Thread: How do others write ugly things

Just my personal opinion as a reader (and all reader opinions are likely to be different): I don't really care to know the actual physical details.

Just as in a horror movie, I don't really care to see the gore of a knife slashing open someone's flesh.

What interests me the most is the emotion. The suspense, the fear, the denial, the feeling of helplessness and despair.

Here's a quasi-rape scene (I use the term "quasi-rape" because it's more like an unexpected seduction / betrayal, where he seduces her and then only afterwards does she feel she was raped), by Jennifer Egan. Notice how she doesn't dwell on the actual act, but just gives a few glimpses here and there.

Originally Posted by Jennifer Egan

Diana was as stunned as if he had slapped her. Gently she tried to pull away, but Sonny was running his palms along her back and kissing her neck as if this were all something they had agreed on. She tried to take it as a joke. "I've heard of self-contradiction," she said, "but this is outrageous." Sonny didn't pause... (He) eased her onto the concrete floor, pushing a folded rag behind her head. She was crying by then, and tears ran from her eyes into both ears. He felt heavy and strange in her arms. His belt buckle struck the concrete--once, then again, over and over again with a thick blunt sound. She closed her eyes at the end. When Sonny was done he stood up, slapped the dust from his hands, and picked up his paintbrush. Diana touched the floor beneath her, thinking she might have bled, though there was no reason. She ran through the rain back to her house, convinced her life would never be the same.

In my opinion, the reader's imagination is a useful tool in visceral scenes. Sometimes the more you leave out, the more the reader can fill in the gaps. If you put everything out there up in the open, it can become clinical and "sterile"... But if there's a sense of mystery about it, leaving things up to the imagination, it can seem more awful, because of the very things that are clearly going unsaid.

Just my two cents. Brave of you to tackle such a subject in regards to your past. Hope all goes well with it. Cheers

I would WALK TOWARD THE FEAR.

If it must be in there, I would set a whole day aside and stream of consciousness the whole thing out of me until I have twenty...thirty...fifty pages. You'll have gotten over it by then and those fifty pages will yield the small material you need.

Sam
This story is not about rape. The rape scene is an important but small part of the whole story. His penis is just one of the tools he uses to degrade and torture a girl before she dies. He wants to inflict pain then release her by killing. And yes I did write it too fast. I wrote it too soon. I don't even know the name of that victim yet. But I knew it would be the hardest part to write so I started it early. You are right. I wrote that scene too fast just to get it started. I know it needs more. That's why I joined this site and posted it. I needed people to push me into being a better writer. This way I have time to go back and rewrite the scene again and again till I get it right. I have read everything people here have written and an still rewriting that scene. I can do this right. I do own the wrords. I just need the push to get them out. Thanks for the push.

If it needs to be there then write it. The question is: does the reader need every gory detail? If they do, and I'm not sure why they would, then what you wrote was pretty horrific from my POV. Maybe needs a rewrite but the scene was quite vivid in my head.

Alternatively, if the killer/rapist is the MC then do it from his POV, perhaps show his thoughts as its happening (his compulsive desire, mixed with a knowledge that its wrong?). If the victim only appears in your novel during the rape scene then it may be a bit much doing it from her POV.

my main question is: what are you trying to show here?

If it is something about your main character: his cold, clinical approach or - at the other end of the spectrum - his losing control to a blood frenzy, then you should be focusing on what he is seeing and feeling and doing and why. If this is just a set-up, where all that is important is an example of him doing the act and the girl is the sacrificial lamb - a character you created just to be killed (you sadistic monster) to advance the plot, then use a lot more more physical detail without cluttering it with his or her emotion. If you are writing a horror story and want to induce feelings of horror in the reader, then stick with her perspective, but go all in and stretch it out to give the reader maximum horror - that's what they want.

I would echo the previous reader - necks bleed a lot, even for superficial cuts, and although everyone doesn't know that, everyone has seen people getting their throats cut in movies. I think the expected result would be for her to think her throat just got cut, and (if she didn't faint) to scream and thrash around in the agony of impending death until she realized that she was still alive in spite of the bleeding.

If you're interested, there's a rape scene in the last story I posted in the Workshop:

http://www.writingforums.com/writers...e-warning.html

It starts at about this line:

As they approached Justine’s, Amy withdrew her hand from his and veered across the dry, flat expanse of sand toward the dunes.

I think there are some similarities -- so you might find it interesting.

It is interesting that there is a fairly wide range of how mental images physically and emotionally effect humans. I am more thoughful than emotional, but visualization of happy endings in movies or internally while reading books makes me cry almost universally. Sap-o-rama. On the other hand, I am able to discuss and visualize all manner of truly sickening disgusting things without any physical response, while if I describe them to a certain friend, she may hurl on the spot or at least have a nausea-induced gag reaction, in spite of the fact that she is a combat photographer who spent months in Baghdad.

People differ in so many ways. For me, I am not a burier. And while I don't stick my finger in flames to feel the pain, I find it therapeutic to write about bad things that have happened to me. It is a way of getting control over them. I am not in the "you can never know what it's like until it happens to you camp". I am in the "let me tell you what it was like, let me give you the tools to understand and feel it" camp.

Originally Posted by KathyReynolds

Sam
This story is not about rape. The rape scene is an important but small part of the whole story. His penis is just one of the tools he uses to degrade and torture a girl before she dies. He wants to inflict pain then release her by killing. And yes I did write it too fast. I wrote it too soon. I don't even know the name of that victim yet. But I knew it would be the hardest part to write so I started it early. You are right. I wrote that scene too fast just to get it started. I know it needs more. That's why I joined this site and posted it. I needed people to push me into being a better writer. This way I have time to go back and rewrite the scene again and again till I get it right. I have read everything people here have written and an still rewriting that scene. I can do this right. I do own the wrords. I just need the push to get them out. Thanks for the push.

There are some who have voiced their opinion that they don't need to read the gory details. That's not what I was suggesting. What I intimated was that handling a scene like this with kid gloves isn't, in my opinion, the way to do it. You don't have to go into every detail to forensic level, but I would expect at least the mere mention of how horrendous the act is. For instance, you can have her see or feel blood around her vagina. You don't need to show us how it came to be there. We can fill in those blanks. What I'm suggesting is to not paper over how horrible the event and how scarred it will leave the woman.