All stories...or at least the interesting and memorable ones...have one thing in common. And that is an element of conflict. There has to be some sort of motivation for your protagonist to chase after, a goal has to be established, and the conflict is whatever obstacle or antagonist that stands between the two of them. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Ok, but where’s the story in that? Maybe there’s heavy traffic that makes crossing the road a dangerous task. Maybe the chicken has a broken leg. Maybe the chicken is being hunted by a predator and putting itself out in the open can mean certain death. Hehehe, whatever. It sounds like I’m thinking about this too much...but am I though? A story without conflict isn’t really a story. Conflict is the fuel that a story has to burn in order to propel itself from point A to point B. Without it...well you just kind of have a series of words floating around in the ether with no direction or purpose. And most people aren’t really interested in reading that. What could they possibly have to gain, you know?

Now conflict can come in many different forms, from financial hardships, to fear of rejection, to a love rival, to a somewhat hostile environment. But that’s not what we’re going to focus on today.

No matter what you’re doing or what genre of fiction you happen to be writing in...there may come a time when the major conflict in your story may reach a level where actual violence becomes a part of it, and depending one what it is that you’re trying to say with this violence...the devil is in the details. It’s important for every author to define for themselves and their audience what kind of effect scenes like this are supposed to have on the rest of the story going forward, or just on the story as a whole. It’s essential that you set the tone and the emotional impact, and that it matches what it is that you’re trying to do with everything surrounding it. Because if you get it wrong, the entire exercise of crafting your project can quickly and easily begin to spin out of control and send mixed messages to your audience. So let’s roll up our sleeves and get down and dirty with the concepts of violence in your fiction.

Just as with any other conflict in your story...violence can be represented and delivered in a variety of different ways, depending on the theme and the situations surrounding. Violence can be a short punch to the face out of sheer frustration and anger, or it can be a drawn out battle as is typical in an action or fantasy based story. It can be as tame as a threat from a grade school bully...or as gruesome as having a monster rip someone to pieces in a horror based ghost story. There are levels to violence that all have a very different ‘feel’ to them, and if you practice using them all at one time or another, you begin to recognize that feel, and develop an instinct on how to determine what level is appropriate for that scene as it fits into the rest of the story.

The first rule is to understand and plan for the impact you would want any scene create. In the story, “My Only Escape”, the abuse was meant to play a major role in the story...and so I wrote the violence in a way that would be very visceral and disturbing to the reader because that was the kind of impact that I wanted it to have. You could almost say that the violence is a character in itself, and it’s designed to be unsettling as well menacing throughout the entire series. However, I also wrote a vampire story spinoff called “GFD: Blade Of Shadows” involving a samurai who is wandering the lands and doesn’t want any trouble at all. He wants to leave the violence behind him and be done with it once and for all, but when his hand is forced...it ends in bloodshed. This is a case where writing out the details of the violence wasn’t meant to be disturbing, but I wanted the reluctant nature of this character to remain in the mind of the audience. Entertaining? Sure. But it was almost like a cut on his enemies was comparative to him making a cut on himself. If that makes sense.

Then I have a horror anthology called “Darkness Waits” available as an ebook (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/) where violence was an actual part of the process, where I definitely put some effort into building up the ‘protagonist’ (if you can call them that) and giving them a sense of character that my audience can engage with...but even though the violence is dialed up higher than normal, it almost feels justified. So one feeling sort of plays a game of tug-o-war with the other, and they balance each other out. Every bit of violence that I’ve added to one of my stories was crafted in such a way where it ‘fits’ with everything else that’s going on in the story. I might have one of my high school romantic stories boil over at some point and end in an angry fist fight with someone else...but I wouldn’t have my protagonist stab the other teen in his stomach with a friggin’ butcher knife, as that would be a bit extreme. Those two vibes don’t necessarily match unless it’s something that I’m deliberately doing for shock value. So learning about the levels of violence and how to mold and manipulate them in ways that I can use to effectively express its purpose at that particular part of the story is what helps me guide all of the events surrounding it.

