#Maim Your Characters

[scriptmedic]

Injury Plots: Definitive Treatment

(This is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction.)

The middle of an injury story begins when the character receives care for their injuries which is “permanent,” and which begins the healing process. This is when a wound that has been been bandaged is finally stitched, when the bone that has been broken is permanently set, when the gunshot wound that had been packed with gauze is now operated upon.

For your character’s minor injuries, like sprains and strains, the definitive treatment might be nothing more than RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. Staying off a sprained ankle for a few days. Letting a cut heal.

The nature of the injury you’ve selected is going to determine the nature of the definitive treatments. Fractures require casts and sometimes surgery; deep cuts can require surgery if tendons are damaged or muscles are severed; head injuries can require CT scans and potentially surgery.

Sometimes, for especially complicated injuries, the Definitive Treatment might be spread out. Nasty fractures might take multiple surgeries to truly fix, or a character recovering from a gunshot wound may have to go back to the OR if they begin bleeding internally again.

  Let’s come back to our examples, and see how the pros do it…

Example: Misery

Paul Sheldon’s Definitive Care comes courtesy of his captor and Editor From Hell, Annie Wilkes. After the crash, while he’s unconscious, Annie forms crude splints to set his mangled legs. They’re far from perfect – his legs heal poorly, and he later requires surgery to rebreak his legs in order for them to heal properly – but Annie’s care still counts as definitive because it keeps him from getting worse.

Annie also cares for his pain. One of the main themes of the book is Paul’s love-hate relationship with fictitious pain medication Novril; Annie feeds it to him while he recovers, and he becomes heavily addicted to the meds. (This will come up again in the next section, believe me!)

  Example: Men of Honor

Carl Brashear is the one who fights for his own Definitive Treatment. In fact, he tells his doctors what to do for him.

Brashear’s leg is badly broken. His career as a diver is going to be over if he undergoes surgery and splinting, because it won’t heal properly. So, to the horror of his doctor-wife, Carl demands that the Navy cut off his leg and give him a prosthetic one so that continue his career.

What’s great about this example is that we don’t have to see the actual treatment. (We don’t see it directly in Misery, either.) Instead, what we see is the heartbreaking decision: your body or your career? Brashear chooses his career – and his wife walks out on him. It’s not the idea of him being permanently disabled she can’t stand, but the idea that he‘s so dead-set on continuing living the Navy life even in the face of all he’s lost.

We don’t need to watch the surgery to know how much this hurts him, and instead of seeing his physical agony, we get a window into something much more precious and relevant: his emotional torment.

  Example: The Empire Strikes Back

Luke Skywalker gets a pretty nifty, sci-fi Definitive Treatment: he gets a whole new hand, just like the old one.

After he’s escaped the station where he and Vader were dueling, he’s taken back to a rebel ship. There we see a medbot testing out his brand-spanking-new hand, complete with wires under some amazing fake skin. We even watch the bot test out the pain receptors by poking the fingers, and Luke reacts. Success! It’s a miracle of medicine!

And it would be a miracle of medicine… if things actually worked that way.

I’m going to have a lot to say about this, but the basic element is that this is a form of Magical Healing, a trope in which the hero is made All Better™ by magic. (In this case, it falls under the Arthur C. Clarke definition: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.) This allows writers to give their characters significant injuries without actually having to face up to the consequences.

But let’s put magical healing aside, and take a peek into the life of Billy Badbones, Demon Hunter.

Homebrew Example: Billy Badbones

In the emergency room, they strip Billy Badbones to his bare bad skin. He stares up at the attending doc. She stares back at him, considering him. Normally Billy likes when women stare at him, but she’s not appreciating the view. Is this how the cow feels when the butcher takes a look?

“Okay,” she says. “Your arm is broken, and your leg has more than a few issues going on. You’ve got road rash all over your right side, and we’re going to have to pick the gravel out of the wounds. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’re going to do it under anesthesia, because you’re going in for surgery anyway. We need to fix your bones.” She pauses. “The derm guys are coming down, but I have a feeling you’re going to need some grafts for the burn and the road rash.” She looks him in the eye. “It’s going to be a long road to recovery, Mister Badbones.”

Billy swallows. Nods.

“Do you need to call anyone?”

He shakes his head no. He doesn’t know anyone in Baltimore.

“Okay. We’re going to get you prepped. Sit tight.”

There’s more pain medicine, and some waiting. Someone shaves his leg, and he’s tempted to ask if the hair wasn’t all burned off — he can smell seared skin. The surgeon is nice but fast, and then Billy is in the operating room and someone is telling him to count backwards from 100 and he doesn’t get to ninety before he’s waking up in a recovery-room bed.

His arm — his gun arm, his dominant arm — is in a cast from the shoulder to the wrist. His right leg is held together with some kind of external fixation. Metal is bolted through his skin and into his bones. There’s a catheter in his penis draining into a bag off the side of the bed.

But all he can think is, Shigure got away.

He’s not in much pain, but Billy Badbones begins to cry.

Billy’s Definitive Treatment matches his injuries well. His arm and his leg were crushed and both require surgery to recover, and he’s also going to need significant time in rehab in order to walk again.

What’s important about setting up his care is that Billy’s injuries are going to take time to heal. This isn’t something he can just walk away from.

To honor an injury as big as dumping a motorcycle on the highway, we need to see some consequences.

  Of course, nothing is perfect, and soon we’re going to see just how bumpy his path forward can be…

This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

  Injury Plots: Definitive Treatment was originally published on ScriptMedicBlog.com

[kaelinaloveslomaris]

Look what showed up today! @scriptmedic

[bysamanthakeel]

Hey, Aunt Scripty! Just wanted to pop in to say I just downloaded my copy of the ebook and it's so _good_ I'm loving this book to death already. I can just tell that my physical copy is going to become dog-earred and worn within a year. And I'm definitely looking forward to the next one you have on the way!

I hope you tell great stories with it. 

xoxo, Samantha Keel

[scriptmedic]

Injury Plots: Definitive Treatment

The middle of an injury story begins when the character receives care for their injuries which is “permanent,” and which begins the healing process. This is when a wound that has been been bandaged is finally stitched, when the bone that has been broken is permanently set, when the gunshot wound that had been packed with gauze is now operated upon.

For your character’s minor injuries, like sprains and strains, the definitive treatment might be nothing more than RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. Staying off a sprained ankle for a few days. Letting a cut heal.

The nature of the injury you’ve selected is going to determine the nature of the definitive treatments. Fractures require casts and sometimes surgery; deep cuts can require surgery if tendons are damaged or muscles are severed; head injuries can require CT scans and potentially surgery.

Sometimes, for especially complicated injuries, the Definitive Treatment might be spread out. Nasty fractures might take multiple surgeries to truly fix, or a character recovering from a gunshot wound may have to go back to the OR if they begin bleeding internally again.

 Let’s come back to our examples, and see how the pros do it…

Example: Misery

Paul Sheldon’s Definitive Care comes courtesy of his captor and Editor From Hell, Annie Wilkes. After the crash, while he’s unconscious, Annie forms crude splints to set his mangled legs. They’re far from perfect – his legs heal poorly, and he later requires surgery to rebreak his legs in order for them to heal properly – but Annie’s care still counts as definitive because it keeps him from getting worse.

Annie also cares for his pain. One of the main themes of the book is Paul’s love-hate relationship with fictitious pain medication Novril; Annie feeds it to him while he recovers, and he becomes heavily addicted to the meds. (This will come up again in the next section, believe me!)

 Example: Men of Honor

Carl Brashear is the one who fights for his own Definitive Treatment. In fact, he tells his doctors what to do for him.

Brashear’s leg is badly broken. His career as a diver is going to be over if he undergoes surgery and splinting, because it won’t heal properly. So, to the horror of his doctor-wife, Carl demands that the Navy cut off his leg and give him a prosthetic one so that continue his career.

What’s great about this example is that we don’t have to see the actual treatment. (We don’t see it directly in Misery, either.) Instead, what we see is the heartbreaking decision: your body or your career? Brashear chooses his career – and his wife walks out on him. It’s not the idea of him being permanently disabled she can’t stand, but the idea that he‘s so dead-set on continuing living the Navy life even in the face of all he’s lost.

We don’t need to watch the surgery to know how much this hurts him, and instead of seeing his physical agony, we get a window into something much more precious and relevant: his emotional torment.

 Example: The Empire Strikes Back

Luke Skywalker gets a pretty nifty, sci-fi Definitive Treatment: he gets a whole new hand, just like the old one.

After he’s escaped the station where he and Vader were dueling, he’s taken back to a rebel ship. There we see a medbot testing out his brand-spanking-new hand, complete with wires under some amazing fake skin. We even watch the bot test out the pain receptors by poking the fingers, and Luke reacts. Success! It’s a miracle of medicine!

And it would be a miracle of medicine… if things actually worked that way.

I’m going to have a lot to say about this, but the basic element is that this is a form of Magical Healing, a trope in which the hero is made All Better™ by magic. (In this case, it falls under the Arthur C. Clarke definition: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.) This allows writers to give their characters significant injuries without actually having to face up to the consequences.

But let’s put magical healing aside, and take a peek into the life of Billy Badbones, Demon Hunter.

Homebrew Example: Billy Badbones

In the emergency room, they strip Billy Badbones to his bare bad skin. He stares up at the attending doc. She stares back at him, considering him. Normally Billy likes when women stare at him, but she’s not appreciating the view. Is this how the cow feels when the butcher takes a look?

