as a weapon (where the word pummeling comes from). One detail is that the fancy pommels with dragon heads or wolves or whatever? Those little pretty bronze ears or horns tear the shit out of your forearm when you are practicing with the weapon.

  -Eye contact is way over-romanticized. There's a time for it, but staring in the eyes or glaring is what wannabe's trying to look tough do. When you get the sensation of someone's eyes 'boring right through you' what you are picking up is that the eyes may be pointed at you but are out of focus. They are, in fact, focused to a point way behind you, where the horizon would be. This is the 'thousand yard stare' and it has nothing to do with shock or psychological damage. Focused vision, what you get with the center of your pupils, is great for picking up details but has the slowest reaction speed of any of the senses except, possibly, smell or taste. The thousand yard stare puts your hands, feet, shoulders and hips in the peripheral vision, which has much faster reaction time. It also helps break the tunnel vision problem.