One of my stories that I think best describes my point is “Gone From Daylight”. My protagonist, ‘Justin’, has never killed anyone in his young life. It’s not who he is as a person, and why would it be? He is, for intents and purposes, a sane and rational person. However, he has now become a vampire and dragged into a world of danger and darkness where such an insane idea has become a part of his character. Throughout this series I’ve used many different types of violence to move the story forward, varying in tone and intensity. Justin has become a very powerful vampire in an extremely short amount of time, and is forced to face many challenges in order to protect himself and the ones that he cares about. So...if comes down to some big battle with other vampires, soldiers, fighters...Justin gets to let loose and break them all down with whatever skills and weapons that he has at his disposal. The details are quick, savage, and to the point. It’s a fight, and the story treats it as such. However...Justin is still a vampire. And there are moments when he needs to feed on the blood of the living in order to survive. I definitely don’t want to demonize my main character or have him come off as some kind of monster...but I didn’t want to treat the issue with kid gloves either, as though the act itself doesn’t matter. So when writing those particular moments of violence in the story, the details tend to be a bit more graphic, the effects are more drawn out. The utter horror behind having to take a human life in that way while they helplessly flail and go limp in his embrace gets highlighted, and you really get a chance to feel the dark side of who he was and what he has become. That was something that I definitely wanted to concentrate on. And yet, he can walk into a room full of enemies, break arms and legs, bite throats, set them ablaze or electrocute them from the inside out...and it comes off more as ‘action’ instead of horror. More of a heroic assault than a traumatic crime. So, with this series, I travel back and forth between the levels of violence and their feel to hopefully create a sympathetic character that my audience can root for...despite the fact that he really is a serial killer now. Hehehe! And the way to adjust those levels is with the amount and the nature of the details that you use in your writing.

To have someone fall out of a tree and break their arm is a painful experience, but depending on the story you’re telling...you can describe that moment in different ways. From simply hearing a ‘snap’ when your character hits the ground, to describing how the arms looks when it’s bent in an unnatural shape or even backwards, or you could take it up a notch with the sound of the character screaming in agony and looking at the arm in disbelief as bones poke through the skin and blood runs down to their elbow. How you explain the injury is what sets the tone. That’s what creates the feel, and determines whether or not it fits in with everything that you’ve written before it and what you might after it. Ask yourself if you want to crank it up to sound more shocking and painful in order to have a greater impact on the scene and the character. Or...ask yourself if it’s seems like a bit much and should probably tone it down a bit in order to keep it from sounding like it just came out of left field. If you’re reading ‘Golidlocks and the Three Bears’...I mean we get the gist of how that original story ended, hehehe! But you don’t want to suddenly go from comfortable beds and warm porridge to, “And with a single swipe, Papa Bear took the skin off of Goldielocks’ face while the other two hungrily lie in wait in to maul her to death.” Ummm...yeah, that’s a bit of a change up that some readers might find somewhat disturbing. So be sure to use your words in a way that conveys more than just what you’re picturing in your head, but in a way that either continues the tone of the rest of the story...or completely causes it to break and shift gears if that’s your intentional. But whichever way that you go with it, just make sure that your choices are deliberate and not just a mechanical reflex that ends up taking your readers out of the moment. That would be a bad thing.

Anyway, I’m sure that there are many of you out there who have never had a reason to use violence in anything that you’ve written so far, and may not feel the need to use any in the future. And that’s fine. Plenty of great and epic tales have been told without it. But if you do come across a moment in your story where you feel it’s appropriate and don’t want to hold back or skip over it...whether it’s abuse, a war torn battle, or standing up to a school bully...I’ve found that discovering and maintaining certain levels of brutality though the details you use and the length of time that you spend lingering on the moment is definitely the way to go. It can be as harsh or as tame as you need it to be. Just make it ‘fit’.

I hope this helps, you guys! Enjoy your writing, and absorb all of the tricks that you can along the way! K? Have fun! Stay beautiful! And I’ll seezya soon!

Don’t hurt me! I’m fragile! Hehehe!