“Okay,” she says. “Your arm is broken, and your leg has more than a few issues going on. You’ve got road rash all over your right side, and we’re going to have to pick the gravel out of the wounds. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’re going to do it under anesthesia, because you’re going in for surgery anyway. We need to fix your bones.” She pauses. “The derm guys are coming down, but I have a feeling you’re going to need some grafts for the burn and the road rash.” She looks him in the eye. “It’s going to be a long road to recovery, Mister Badbones.”

Billy swallows. Nods.

“Do you need to call anyone?”

He shakes his head no. He doesn’t know anyone in Baltimore.

“Okay. We’re going to get you prepped. Sit tight.”

There’s more pain medicine, and some waiting. Someone shaves his leg, and he’s tempted to ask if the hair wasn’t all burned off — he can smell seared skin. The surgeon is nice but fast, and then Billy is in the operating room and someone is telling him to count backwards from 100 and he doesn’t get to ninety before he’s waking up in a recovery-room bed.

His arm — his gun arm, his dominant arm — is in a cast from the shoulder to the wrist. His right leg is held together with some kind of external fixation. Metal is bolted through his skin and into his bones. There’s a catheter in his penis draining into a bag off the side of the bed.

But all he can think is, Shigure got away.

He’s not in much pain, but Billy Badbones begins to cry.

Billy’s Definitive Treatment matches his injuries well. His arm and his leg were crushed and both require surgery to recover, and he’s also going to need significant time in rehab in order to walk again.

What’s important about setting up his care is that Billy’s injuries are going to take time to heal. This isn’t something he can just walk away from.

To honor an injury as big as dumping a motorcycle on the highway, we need to see some consequences.

 Of course, nothing is perfect, and soon we’re going to see just how bumpy his path forward can be…

This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters,  from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

On Scars

(This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction.)

First off, let me be clear about what I mean when I say the word scars. I’m not talking about the medical definition: rough tissue that overlies a wound as it heals over time.

I’m using a broader definition of any physical evidence of a previous injury.

That can be the amputated hand, the limp from a spinal cord injury.

It can also include tattoos. (Maui’s moving tattoos in Moana are a perfect example of this: his tattoos are a physical embodiment of where he’s been.)

 Scars, by this broad definition, are an interesting shorthand for a story, whether we actually see that tale or not. We use them as a way to say there’s a story here. Sometimes our global story gives us the chance to tell it, sometimes not; either way, scars can be an interesting way to add depth to a character.

In fact, sometimes a scar is integral to explaining and understanding who that character is.

For example, we know that Peter Pan’s Captain Hook has been involved in some fierce battles, because he lost his hand – and had it replaced with his legendary pirate hook. That hook is a symbol of the cold cruelty he now gives off.

The eponymous Harry Potter wouldn’t truly be Harry without his lightning-bolt forehead scar. For Harry, it’s not just about his past, it’s about his future: his fate and the fate of the scar-giver are intertwined, a battle that will determine the fate of the world. Worse, it’s all inscribed on his forehead, for everyone to see.

Darth Vader’s scars in Star Wars are extensive, so much so that they shroud his identity completely. While we see the faces of the heroes, and even of Emperor Palpatine himself, Vader’s wounds require a respirator mask that obscures his face and makes him the terrifying villain he is. He’s actually turned the support system he needs to stay alive – a depersonalizing suit and respirator – into something useful, a mask to terrify his enemies. Vader’s life is, in some ways, enhanced by his disability, and he’s certainly comfortable moving in his world with the scars he’s got.

In Moana, the demigod Maui’s scars are branded on him as tattoos. These are the stories of who he’s been and where he goes. When hero-protagonist Moana asks him where they come from, he tells her, “They show up when I earn them.”

This isn’t dissimilar to the battle scars on an old soldier, sailor, or mercenary: their wounds are manifested on their flesh.

  But if scars are shorthand for a story, if they’re someone’s past writ large, we need to honor that character in the way we represent them. If we elect to give a character scars, they should represent not a plot but a story, something that not only wounds the character but drives them to change internally.

As an example, I’m going to tell you the story of two of my personal scars. At the end we’ll discuss which one would go into a story about me, and why.

 Scar #1: The Knife Point. When I was six or seven, I was trying to get some corn off the cob — I wanted to eat it in kernel form for some reason, and I was using a kitchen knife. I got the corn off all right — and drove the point of the knife straight into the webbing between my thumb and forefinger on my left hand. Ouch!

(Actually, it didn’t hurt, it was the sheer volume of blood that was terrifying).

I changed in that I learned not to do that specific task (cutting corn off the cob) that specific way (driving the knife toward my hand).

But it’s not a marker of who I am.

 Scar #2: The Bite Mark. Let’s consider another scar, also on my left hand. There’s an old bite mark by the heel of my hand, at the base of my left thumb.

It happened like this: I was fifteen or so, and my neighbor’s dog, Clancy, wasn’t doing well. He was old and he was sick. That day he had become too sick to get up. It was time for my neighbor to take him to the vet and say goodbye.

She had him on a blanket. But he was a big dog, and the vet was far, and she didn’t have a car, and so our neighbor came to ask me and my mom to help get him to the vet. Of course we said yes. We liked her, but more importantly, we loved animals. (Both my mother and I had worked at the vet at one point or another.)

When we went to move him by picking up the blanket and moving him to the car, Clancy reached out and bit me. Not because he was a bad dog, not because he was out to hurt me. He bit me because he was scared and sick and hurt and he didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t feel anger at Clancy, and I didn’t turn afraid of him. I felt sympathy. His act hurt my skin. His pain broke my heart.

So when we got him to the vet, while they were easing his pain and saying goodbye, I calmly and quietly washed my wound in the sink with an antiseptic.

I learned something about myself in that moment.

I learned that healing really is a calling for me. That I was glad we had cared for him and that I was able to help him on his final journey. I was glad to know Clancy. I wasn’t mad, or hurt, even though my hand stung from the antiseptic.

That scar helped me find my internal true north.

 Now, which of those scars has meaning? Which of them would you want to include if you were writing me as a character? Which do you think would make it into a memoir, if I wrote one? It’s most certainly the second, the one that helped me figure out who I am, the one that drove me to learn about myself. The first is something that happened; the second is something that changed me.

It’s stories like these that you should use in order to figure out who your characters are – and how to honor them.

 Let’s Talk Tattoos.

Tattoos are interesting in that they can be another, more interesting set of shorthand. Unless your character has a Maui-like situation going on, her tattoos won’t simply appear. She’ll not only have to choose what story she wants to represent on her flesh, but she’ll have to choose how to express that story in an image. Then comes the pain of the ritual scarification: the injection of ink under the skin, a microbaptism in pain and blood and pigment.

Tattoos are absolutely fascinating. Because they don’t typically connect to physical wounds so much as to emotional ones, they’re a really great piece of shorthand for getting into the depths of who someone truly is.

My own tattoos are direct messages to myself about how I should live in the world. They’re an easily visible piece of guidance that explores what my role is and should be in the world.

 Of course, not all tattoos have this deeper meaning. People choose to tattoo things on themselves for a hundred different reasons, the aesthetics of the design being one of them. Some tattoos are simply trendy. I’m not here to judge anyone’s ink!

But if you’re going to cover a character in tattoos, consider having each of them explore a deeper facet of that character’s personality and the journey they’ve been on.

How to Use Scars Effectively

As we said above, scars are a shorthand for a story. Prominent scars, particular facial or obvious hand scars, are a constant source of tension and questions. When someone has a big scar on their face, we find our eyes drawn to it, a question forming on our tongue: What happened?

But the What happened? isn't as important as How did it change you? And so my general recommendation with scars is twofold and contradictory:

One: only introduce scars if it’s an incredibly important part of a character’s past.

Two: only introduce scars if it’s an incredibly important part of a character’s future.

So why the two recommendations? Why the contradiction?

Characters are constantly moving, if not in space, then through time. Their scars shape their past, which shapes where they are now and where they’re going.

If a scar is germane to a character’s past, it helps establish where they’re coming from and what their experiences have been.

But those experiences are only important if that scar-causing event is relevant to their future.

The scar a sea captain got fending off pirates once upon a time doesn’t have much to add if his current quest is finding new plumbing for his house. His scar isn’t relevant, unless it intimidates the shady plumber into giving him a better price. Even then, it’s a shallow connection.

Consider the old injury (and its scar) to be a cause.

Ask: what was the effect? If your character got a scar on their eyebrow from a bike accident when she was seven, that scar doesn’t mean anything… unless that was the bike accident where she failed to protect and save her kid brother, which makes her overprotective and hypercautious now.

If she crashed her bike as a kid and merely went on with her life… what was the point? Why tell that story with a scar so visible?

Remember that the point of a story is that people change. If a scar doesn’t fundamentally shape a character, consider simply leaving it out. Window dressing is just that: window dressing.

What we want is to give more insight into who your character is.

 Avoiding Wandering Scar Syndrome

Wandering Scar Syndrome is when a character’s scar is on their left eye on Page 3 and their right cheek on Page 12. It’s simply a symptom of not taking good notes.

There are two techniques I’m going to suggest here.

The first is, keep character sheets. Many writers choose to do this, many do not. But especially if you’re going to wallpaper your character with scars and tattoos, it’s worth writing down where they are and what they look like. In fact, copy/pasting the way they were originally described into a separate document is particularly helpful in being sure your descriptions stay consistent throughout the story. It’s a pain in the butt for a moment, but it helps so much with consistency down the line!

