Welcome (back) to the Scarlet Quill Society!
In 2023 YeahWrite’s free workshop is going back to the basics with a focus on tropes, the sometimes imperceptible and often underrated building blocks of writing. Check out the bottom of this post (and every post) for a roadmap to the year. We’ll be updating it with links each month as the posts go live, so that you can navigate through easily. And don’t forget to check out the Writing Resources tab up **gestures vaguely upwards** there to find our previous workshop series on prompts and editing (not at the same time).
The biggest bonus of the Scarlet Quill Society is that there are actual club meetings. That’s right! Once a month we’ll get together with you and talk about that month’s subject, answer questions, and record the chat for posterity. So if you have an easier time taking in information that way, or if you’re left with lingering questions after a monthly topical post, you’ve got a chance to get the full picture! Check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.
Kryptonite trope alert!
For all that our Managing Editor claims to have the coldest heart of any YeahWriter [Ed’s note – hey, if the shoe fits /rbg] there’s one trope that’s a permanent fixture in Rowan’s AO3 tags: Hurt/Comfort. And hey, who doesn’t like a story about needing and receiving physical or emotional care? This month we’re going to dive into the tropes of injury, and why your character might not be able to walk it off. And some surprising cases where they can–for now.
Ow. No, wait, really ow?
Look, memes about writing aside, in general we hurt our characters for reasons. And those reasons are important to us – the story moves along, the characters develop, bonds grow, and readers gain understanding. But the importance of those reasons is always in balance with the importance of keeping our readers in the story. What we write is in service of helping them to suspend their disbelief and come with us as we show them things. That’s why “because magic” isn’t a good enough reason for something to happen unless there’s a consistent magic system in your world. That’s why the car chase scene in Blues Brothers is always going to be definitive, and the car chase scene in FF Whatever Number It Is Now isn’t, even though it’s a lot of fun to watch. And it’s the difference between a great kung fu movie and a really cool wire fu combat scene.
And just like that last example, there are reasons to use unrealistic combat or injury mechanics. But if injuries are consistently shrugged off, you’re suddenly in Blade Runner 2049, where there are so many visibly life threatening injuries that are so completely ignored that viewers don’t know which ones to be concerned about, and it actually has the effect of lowering the stakes and engagement for what should be a poignant scene. “Oh, was he dying that whole time? Would have been nice to know, I could have been all wistful there.” So let’s talk about what we’re doing with injuries, why we’re doing it, and how far is too far!
Reason: To raise the stakes for failure
How much is enough? If you want to raise the tension in a story, raising the stakes – emphasizing what a character will lose if everything goes wrong – is a great way to do that. And what higher stake is there than their life (that’s not a challenge, I can think of five other really high-stakes answers too, but bear with me)? Showing how injured a character can get by shooting them with an actual bullet (to prove the villain can and will, for example) is one way to demonstrate those stakes. The threat has to be credible, after all. But it turns out that bullet wounds actually take quite a bit of time to heal, so unless the next thing in your plot happens either right away or several months from now, consider a different demonstration!
Tropes that don’t work the way you think: Bullet “grazes” and “nicks” are also serious wounds in their own right and usually require significant medical attention. And getting shot is more than just getting a hole in you, there’s kinetic transfer. Consider how much healing (and occupational therapy) is necessary before you shoot a character.
Reason: To give characters an opportunity to bond/show the existing bond
How much is enough? You want to talk about tropes we love? How about one character nursing another through an illness or injury? It’s a way to show tenderness and patience from a character who isn’t otherwise particularly demonstrative. And it’s a way for an aloof character to break down the trauma artifacts that keep them that way and learn to accept community, love, and care.
Tropes that don’t work the way you think: Look, illness doesn’t make you a nicer person, and it’s a genuine unkindness to put that trope in, in the face of the millions of people who are or are caretakers for sick, terminally ill, or temporarily or permanently disabled people – let people who are sick and hurt and disabled and dying be mad about it. They don’t have to be perfect to be deserving of care, but that’s what you imply when you throw yet another Satine into the mix. And hey, as a bonus for letting your characters act realistically in the face of something that’s scary and infuriating, they’ll get to have an apology arc and show reciprocal care instead of having an unhealthy codependency which fades when the outside impetus for caretaking goes away.
Reason: To show emotional stakes
How much is enough? We can’t get enough of it: Character One hides a life-threatening injury from Character Two until it’s (almost) too late, forcing Two to take care of One/confess their love/have a personal realization they loved One all along. But often the kinds of injuries used to further this trope are, well, a little more life-threatening than they need to be. By the time you’re collapsing from blood loss, you’re in very real trouble and need more than a good bandage and a few days in your berth with your lover spoon-feeding you soup. Hiding injuries can compound them.
Tropes that don’t work the way you think: It’s real awkward to get that love confession worked into your story only to have your character die of sepsis (LOOKING AT YOU, turn of the century Hornblower series). Make sure your characters know or have access to appropriate first aid unless you’re writing a tragedy.
Tropes that don’t work the way you think: Pay attention to the fallout from an injury when one character is concealing it from another. If it’s an abdominal wound, it’s going to significantly change the things they can do. Is it leaking? How much is it leaking? Can they use all their limbs? And will the things they do while hiding the injury aggravate it?