 Another option is to use [brackets] as an aside.

What do I mean?

Let’s say you talk about a minor character in two different places in the story, chapters — even acts apart.

Kitty Scarborough was the best fighter in town, and she bore the scars to prove it. [Kitty Scar Description — line on her face?] Or, [scar TK]

TK is the editor’s mark for To Come, a placeholder of sorts, and it’s useful for all kinds of things: Name TK, Dog Breed TK, Red sports car [make/model TK], etc. (Once upon a time, this book was littered with TKs .)

Later, we can pull it back up: A tall redhead walked through the door. Kitty Scarborough was easy to recognize, especially by her [Kitty Scar Description].

Why does this work? Why is this helpful?

Because it allows us to maintain flow as a writer. If we know Kitty’s got scars from fighting, we can come up with what exactly those look like later. (We’re using them as evidence of her toughness and battle prowess, not for a particular meaning behind each individual scar she’s got.) So when we describe Kitty, we don’t need to spend ten minutes racking our brain for a cool scar to give her — we can do that later. All we need to drop into our first draft is [Kitty scar] and we can move on!

This works for all sorts of details, from car models to hair colors to background characters’ names, so don’t think it’s just a scar locater!

Later on we can come back, look through our manuscript with the magical Find tool, and simply search for that left bracket, [ . Anything that comes up can be filled in with your text!

 Want a good scar generator, including ideas for how it shaped the character? Visit MaimYourCharacters.com/Scars !

This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

Content and Reality Genres

(This post is an excerpt from the upcoming Maim Your Characters) 

What’s Your Content Genre?

Genres in fiction are the promises you make about the story you’re going to tell.

They’re a mutually shared set of expectations between you and your readers.

If you put a skull and crossbones on the front of your novel, there had better be pirates inside, preferably on the first page.

If there’s a spaceship, your readers would be very mad to find their story set entirely in a jungle in 1930s Congo and a distinct lack of aliens.

And iIf you put a cartoony cover of kids playing in a park on an erotica novel, monster is the kindest thing you will be called.

Genres tell readers what to expect. In an Adventure novel, we’re going to see great settings and a fast pace. In a Thriller we’re going to get violence, and at least one moment when the villain has the hero at their mercy.

We also don’t expect a bear-trap amputation injury in a Cozy Mystery or a Sweet Romance. But we do expect it in the Horror novel.

 The point I’m trying to make is that your readers have expectations about what will or won’t happen in your novel, based on the genre you’re writing in. There are always methods available to push the limits, of course, but you can’t go wrong by  sticking with what your reader expects – or at least by avoiding stepping too far out of the boundary lines.

 A few suggestions…

Fantasy is typically fairly “clean,” in that we don’t see enormous gouts of blood or detailed descriptions of the gristle coming out of  the wound. Wounds aren’t horrendous (unless you’re reading George R.R. Martin books). They also tend to be healed with magic rather than naturally, with truncated injury arcs. 

Science Fiction likes fancy weapons like blasters and phasers, especially if you’re writing in Military Sci-Fi, but there may be some room for older-school wounds depending on who your hero is fighting. Also, I have never seen a car / scooter / spaceship crash producing significant injuries in a sci-fi story. Again, descriptions tend to be sparse and general; we see the man go down, but we aren’t invited to smell the burning flesh of the wound.

In Romance plots, I would stay away from significant injuries unless they happened prior to the start of the story. There are definitely stories in which nurses fall for their patients, and vice versa, and they’re not wholly made-up; if nurses never fell for their patients, I wouldn’t be alive, because my grandmother cared for my grandfather’s wounds in World War II.

In the softer subgenres of Mysteries, there tend to be murders but not injuries per se.

Action stories seem to think that anything from a bullet to the knee to a love tap with a pistol butt will knock someone unconscious (a trope I despise, by the way), but tend to be light on life-altering injuries. This is, in part, because a great many Action tales don’t have underlying emotional arcs. Think of Indiana Jones: He gets the treasure, loses the treasure, gets the treasure, loses the treasure, meets his ex, gets the girl again, gets the treasure. At no point does Indiana Jones fundamentally change.

Police Procedurals tend to focus on murders, but may be up for a good maiming, especially when an officer gets too close to an investigation and gets hurt. But it’s usually a beating that sidelines the character without a significant change in who they are or how they behave because of it.

 The list could go on forever, but the point is this: understand the genre and subgenre you’re writing for so you know what your readers expect. Then deliver on those expectations, making sure that things actually matter.

It’s harder than it sounds, and more crucial than I could ever emphasize.

 What’s Your Reality Genre?

There’s a phenomenal book on editing called The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne (and an absolutely epic podcast by the same name). It’s one of the most amazing writing books I’ve ever bought, and it’s worth every penny, and I’m going to borrow an element rather shamelessly from Shawn’s work.

Among other things, Shawn discusses what he calls the Five-Leaf Genre Clover, which is basically his way of categorizing stories. It’s based on structure, on content, and a few other things.

While there are obvious “genres” to do with story type and convention (horror, action/adventure, thriller, coming-of-age, etc.…), these fall under only under one leaf of the Clover, specifically the Content Genre leaf.

I want to talk about a different leaf: the Realism leaf.

Shawn breaks the Realism leaf of the Genre Clover down into four separate categories:

Factualism: These are stories based on things that have actually happened. An injury in a Factual story would be based on what happened and how a person coped. Biographies and historical tales fall into this genre.

Realism: Something that could plausibly happen in our real world. Injuries in the Realism genre need to be strictly accurate: the Inciting Injury is possible; the Treatment, plausible; the Recovery, realistic; the New Normal, what we would expect if it happened to our cousin.

Fantasy: This is Realism with added elements that are not possible in our reality. They can be elves, spaceships, or portable nuclear generators. Injuries in the Fantasy setting can be totally realistic (if the fantastical elements have nothing to do with healing technology or magic). Remember what Arthur C. Clarke said:   Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Science Fiction is a kind of fantasy in which the fantastical elements are based on real or theorized science, though different subgenres incorporate different levels of realism.

Absurdism: This is a type of world in which an Injury might be treated by filling the character with marshmallows and rolling them up a hill, or a fish might tell your character that to err is divine but to drive to New Mexico is human. Absurdist stories aren’t bound at all by Realistic logic, or at least break that logic deliberately.

 Here’s the thing: You need to know which genre you’re writing in. Can you get away with hand-wavy magical healing in your genre? If you’re writing a gritty Realistic war story, probably not. If you’re writing a soft sci-fi (Fantasy) book, probably so. But what about stories in the middle?

 For example, if you’re writing an Absurdist piece, go with your imagination: Why shouldn’t the poisonous snake spit healing medfoam that gives your character acid trips but heals their wounds?

Factualism is simply a subset of Realism: it’s based in the real world, and also bounded by history and actual events that took place. The rules of Realism and the rules of Factualism are going to be essentially the same, from this perspective, so we can just roll them into one.

So that leaves us with two functional reality genres left to work in: Realism and Fantasy. We’re going to discuss each of them in detail in the next chapter.

This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you'd like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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[scriptmedic]

Injury Plots: The Immediate Treatment

(This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, which is out this week!)

The Immediate Treatment phase of the injury plot is fairly straightforward: it is anything your characters do in the moments following an injury in order to feel better and to get to safety.

Oftentimes, this is instinctive. If someone is punched in the face hard enough to break the nose, for example, the first response is to shield the nose by protecting it with the hands. This is part and parcel of the Immediate Treatment – as is the tissue (or tampon) in the nostril to stop the bleeding.

But so are fighting back and running away.

In fact, according to Tactical Combat Casualty Care, the standard course for combat and SWAT medics, the first duty of a medic treating a downed comrade isn’t to treat the wounded. Their first duty is to return fire, because that’s how the group – and the medic themself – stays safe. So the Immediate Treatment of an injury may be to inflict further injuries to the opposing party!

 So let’s look at a few examples of some Immediate Treatments, shall we?

 Example: Misery

In Misery, Paul Sheldon’s Immediate Treatment is a simple act of rescue.

Annie Wilkes is driving down the road when she comes across Paul’s car. She checks on the driver and immediately recognizes him – she is his Number One Fan, after all. She hauls him out of the wreck – I believe the words sack of potatoes are used; Annie is a strong, sturdy woman – and she throws him in her truck, covers him in blankets, and drives him to her house.

Note that we don’t see any care addressed to his actual wounds in this case!

 Example: Men of Honor

Carl Brashear’s Immediate Treatment is mostly overlooked in this film, which is, in my thinking, a mistake. (His story parallels that of another character – more about this later – and that character is short-shifted on his Immediate Treatment phase, too. It’s the one downfall of that injury arc.)

What we see is Carl lying on the deck of the ship, screaming in pain, as men swarm to come to him. His leg is mangled, bent at a horrible angle away from his body, and blood is pouring onto the deck. Someone calls for a medic (an inaccuracy; in the Navy it should have been corpsman.) But we cut away before we see anyone attempt to render first aid.

 Example: The Empire Strikes Back

Luke Skywalker’s Immediate Treatment may be the most interesting of these three examples. Luke’s hand is gone, but the lightsaber did him one small favor on the way past: it cauterized his wound. Where a sword injury like this would be causing a severe bleed, Luke doesn’t have one.

Instead, we see Luke squirming on the catwalk to get away from his assailant – who reveals, in one of the most misquoted lines in movie history, that I am your father.

But we also see Luke protecting his stump. He keeps the stump of his missing hand tucked in the armpit of the other arm, trying desperately to keep it safe from further harm.

(Ultimately, Luke jumps off the edge of the catwalk and somehow winds up landing safely, because The Force. While this is a form of escape, and therefor falls into this section, it’s a little bit… hand-wavy.)

 Homebrew Example: Billy Badbones

Billy’s bike goes down alright, and he’s trapped underneath.

For a moment it’s just Billy, with his arm and his leg all jacked up, his bike still trapping him. As the adrenaline fades, the pain ramps up and up. He’s been shot twice before, but nothing has hurt like this.

He looks up to find a concerned man standing over him. Despite Billy’s most fervent hope, the man asks the most useless question in history (and one of the most common): “Are you okay?”

Billy is not okay.

He’s had a minute to think and take stock. His arm is a ruined mess, his leg is still pinned by the bike. There’s pain, not just from the road rash and the broken bones, but from the scorching-hot engine that’s lying on his leg. Cars have stopped in a jagged line, too close for comfort. He doesn’t like looking up at the axles underneath them.

“Get it off me,” he says. With help from two other motorists, the man manages to move the bike.

Billy tries to sit up, but he can’t move. He hears the wail of sirens in the distance.

When the medics arrive, they carefully move Billy to the stretcher and load him into the ambulance. One asks questions that seem inane to Billy, while the other begins to cut his clothing off. Their shears aren’t adequate for the thick biker’s leather, and sweat drips from the medic’s brow. Billy could swear. New leathers alone will cost him a thousand dollars he doesn’t have.

Then they’re splinting his leg, splinting his arm. Cold packs. An IV. Finally the merciful, beautiful moment when the medic pushes “a little something for the pain.”

It doesn’t fix everything, but it fixes enough to make it bearable.

So let’s unpack this a little bit. Billy gets some treatment from the motorists – they rescue him from being under the bike with its burning-hot engine. They also call for an ambulance (requesting help is still a treatment!), and from the medics he also receives care: splints, an IV, morphine.

Even though this all probably takes about half an hour, it’s still Immediate Treatment. It’s within the first few hours of the injury, but it’s also not entirely Definitive. Splints will do a little, but Billy will need more care before he’s back to being a road warrior.

This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, out TODAY from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

Injury Analysis: How to Train Your Dragon

This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction. It’s one of nine injury analyses that appear in the book, but this one is near and dear to my heart, especially because you all helped pick it. I asked a couple of months ago for injuries to analyze in fiction, and this one was suggested above all others. I hope it doesn’t disappoint! 

(Image courtesy of Dreamworks) 

Format: Feature Film (animated) Genre: Action-Adventure / Kids ealism: Fantasy (high fantasy)

 It’s funny. When I put out a call to my readers asking what injuries I should take a look at for this book, I got this kid’s movie as an overwhelmingly popular arc to take a look at. It’s a great representation of disability!

It’s just that everyone suggested specifically the back half of the movie, where a human gets injured.

But I say let’s start from the front and look at both of the arcs in this movie, shall we?

I think everyone forgot the first injury because it happened to a dragon.

 How To Train Your Dragon is a Dreamworks movie about a Viking named Hiccup, a chief’s son who’s very… “un-Viking.” As in, he doesn’t want to kill dragons.

Dragons are initially presented as “pests,” but it turns out they’re more than that, they’re a menace: the town of Brunk gets raided, set on fire, all the time.

So here’s an interesting start: the beginning of the movie finds Hiccup working for a disabled blacksmith, who has interchangeable prostheses for his left hand and a peg leg for his right leg. His hand can become anything: a hammer, tongs, even a saw or a battle-axe. Yet his prosthetic leg is just that: a leg, something for him to stand on.

As the blacksmith’s protégé, Hiccup is shown to be a very handy inventor. He makes a mean catapult, and the opening of the movie has him trying to take out a special kind of dragon called a Night Fury. Scary!

To the excitement of all, Hiccup shoots one down! His homemade catapult launches a set of stone balls on a cord, which brings down a Night Fury — a feat no one’s ever accomplished before.

Of course, no one sees him do it, so no one believes him.

But when he goes over to check on the dragon he shot down, it turns out the Night Fury isn’t so tough after all. The beast is tied up in the cords from the weapon Hiccup launched.

In a moment Blake Snyder’s kickass book on storytelling (Save the Cat!) would approve of… Hiccup sets him free!

…and almost gets eaten for his troubles.

But the dragon doesn’t kill him, which is perplexing to Hiccup. After his relief washes away, the ever-curious Hiccup keeps coming back to find out why the dragon hasn’t killed him.

It turns out the dragon — who’s later dubbed Toothless — has an Inciting Injury: one of his tail fins has been ripped off by the accident.

Hiccup has already given him his only Immediate Treatment: he’s cut the ropes that are holding him captive.

But that doesn’t solve Toothless’s flying problems. Toothless is pretty miserable. He has fallen into a ravine he can’t get out of, because his flight trajectories are all messed up by his damaged tail.

The two form a friendship, over fish, over drawings, and Hiccup decides to build him a prosthesis to fix his tail.

This is the first analysis we’ve looked at where the protagonist gives the Definitive Treatment to another character. It’s unconventional, and it’s a risky move on Hiccup’s part, but it gets Toothless back in the air.

Cue the training montage! Hiccup builds a saddle to ride Toothless, and their training forms a Rocky Road to Recovery as they learn to fly together. They train, and Hiccup works through various incarnations of the dragon tail and harness system. They crash, they fly, they crash again, until they get it right.

Their New Normal is a great partnership! With Hiccup at the controls of Toothless’s prosthesis, they can fly together. The lessons Toothless teaches Hiccup about the way dragons work make Hiccup a celebrity in his town.

So Toothless’s arc is pretty straightforward…

 Toothless’s Injury Arc

 Inciting Injury: Tail fin amputated when he’s shot down by Hiccup.

Immediate Treatment: Freed from the projectile, which had tied him down. (A few days later, but hey, he’s a dragon.)

Definitive Treatment: Prosthetic tail fin made by his human handler.

Rocks on the Rocky Road: Toothless and Hiccup almost fall from the sky a few times during the acclimation process, but the wound itself isn’t the issue that needs discussing.

The Big Test: None. By the time we need Toothless to fight, they’ve already reached the last stage.

And the New Normal? A lasting friendship and partnership, where the two can fly — but only together.

 This isn’t the only injury arc the movie has in store for us, however. Later in the plot it’s Hiccup’s turn to be maimed.

In the story’s global climax, Toothless and Hiccup are taking out the mother dragon that’s made all the other dragons behave so badly. Their plan has worked — the other dragon’s gone down and exploded!

But up shoots a wall of fire, Toothless’s prosthesis has been burnt away, and Hiccup falls —

And Toothless, ever the faithful dragon, follows him down.

When they hit the ground, there’s a horrifying moment when we think Toothless has been horribly hurt and Hiccup has been consumed by the flames, until Toothless reveals he’s had Hiccup nested inside his wings.

  Hiccup has had an Inciting Injury, though we don’t know what it is until the next scene.

He wakes up at home to Toothless’s cheery face snuffling him like a puppy, and we discover when he tries to stand that his injury has been twofold: a head injury (which explains the time lapse) and a lower leg amputation. He’s got a steel prosthetic foot, a Definitive Treatment for an injury we didn’t know he had. (His Immediate Treatment for the burns and concussion was injury prevention: Toothless wrapped him in his wings so he wouldn’t burn to a crisp on the way down.)

Hiccup gets an absurdly short Rocky Road to Recovery as he tries to walk outside and stumbles — but Toothless lets himself be used as a crutch, and helps his friend learn to walk on his new leg.

However, the two get back to their New Normal pretty quickly. Turns out Hiccup’s blacksmith boss — owner of the peg leg and the prosthetic multitool hand — has built a special harness that will allow Hiccup’s new metal foot to lock in to Toothless’s saddle. They can fly again!

(All of this happens in the span of about two minutes of screen time, which is pretty impressive for a fully-told injury arc! However, this arc is abrupt even for a fantasy movie; the character goes from unconscious and unable to walk to flying a dragon in less time than it takes to brew coffee.)

Hiccup’s injury mirrors Toothless’s…

  Hiccup’s Injury Arc

 Inciting Injury: Falls through some fire. It’s never explained how, exactly, he comes by his leg amputation or his significant head injury which causes him to wake up at home probably weeks later.

Immediate Treatment: Injury prevention, by Toothless swaddling him as the two plummeted together.

Definitive Treatment: While he was unconscious, his blacksmith boss built him a prosthetic leg. His head injury is completely ignored here; it’s implied that he’s been allowed to rest.

Rocky Road to Recovery: Hiccup has some difficulty walking, but it quickly goes away — the magic of filmmaking! He literally stumbles twice.

(To be fair, we’re talking about a movie with Vikings riding dragons and talking with Scottish accents. Realism isn’t exactly their forte.)

The Big Test: None.

New Normal: Hiccup is back to total functional ability. Because his needs have been fully met, he can continue to walk, fly his dragon, and has no apparent significant changes to his life. This can technically be regarded as Total Disability for the foot, since the foot itself was lost, but as he shows no signs of problems walking or performing his activities, it’s almost a meaningless amputation. Functionally, this is No Disability.

  What Can We Learn?

Well, first of all, the injury arc doesn’t have to be about the hero to be a meaningful arc for the audience.

The injured character doesn’t even have to be human.