Reason: To show a character’s personal conviction/strength
How much is enough? Here’s the trope: One is falling off a roof, and Two ignores a dislocated shoulder to reach out and catch them. We all wince in sympathetic pain, but One is saved and has proof of Two’s willingness to make sacrifices for them. The tricky line here is that the thing your character is able to power through and do should be within the limits of their abilities without the injury, and can’t be impossible with the injury. For example, it doesn’t matter how much you care, you’re not doing 500 situps with an abdominal stab wound when you couldn’t do 100 without one. So the dislocated shoulder thing? Might not be possible.
Tropes that don’t work the way you think: Ok first of all let’s acknowledge that the trope that “powering through because something matters to you” has ableism embedded in it. On the other hand, there’s a wealth of examples of moments when a person is able to ignore an injury or perform a feat of strength that isn’t otherwise possible. So when you’re using this one, pay careful attention to the scope of what your character can accomplish and for how long, and whether you’ve given them characteristics that they share with real people who might be harmed by the implication that the reason they aren’t able to do this is that they don’t care enough.
Reason: To provide a character with motivation
How much is enough? If it’s to motivate the injured character, make sure the injury isn’t of a nature that will prevent them from doing the thing they’re motivated to do. Also remember that being injured is likely to have emotional as well as physical fallout – that is, fallout beyond just the motivation. If it’s to motivate another character, consider just… not. It denies the injured character agency and personhood.
Tropes that don’t work the way you think: Look, while there are instances where injury leads directly to revenge, most people aren’t wired that way and haven’t been trained into it (for example, both John Wick and Max Rockatansky had specific programming early in life that depersonalized and dehumanized circumstances that would leave many people dealing with a grief load that is a book in itself to manage). And if your character is now managing a temporary or permanent physical disability, there are going to be a lot of new challenges in their life without trying to hunt down and murder the person they consider responsible. This family of tropes just about mandates a sensitivity read both from a physical challenges standpoint and from a PTSD standpoint. The usual “workaround” for this is to just slap a mechanical prosthetic on and send the character about their day, but prostheses aren’t magic (and if you can just magically regrow a limb perfectly, then you’re going to have to come up with a reason why it bothers the person to have had it removed – like sure it’s a lot of pain but there are other injuries you could have picked that are also incredibly painful and life threatening, so maybe you should have considered those first?).
Obviously, we’re not saying to swaddle your characters in cotton wool and bubble wrap. What we’re saying is to treat those injuries like they’re real injuries to real people, and there are real consequences to being injured. After all, if there aren’t consequences, there would be no point in injuring your characters in the first place.
[breaks the fourth wall long enough to stare directly into the MCU]
In conclusion…
Whether it’s a skinned knee or death itself that your character faces, illness and injury can effectively raise the stakes in your story, bond your characters together, and show your readers important character strengths and flaws. But if you can’t do it realistically, then you’re going to end up lowering the stakes, losing readers, and maybe even spreading damaging or ableist misinformation. So take the same care with injuries that you do with other information you don’t really know. You do know what pain feels like (probably), but that doesn’t mean your experience applies to the situation your character is in. Because even breaking a bone isn’t the same thing as an amputation, and no amount of side cramps from running are the equivalent of a stab wound.
The good news for you is we’ve got another expert talk coming this month to talk about, well, getting shot and stabbed and in bar fights. See you there!
Your turn!
Got questions? Let’s continue this conversation in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord. And keep an eye out for the next face-to-face (face-to-Zoom?) meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society.
Join the Scarlet Quill Society!
Live Scarlet Quill Society meetings take place once a month. This month’s meeting will take place on Thursday, September 21 at 7pm US Eastern. Don’t worry; we’ll send out a reminder! (Not on our mailing list? Sign up here!) Future dates and times TBD based on member and guest availability, but we’ll try to accommodate as many folks as possible. (Yeah. We know. It’s best to have a fixed time. But we think it’s even better than best to be able to accommodate a diverse slate of exciting and qualified panelists, and we hope you’ll agree.)
You can also sign up for a monthly membership! Each month, paid Society members will receive an email with a link to the Zoom meeting. If not every topic interests you, you can also purchase one-time access passes to each month’s meeting via Ko-Fi. If you can’t make it to the meeting, or you don’t like to speak on camera, you are welcome to submit questions before the meeting that our editors will answer in the meeting.
- $5 one-time access to this month’s Zoom session. (The January meeting is free, but please use this link to RSVP!)
- $5 monthly subscription (Pen level): Access to all the live meetings and recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where we can discuss tropes in more detail, and your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors! Pen level members can also suggest tropes for future live discussions – our goal is to give you what you want and need!
- $3 monthly subscription (Pencil level): Access to the meeting recordings as soon as they’re uploaded and to the private Discord channel!
A week after the meeting, recordings will become available to all at no cost, but if you find them useful we encourage you to leave a tip in our tip jar—it helps keep the lights on over here and allows us to keep bringing you the high-quality workshop content you’ve come to expect from us, as well as acquire some exciting guest panelists. You can also sign up for a $1/month Paper level membership just to show us you love us.