Second of all… notice a theme?

The blacksmith (the only one in the village who truly believes that Hiccup can become a great Viking, by the way) is disabled. His disability is played almost for laughs; he’s got an interchangeable hand (sometimes tongs, sometimes an axe), but his leg prosthesis is just a piece of wood.

Then Toothless gets hurt — by Hiccup’s hand, an emotional element that’s never fully explored. Should Hiccup feel guilty about shooting down what turns out to be a gentle, playful, kind creature?

But Toothless has an injury that’s a parallel to a leg amputation: one of his tail fins is missing, making his usual form of locomotion impossible.

While Toothless is canonically a dragon, he’s modeled very much like a dog in his actions and behaviors: his loyalty, his curiosity, his initial standoffishness that becomes a fierce friendship. Hiccup, seeing this metaphorical dog metaphorically limping, helps.

It’s through his kindness to his companion that Hiccup learns how to save his people — and does just that in the end. Seeing Hiccup’s example of kindness and understanding toward the once-feared creatures causes a realization in his people: that humans and dragons can coexist peacefully, that each can benefit the other. Hiccup and the Vikings help rid the dragons of an evil overlord, and the dragons stop raiding the village and stealing the sheep.

Hiccup is himself injured near the end as a parallel injury. Thus, the blacksmith, Toothless, and Hiccup all find themselves depending on their prosthetics to move through the world as they once did. The parallelism is phenomenal!

There’s even a moment of kindness repaid: It’s Hiccup who’s taught Toothless to fly again, and it’s Toothless who helps Hiccup walk again.

Now, how can we all learn to incorporate that kind of parallelism into our stories?

It’s also a great example of the Big Battle having consequences — Hiccup’s wound isn’t timed so that his Big Event will coincide with the climax, but so that the climax will be his Inciting Injury.

 My one criticism of the film (from an injury arc perspective) is the way in which Hiccup’s arc is shortened.

He remains unconscious for what must have been weeks of sailing home and fitting him for his prosthesis — his smithy mentor has even designed and built a wholly new flight apparatus for Toothless so they can fly again right away.

In terms of time, it takes weeks for a stump to heal enough to accept a prosthetic, and weeks again for the amputee to learn to walk, instead of literally seconds of film time. However, since this is in the denoument of the film, it’s much less irritating than it would be if, say, it had happened before the Big Battle and Hiccup had been on his feet again for the fight.

This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, out THIS WEEK from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers].

It’s not too late to receive the bonus content for Maim Your Characters!

With three extra injury analyses like this and the official ScriptMedic Character Injury Worksheet, plus a copy to keep of the 5 Biggest Mistakes Writers Make Approaching Injuries. Just email a copy of your receipt for the book to AuntScripty{at}gmail{dot}com and I’ll be happy to send your bonus content right along! 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

Injury Plots: The Inciting Injury

(This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, which is out today!) 

At its core, the Inciting Injury is the catalyst of the injury plot. It’s the moment when the leg snaps, the hammer comes down, or the bullet strikes. It’s the blossom of pain, the initial moment of agony.

There are two significant portions of the Inciting Injury: what happens, and why it happens.

The what is going to determine the way the arc works. Is your character shot in the chest? Did they twist their ankle? Maybe they have a concussion, or a broken arm. You get the idea.

Of course, there’s also the why. The injury might be the effect of some other plot element that is causing your character harm. Did they poke their nose in the wrong badger hole? Are they simply a klutz, or is their injury a consequence of some choice they made earlier on, like going up against a mob boss or invading a foreign nation?

You don’t need to have a great why for a phenomenal injury story to work, as you’ll see in the form of an example: Steven King’s Misery, below.

 Injuries tend to happen for one of two reasons. Either they’re completely random (you slip in the tub), or they’re a consequence of some other cause (you ventured into enemy territory and got shot). Which one you use is completely up to you, of course, but I would argue that the best Inciting Injuries are the byproduct of other elements in the plot.

We’re going to go over the exact process of building your own injury plot later on in the book (with an example and the choices we might face along the way), but as we go forward I’m going to give a few examples of the way famous writers have approached each of the elements we need to look at.

We’re also going to take a look at the arc of a fictional character I’ve made up: Billy Badbones, Demon Hunter. Where the other examples are going to get summaries, Billy’s story will be told in shortened versions of the actual scenes.

 So let’s look at some examples of Inciting Injuries in fiction.

 Example: Misery

Misery is a phenomenal piece of writing from Stephen King. (It was later adapted into a film, starring James Caan and Kathy Bates.) It’s a horror tale: a writer, Paul Sheldon, suffers a terrible car accident and is trapped in the house of his Number One Fan, the disturbed and disturbing Annie Wilkes. Wilkes is a nurse by trade – but an Angel of Death, a nurse who kills her patients. To survive, Paul must write Annie a novel all her own, resurrecting her favorite Sheldon character, Misery.

For Paul Sheldon, the what of his Inciting Injury is a car crash, which gives him a head injury, two broken legs, and a broken pelvis.

The why is a simple accident: Sheldon, who has just finished his latest and greatest novel, goes driving in the snow. The storm picks up, and he crashes his car into a ditch. (Sheldon has just finished his latest and greatest novel). There’s a point to be made about hubris here, but King makes it subtly: it is Paul’s pride in his work that causes him to start driving in a Colorado snowstorm.

One thing that’s unique about Sheldon’s plot is the way in which it’s told. When we first see Sheldon, he’s waking up in a haze of pain and painkillers, at the beginning of his Rocky Road to Recovery. King chose to begin the tale in media res, in the middle of things – which meant starting at the heart of the story: the beginning of Sheldon’s relationship with Wilkes. We get the earlier phases as glimpses later on.

 Example: Men of Honor

Men of Honor is a 2000 film that follows the career of real-life Navy diver Carl Brashear. Brashear, the first black diver in the Navy, faces struggle after struggle because of his race. He suffers unending injustices at the hands of the racist institution.

Nearly two-thirds of the way through the film, Brashear is on the deck of a ship when he sees significant tension being put on a line. Two other sailors are standing over it, and Brashear shoves them out of the way just as the line snaps – and brings a hunk of metal hurtling toward him at high speed.

The what of his Inciting Injury is that the piece of metal breaks his leg, causing Brashear to immediately fall to the deck screaming in agony.

The why is that Brashear is, in this portrayal of him, a hero. He saves two other men from a fate that could have been similar, or could have been worse. The why of his injury shows us who Brashear is: he throws himself into danger. (This scene immediately follows one in which he is on a dive and almost gets run over by a Russian nuclear submarine.)

 Example: The Empire Strikes Back

The story of Luke Skywalker’s hand amputation is an interesting one. It’s not going to be presented here as a positive example. If anything, it’s closer to what not to do. We’ll see why that is later on, especially when we talk about magical healing, but for now, let’s just tell the story.

Luke Skywalker is a Jedi Knight taking on the evil Empire. He’s having a lightsaber showdown with one of the biggest bads in the ‘verse: Darth Vader himself, the Emperor’s right-hand man.

They’re dueling, fighting. It looks like Luke is going to have the upper hand… and then Vader gives Luke his Inciting Injury. He cuts off Luke’s hand with a lightsaber. Luke’s hand – and his own lightsaber – go sailing over the railing of the catwalk where they’re dueling.

The what is an amputation of the right hand, conveniently cauterized by the blade.

(Isn’t sci-fi neat?)

The why is that Luke is fighting for the freedom of all mankind – and facing an enemy far more powerful than he is.

 Now what about our own example, Billy Badbones?

 Homebrew Example: Billy Badbones

Billy Badbones is, well, a badass. He digs motorcycles, especially his late father’s Indian, and he guns down demonic drug lords. He rides across the nation, delivering grievous bodily harm and destroying heroin reserves everywhere he goes. He’s the Jack Reacher of demon drug busts.

He’s chasing the Demon Lord Shigure all along I-40, from Arizona to the East Coast. It’s been four days of hard rides and little sleep, and Billy’s exhausted. But he’s close on the demon’s heels, so he keeps going.

And, doing 60 down I-95, Billy Badbones falls asleep on the bike.

He does his best to keep his face off the pavement, but the fall lands his body weight on his arm. He can feel the bone crunch, feel the white-hot searing pain as his arm snaps under the weight.

He scrapes across the blacktop, ripping through his leather jacket. His favorite demon-killing gun goes skittering away, off the side of the road and into the underbrush. He and his bike go rocketing down the road, the metal sparking, his arm and leg screaming in agony.

He tries to slide, to take it on his back, but the bike has trapped his leg, and he’s getting crushed by the weight of it.

When he finally comes to a stop, the bike is mangled and so is he. He can only thank the gods that his bike isn’t on fire, that the driver behind him slammed on his brakes. The car stops ten feet shy of him.

Billy lays back on the pavement panting. He’s breathing heavily, but he’s alive. It could have been worse, he thinks.

It’s going to get worse.

In The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell writes about establishing the regular world before transitioning into the New World. Here we’ve talked about Billy’s regular world (health), and we see him come crashing into the New World (his upcoming disability). He’s begun his journey, even if it wasn’t his idea.

So the what of Billy’s Inciting Injury is that his arm and leg have been crushed, burned, and ripped up by road rash, and he’s been dragged by his motorcycle — he’s gonna be in some hurt!

The why of his injury is his own exhaustion. Billy’s so driven to accomplish his goal – killing the Demon Lord Shigure – that he takes a spill off his bike on the highway at speed. It’s up to the reader to determine if that’s madness (working way too hard), or a marker of dedication (he must chase the demons!), or both.

Next up, we’re going to talk about the second half of the Beginning: the Immediate Treatment!

This post is an excerpt from Maim Your Characters, out TODAY from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, [click here]. If you’d like to order a print copy, it’s available [via Amazon.com], and digital copies are available from [a slew of retailers]. 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

IT IS LAUNCH DAAAAY

Humans! Humans! 

It is Mothaflippin’ Launch Day! 

Maim Your Characters is out, it is out today, and I am one excited Scripty! 

The preorders went amazingly well. We sold almost $4,000 worth of business, which included -- 

91 signed print copies of the book, sold in 8? 9? countriesalmost 150 digital editions over 50

signed

digital editions 

Holy Poops! Holy ungodly poops!!

Plus, the book is doing super well on Amazon, too, ranking as high as 80th in its category over the last few days. That is super important to the long term health of the book (and, by extension, the author!), and it’s a very promising start. 

AND there is More(TM) 

Every preorder came with some Bonus Content, which included: 

An additional 3 injury analyses, not included in the book. 

Black Sails: How John Silver’s amputation made him a legend (and yet still respected the character, the injury, and the context of the era) 

Person of Interest: How Root’s impromptu surgery made her into a digital demigod 

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: How the movie managed to stop an out-of-control protagonist in his tracks by reminding him of what mattered

The official ScriptMedic Injury Worksheet, a one-page guide to keeping track of not just a character’s injuries, but the hows and why of thems -- and what changes because of them. 

That Bonus Content is Still Available! 

Pick up a copy of Maim Your Characters from any retailer between now and 9/11/2017, email me your receipt to AuntScripty {at} gmail {dot} com , and I will send you a link to the bonus content! (Redact any info you don’t want to share, I won’t be offended.) 

Where Can I Get This Amazing Thing? 

You mean this? 

It is available at: 

Amazon (print + digital) 

iTunes 

Kobo

Most Other Places 

Thank you so much for helping make this launch crazy successful and I’m extremely grateful that you all have trusted me so much. As a first-time author, this is an overwhelmingly amazing launch, and I can’t find the words to express how awesome this has been. I’ve cried at least twice. 

Thank you for being amazing, awesome readers, and for helping make things go as smoothly and as wonderfully as it has. You all mean the world to me. 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

Injury Analysis: Misery

Today's post is an excerpt from my upcoming book Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction. What follows is one of the nine injury analyses which appear in the book. 

Those who preorder the book, or who email me their receipt for a copy purchased from any retailer between 9/4/2017 and 9/11/2017 ( AuntScripty {at} gmail {dot} com ), will receive a package of bonus materials including three additional injury analyses and the official ScriptMedic injury worksheet.

The additional analyses are: John Silver's amputation in Black Sails, Root's transcendence into a demigod in Person of Interest, and the injury that changes the course of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

Misery, by Stephen King

Format: Novel (Also a feature film) Genre: Horror Reality: Realism

 We’ve been citing Misery as an example throughout this book, and now is the time to bring it all together.

 The Inciting Injury happens off-page and before the opening scene of the novel. Writer Paul Sheldon finishes his latest novel, a work he hopes will take him from being a Genre Hack to a Respected Author. Having finished his book, Paul drives off to take his manuscript to his publisher… and gets caught in a blizzard. He crashes his car into a ditch and is severely injured.

Paul’s legs are both broken, and he suffers a significant concussion and probable traumatic brain injury, though there’s little evidence of this other than his lapsed memory of the first days of his recovery.

The brilliance of Stephen King is in his slow exposition of the arc. We learn this story in bits and pieces as the story goes on.

 We learn later, for example, about the Immediate Treatment Annie Wilkes offered Paul when she “rescued” him from his car crash: she pulled him from his car in the middle of the blizzard, threw him on the backseat of her pickup like a gunnysack, and drove him to her house for care. (Annie is a once-upon-a-time nurse, who we later learn was barred from practicing after her patients kept dying suspiciously.)

As for her so-called Definitive Treatment for Paul Sheldon’s mangled legs… well, she splints his legs (badly), ignoring the most severe injuries (his broken hips). She also allows him time to rest, letting him sleep through the worst of the pain and the recovery.

Crucially for the addiction plot of the novel, she also force-feeds him Novril, a fictional painkiller that is supposed to be the allegory of codeine.

In fact, when we meet Paul, he is already deep in the throes of the Novril addiction, and numerous times we see his agony multiply without his medication. We see him force his way out of his room — risking his life, given that he’s held hostage — to get Novril. His addiction sets in deep, and it doesn’t let go.

 The entire book’s present tense is set in the Rocky Road to Recovery, where Paul is recuperating from his injuries, and the stumbling blocks on that road to recovery are staggeringly huge. In fact, those stumbling blocks are the plot points of the novel; the injury plot and the global plot are one and the same.

For one, he’s not getting proper physical therapy, so Paul never recovers to the point of being able to walk.

For another, he’s got the nasty Novril addiction to fight.

For a third, his captor is demanding he write her a novel all her own — meaning that he must be moved to a wheelchair well before he’s ready, and endure the pain of sitting with broken hips and legs. He must endure this for hours while he fights to write a novel she won’t kill him over.

Of course, the villain adds new injuries to the mix…

Annie Wilkes amputates his left foot with an axe, in a fit of rage over something Paul’s done. (In the movie, Annie, played by the brilliant Kathy Bates, hobbles Paul with a sledgehammer.)

Later, she cuts off his thumb, again for disobedience.

(While it’s tempting to see these as separate injury events, they function more as stumbling blocks in his global injury/recovery arc; although they’re mentioned, and the psychological impacts are profound, Sheldon’s story is more about his overall disability and the pickle it puts him in than the individual pieces that go wrong.)

To make matters worse, Paul develops an infection in his kidneys toward the end of the book.

 But come the Big Test, the big break where Sheldon escapes Annie’s wrath… well, that’s a trial, isn’t it? The woman has already killed a state trooper and outsmarted a half-dozen others.

Paul Sheldon has to take her down — mangled legs and all.

The image of Paul force-feeding Annie Wilkes burning pages of the manuscript she made him write is forever seared in the consciousness of anyone who reads the book (or watches the brilliant movie adaptation). Moreover, in spite of it all, Paul overcomes a formidable opponent with the tools he’s managed to wheedle from her: a typewriter, a stack of pages, a stolen can of lighter fluid, and a single match.

From an injury arc perspective? Well, in the struggle, Paul is forced to crawl on the floor. Annie grabs his still-healing stump and squeezes. He also gets glass in his arm from a broken champagne bottle.

He spends the end of the climax crawling to a closet looking for Novril, taking a small fistful before passing out. Later, when he wakes up, he’s rescued by cops coming to interview Annie Wilkes.

 In the New Normal, set nine months after his experience in Annie Wilkes’ hell house, Paul has had to undergo a reinjury (the rebreaking of his legs to allow them to heal properly this time), but now he’s at least walking; King graces us with the Clack… clack… clack… of his two walking sticks.

In fact, it becomes a horror refrain, as Paul is thinking about Annie even now. In his moments of terror in the hell house, he saw Annie everywhere: behind couches and doors… (His fear is unfounded; he’s really seeing a cross-eyed Siamese named Dumpster.)

So his New Normal is, despite everything, one of only partial disability: he can walk, on crutches, with the hope for better ability through further rehabilitation.

Now, as to Sheldon’s psychology…

Sheldon is an interesting case study for recovery because he has only one person to help him, and she’s the villain of the story, plain as day. While his (partial) recovery is in her interest — he has to be healthy enough to write for her, after all — it’s certainly not in her interest to have him recover fully.

So Paul spends the book in the space between absolutely broken and completely well, and will spend the rest of his life in that space — remember his amputations.

His addiction to Novril is his addiction to a few things: not only painless existence, but sleep and retreat.

 The Injury Arc

 Inciting Injury: Paul breaks his legs and hips in a nasty car crash.

Immediate Treatment: He’s rescued from the snowbank by his Number One Fan, Annie Wilkes.

Definitive Treatment: Annie has splinted Paul’s legs (badly), and he’s given time to recover in bed.

Rocks on the Rocky Road to Recovery: Paul must contend with a painkiller addiction, an evil captor (who is also an Angel of Death), he endures two new amputations, he’s got terrible pain, UTIs, and he must write through the pain and against the clock.

The Big Test: Paul must kill Annie Wilkes before she kills him. He succeeds!

The New Normal: Paul has Some Disability later on. (He actually lives through a medical reInjury, briefly summed up in the last chapter: his doctors have to rebreak his legs to let them set correctly.)

 What Can We Learn?

First of all, let’s just say it: none of us are ever going to write a novel as absolutely brilliant as Misery. I’m pretty sure it can’t be done. King is a bona fide genius, and that’s all there is on the topic.

What can we take away? How can we write a story like Misery?

Well…

For starters, look at how King used disability, not only by itself, but as a way to entrap his character. Annie Wilkes needs no chains to keep Paul Sheldon trapped in her house. She’s got his broken legs — and she can keep taking pieces of him any time she wants.

In fact, that’s one of the terrifying things about the story: there is always another level to sink to, whether it’s psychological or physical, always some fresh horror that can be visited upon Paul. Even when he leaves her custody he’s terrified.

But this can be seen from an opposite and empowering perspective: don’t discount the disabled hero! Paul still manages to kill Annie with what she’s given him (and what he’s stolen): a manuscript, a match, a typewriter, and some lighter fluid, in spite of all the crash and her wrath inflict upon his body. Go Paul!

Also, especially if it’s a one-off book, don’t be afraid to let your character be disabled in the end! Sheldon might be walking, but he’s walking on crutches. That’s okay — in fact, it’s perfectly appropriate. 

This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you'd like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017 and get your free bonus content, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

The Structure of an Injury Plot

The Structure of an Injury Plot

An injury plot works on one very simple three-part platform:

A character gets hurt. (The Beginning)

That character gets treatment and begins to feel better, but must navigate the world in a state of partial disability. (The Middle)

Finally, the character settles into their new normal, whether that’s back to a healthy baseline, living with some partial disability, or suffering a total disability of one body part or another. (The End)

Congratulations! This book is done. Go forth and maim your characters!

  If only…

  The good news is that sticking to this simple structure will give you a perfectly reasonable injury tale. Observe:

  While daydreaming about smashing a homer at the company softball game, Mary trips over the ottoman, falls, and breaks her wrist. She tries icing her wrist, but the pain just keeps getting worse. (The Beginning)

She goes to the ER and gets X-rays and a cast. Thoughts of the game are replaced with daily challenges: how to button her shirts, how to drive her stick shift, how to type her TPS reports at work. She solves these challenges by asking her wife for help with her shirt, swapping cars for a couple of weeks with a coworker who has an automatic, and using dictation software. (The Middle)

Eventually, Mary’s cast comes off. Her wrist still hurts when the weather changes, but mostly she can ignore it. The softball game is all but forgotten. (The End)

This progression certainly works, although it’s a little dull and, most importantly, it lacks meaning. At present, it’s a plot, but not really a story. Remember, Mary needs to change in some fundamental way for it to be a story with meaning (rather than a series of things that happen).

One way we could add some meaning is defining why the softball game is so important to her. Does she need to redeem herself for a mistake? Does she miss the glory days of her youth? Is she trying to impress her boss – or a potential side lover? (Scandal Alert! Or, a perfectly healthy polyamorous relationship.)

In short: this plot is good, or at least makes sense, but now let’s elevate this plot to the level of story.

In my experience, this is where most injury plots fall apart. There’s a very clear cause – a character is injured, usually shot – but there’s no effect on the person or on the story. It becomes simply a piece of texture, an element of “grit” that carries no weight of meaning behind it.

(If texture is something you’re interested in for your story – if you want the injury for the sake of having an injury, not as a mirror to hold up to your character – that’s okay too, as long as the injury is fairly minor. We’ll get to this in Part 8: Sweating the Small Stuff.)

  So we’ve taken a look at the Beginning, Middle, and End of Mary’s broken wrist plot, and touched on why this might matter to her. All of which is great! But let’s break down those three components into smaller pieces that will help us understand the particular quirks of an injury plot.

  There are six distinct phases of the injury portion of the injury plot.

Broken down by plot section, these are:

  The Beginning

The Inciting Injury: the moment and manner in which the character gets hurt.

The Immediate Treatment: what the character does in the moment to feel better and avoid further injury.

The Middle

The Definitive Treatment: when the character receives care which ultimately begins their healing process.

The Rocky Road to Recovery: when the character faces challenges relating to their new disability and how they cope with those problems during healing.

The End

The Big Test: the moment when a character must overcome a greater challenge related to the global plot – while still recovering from their injury.

The New Normal: when your character’s final degree of disability becomes apparent. They can have No Disability, a Partial Disability, or be Totally Disabled (for the affected body part).

You can see places where the five fundamental elements of storytelling mesh into the injury plot. The Inciting Injury is the Inciting Incident, the Progressive Complications are in the Treatment stages and the Rocky Road to Recovery, the Crisis and Climax parallel nicely with the Big Test, and the Resolution is one and the same as the New Normal.

So why the relabeling? Because it’s easy to get distracted by vague terms. The labels that are injury-specific will help you remember the pieces you need to have in place in order to make sure your audiences find your arc believable.

  Let’s take another look at Mary’s wrist fracture, through the lens of the Six Phases:

  Inciting Injury: Mary trips over the ottoman and breaks her wrist.

Immediate Treatment: Mary tries to ice her wrist and hopes it gets better, but it doesn’t.

Definitive Treatment: Mary goes to the ER, gets X-rays and a cast.

The Rocky Road to Recovery: Mary’s everyday life becomes more challenging with her broken wrist! Driving a stick shift is out, she can’t even button her own shirt, and she can’t effectively type one-handed. She solves each of these problems.

Big Test: Mary doesn’t have one… yet.

New Normal: Eventually Mary’s cast comes off, and she has a very minor Partial Disability: some lingering wrist stiffness and some aching when the weather changes.

Hopefully the first three phases are pretty clear and straightforward. But I want to talk about the Rocky Road to Recovery for a little bit, because, at least at the moment, it’s the easiest way to touch on the third rail of the story: why the injury actually matters.

Why is it, exactly, that these three tasks are so important to Mary? Essentially, what parts of herself does this injury force her to face?

Buttoning Her Shirt: As it stands, this is just an inconvenience, one that will go away in a few weeks. But what if Mary is very independent, and hates anyone – even her wife – seeing her vulnerable and weak? Why would she feel this way? Maybe when she was younger, Mary had to take care of her aging grandmother, and she always hated buttoning her grandmother’s blouse. She always vowed that she would never get to that stage in her life – and yet here she is. Maybe she’s coming up on a birthday and fearing her older age.

(Note that these concepts are both very natural and very ablist. On the one hand, change is extremely hard, especially where it concerns things we take for granted, such as our ability to do anything we choose. On the other hand, the mindset that becoming disabled is an awful thing implies that the lives of disabled people are awful, which doesn’t necessarily follow. Be aware of what you’re writing as you write it!)

Swapping Cars: Again, this is an inconvenience – until we know why it’s a big deal for Mary. Is she super proud of her ability to drive a stick shift? Is she super proud of her car as a status symbol – and now she’s swapping her this-year’s Lexus for her coworker’s twelve-year-old Civic? What if she’s a neat freak, and the person she’s switching cars with is a total slob? Or, what if she just got her car – by inheritance, and she has conversations with her car as though it’s her lost parent?

In any of these cases, why does it matter?

Typing and Work: Why does it matter so much that Mary has difficulty typing? Is she on the verge of losing her job – hence her burning desire to impress at the softball game? Is it her dream job she’s at risk of losing, one she’s fought to get? Does she feel like an imposter, like she’s gotten someplace she doesn’t actually deserve, and maybe losing the job is some cosmic retribution for her masquerade? Or maybe she’s self-conscious about her voice (why? An utterly embarrassing failure at a school talent show when she was a teen?), and doesn’t want to use dictation software where other people can hear – but it’s the only way to keep doing her work?

As you can see, this is the single best place where an injury plot can teach us about Mary. With just three relatively small challenges, we learn about her grandmother’s illness, her connection with her lost parent, and her sense of being an imposter at a job she doesn’t deserve (even if she does). All of a sudden, Mary isn’t just a woman who tripped over an ottoman – she’s a person, with a story. Maybe we even feel like we know her. Maybe we identify with these pieces of her we’ve discovered through her struggle.

The magic of storytelling is that if what happens to the character matters to the character, and we know why that is, then what happens will matter to your audience as well.

In the next few sections, we’re going to break down each part of the injury plot more thoroughly, including the way some stories, great and small, have approached them. I’m also going to give you a rough sketch of a story made especially for this book that will illustrate the way each portion of the injury plot might work.

This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you’d like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.

xoxo, Samantha Keel

The Structure of an Injury Plot was originally published on ScriptMedicBlog.com

[scriptmedic]

The Structure of an Injury Plot

(This post is excerpted from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters.)

The Structure of an Injury Plot

An injury plot works on one very simple three-part platform:

A character gets hurt. (The Beginning)

That character gets treatment and begins to feel better, but must navigate the world in a state of partial disability. (The Middle)

And finally, the character settles into their new normal, whether that’s back to a healthy baseline, living with some partial disability, or suffering a total disability of one body part or another. (The End)

Congratulations! This book is done. Go forth and maim your characters!

If only…

 The good news is that sticking to this simple structure will give you a perfectly reasonable injury tale. Observe:

 While daydreaming about smashing a homer at the company softball game, Mary trips over the ottoman, falls, and breaks her wrist. She tries icing her wrist, but the pain just keeps getting worse. (The Beginning)

She goes to the ER and gets X-rays and a cast. Thoughts of the game are replaced with daily challenges: how to button her shirts, how to drive her stick shift, how to type her TPS reports at work. She solves these challenges by asking her wife for help with her shirt, swapping cars for a couple of weeks with a coworker who has an automatic, and using dictation software. (The Middle)

Eventually, Mary’s cast comes off. Her wrist still hurts when the weather changes, but mostly she can ignore it. The softball game is all but forgotten. (The End)

 This progression certainly works, although it’s a little dull and, most importantly, it lacks meaning. At present, it’s a plot, but not really a story. Remember, Mary needs to change in some fundamental way for it to be a story with meaning (rather than a series of things that happen).

One way we could add some meaning is defining why the softball game is so important to her. Does she need to redeem herself for a mistake? Does she miss the glory days of her youth? Is she trying to impress her boss – or a potential side lover? (Scandal Alert! Or, a perfectly healthy polyamorous relationship….)

In short: this plot is good, or at least makes sense, but now let’s elevate this plot to the level of story.

In my experience, this is where most injury plots fall apart. There’s a very clear cause – a character is injured, usually shot – but there’s no effect on the person or on the story. It becomes simply a piece of texture, an element of “grit” that carries no weight of meaning behind it.

(If texture is something you’re interested in for your story – if you want the injury for the sake of having an injury, not as a mirror to hold up to your character – that’s okay too, as long as the injury is fairly minor. We’ll get to this in Part 8: Sweating the Small Stuff.)

 So we’ve taken a look at the Beginning, Middle, and End of Mary’s broken wrist plot, and touched on why this might matter to her. All of which is great! But let’s break down those three components into smaller pieces that will help us understand the particular quirks of an injury plot.

 There are six distinct phases of the injury portion of the injury plot.

 Broken down by plot section, these are:

  The Beginning

The Inciting Injury: the moment and manner in which the character gets hurt.

The Immediate Treatment: what the character does in the moment to feel better and avoid further injury.

 The Middle

The Definitive Treatment: when the character receives care which ultimately begins their healing process.

The Rocky Road to Recovery: when the character faces challenges relating to their new disability and how they cope with those problems during healing.

 The End

The Big Test: the moment when a character must overcome a greater challenge related to the global plot – while still recovering from their injury.

The New Normal: when your character’s final degree of disability becomes apparent. They can have No Disability, a Partial Disability, or be Totally Disabled (for the affected body part).

 You can see places where the five fundamental elements of storytelling mesh into the injury plot. The Inciting Injury is the Inciting Incident, the Progressive Complications are in the Treatment stages and the Rocky Road to Recovery, the Crisis and Climax parallel nicely with the Big Test, and the Resolution is one and the same as the New Normal.

So why the   relabeling? Because it’s easy to get distracted by vague terms. The labels that are injury-specific will help you remember the pieces you need to have in place in order to make sure your audiences find your arc believable.

 Let’s take another look at Mary’s wrist fracture, through the lens of the Six Phases:

 Inciting Injury: Mary trips over the ottoman and breaks her wrist.

Immediate Treatment: Mary tries to ice her wrist and hopes it gets better, but it doesn’t.

Definitive Treatment: Mary goes to the ER, gets X-rays and a cast.

The Rocky Road to Recovery: Mary’s everyday life becomes more challenging with her broken wrist! Driving a stick shift is out, she can’t even button her own shirt, and she can’t effectively type one-handed. She solves each of these problems.

Big Test: Mary doesn’t have one… yet.

New Normal: Eventually Mary’s cast comes off, and she has a very minor Partial Disability: some lingering wrist stiffness and some aching when the weather changes.

 Hopefully the first three phases are pretty clear and straightforward. But I want to talk about the Rocky Road to Recovery for a little bit, because, at least at the moment, it’s the easiest way to touch on the third rail of the story: why this the injury actually matters.

Why is it, exactly, that these three tasks are so important to Mary? Essentially, what parts of herself does this injury force her to face?

Buttoning Her Shirt: As it stands, this is just an inconvenience, one that will go away in a few weeks. But what if Mary is very independent, and hates anyone – even her wife – seeing her vulnerable and weak? Why would she feel this way? Maybe when she was younger, Mary had to take care of her aging grandmother, and she always hated buttoning her grandmother’s blouse. She always vowed that she would never get to that stage in her life – and yet here she is. Maybe she’s coming up on a birthday and fearing her older age.

(Note that these concepts are both very natural and very ablist. On the one hand, change is extremely hard, especially where it concerns things we take for granted, such as our ability to do anything we choose. On the other hand, the mindset that becoming disabled is an awful thing implies that the lives of disabled people are awful, which doesn’t necessarily follow. Be aware of what you’re writing as you write it!)

Swapping Cars: Again, this is an inconvenience – until we know why it’s a big deal for Mary. Is she super proud of her ability to drive a stick shift? Is she super proud of her car as a status symbol – and now she’s swapping her this-year’s Lexus for her coworker’s twelve-year-old Civic? What if she’s a neat freak, and the person she’s switching cars with is a total slob? Or, what if she just got her car – by inheritance, and she has conversations with her car as though it’s her lost parent?

In any of these cases, why does it matter?

Typing and Work: Why does it matter so much that Mary has difficulty typing? Is she on the verge of losing her job – hence her burning desire to impress at the softball game? Is it her dream job she’s at risk of losing, one she’s fought to get? Does she feel like an imposter, like she’s gotten someplace she doesn’t actually deserve, and maybe losing the job is some cosmic retribution for her masquerade? Or maybe she’s self-conscious about her voice (why? An utterly embarrassing failure at a school talent show when she was a teen?), and doesn’t want to use dictation software where other people can hear – but it’s the only way to keep doing her work?

As you can see, this is the single best place where an injury plot can teach us about Mary. With just three relatively small challenges, we learn about her grandmother’s illness, her connection with her lost parent, and her sense of being an imposter at a job she doesn’t deserve (even if she does). All of a sudden, Mary isn’t just a woman who tripped over an ottoman – she’s a person, with a story. Maybe we even feel like we know her. Maybe we identify with these pieces of her we’ve discovered through her struggle.

The magic of storytelling is that if what happens to the character matters to the character, and we know why that is, then what happens will matter to your audience as well.

In the next few sections, we’re going to break down each part of the injury plot more thoroughly, including the way some stories, great and small, have approached them. I’m also going to give you a rough sketch of a story made especially for this book that will illustrate the way each portion of the injury plot might work.

This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you'd like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you'd like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

How Plot Differs from Story

(Excerpted from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters)

Before we even start to look at injury plots specifically, it’s worth taking a good strong look at what stories are overall. This definition applies not only to an injury story, but to all stories.

Ready? Here goes:

A plot is what happens – the outside events of the tale.

A story is the change a character undergoes when faced with mounting obstacles and the consequences of their own choices.

Shawn Coyne (The Story Grid) understands that there are always two tales, woven together to form a truly compelling story. There’s the External Plot, the events of the story. Then there’s the Internal Plot, the changes that the character undergoes. His chief example is the novel Silence of the Lambs, where the External Plot is a thriller – but the Internal Plot is about Clarice Starling’s disillusionment with her budding career at the FBI.

Lisa Cron (Story Genius) calls this second part the “third rail,” the part that our readers glom onto instantly, the emotional fire that gives your story oomph. This is the crux of storytelling.

In the end, we don’t care what happens.

In the end, we care how people behave and change.

Without the internal aspect of story construction, no one is going to care about your story. You can have the biggest, most epic battle in the history of storytelling. But unless we see how individual people are affected, it’s just cool words on a page – words that may dazzle us with their brilliant prose or wondrous events, but which fail to give us the emotional satisfaction we crave.

So whenever you construct a story – any part, any scene – you need to focus not on the events, but on how those events affect the characters. Ultimately the furniture can be as cool as can be, but we want to read about people (or people-like robots, aliens, sentient tacos, etc.).

Kurt Vonnegut taught that there are only six emotional arcs available in all of storytelling. Wikipedia describes a total of 36 plots available to storytellers. Yet from these simple and repetitive arcs can come the entire range of human emotion.

This post is an excerpt from the forthcoming Maim Your Characters, out September 4th, 2017 from Even Keel Press. If you’d like to read a 100-page sample of the book, click here. If you’d like to preorder signed print or digital copies of the book before 9/4/2017, or claim Executive Producer status of the upcoming Blood on the Page, click here.

xoxo, Samantha Keel

disclaimer

How Plot Differs from Story was originally published on ScriptMedicBlog.com

[scriptmedic]

Would you ship a physical copy of Main Your Characters internationally? I live in Canada and don't like ebooks.

YES. Gotcha covered, fam. Preorders are available with worldwide shipping. It’s expensive, unfortunately, but it’s absolutely doable. 

US orders are available either by Media Mail or with express shipping. (IndieGoGo lists these as different “perks” at the same price point.)  

[Preorder Link] 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[scriptmedic]

Coming September 4th, 2017: Maim Your Characters!

Increase Realism.  Raise the Stakes.  Tell Better Stories. 

Coming 9/4/2017! 

What Is It? 

It’s a ScriptMedic book! 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction is a book designed to help teach you the ins and outs of injuring characters and integrating them into your story. 

The book is nearly 400 pages and is jam-packed with helpful, useful information!

In this book, we’ll.... 

Talk about the five fundamental pieces of what makes a story. 

Learn the six phases of an injury plot, with a dedicated break-down of each. Each section contains examples from popular media and a homebrew, custom-made example starring the blog’s trauma mascot, Billy Badbones!

Discuss magical healing, and why it poses such a threat to your story, as well as how injuries might work in different Reality genres. 

Examine not one, not two, but nine different stories to see how they used injuries! Where did they do well, and where did they go wrong? 

Construct an injury plot together from the ground up, including learning why certain injuries will or won’t work for the story we’re trying to tell.

Plus, a Sneak Preview! 

If Maim Your Characters is the why and the how of injuring characters, then the upcoming Blood on the Page is the what. A book of 31 injuries and 9 articles of injury wisdom, Blood on the Page is coming later this year. 

Included at the end of Maim Your Characters is a sneak peek at Blood on the Page, including two injuries and an article of wisdom. 

Preorders Are OPEN! 

The book launches on 9/4/2017, but the preoders have already begun! Quantities are limited for print editions. Secure your copy before they’re gone baby gone!

[Click Here to Pre-Order Your Copy Today!] 

xoxo, Samantha Keel