How to make a repeating plot "slice" not annoying

I am a fan of questioning your givens. You don't want to kill anyone? Fine. But what plot point is served by having your characters physically injured?

• Does it remove them from the action? Have someone miss a bus/train/plane, oversleep, trapped in a stuck elevator.
• Does it make them vulnerable? PTSD, reaction to someone else's injury, romantic relationship breakup, religious crisis.
• Does it show the strength of the enemy? The enemy isn't just attacking your characters, and can be shown leveling a city or killing civilians.
• Does it show some facet of your character's personality? There has to be another way to demonstrate perserverance, endurance, resilience, etc.

Figure out why you want them injured and you may be able to come up with a way to accomplish the goal in another fashion. That will perforce mix things up.

posted over 6 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1

Make every injury worse than the last.

The first time you get badly hurt, you may think its the worst pain you've ever experienced. (You may look back on it later and think you overreacted, but even so.).

The next injury is worse, more horrific, could potential leave you in a cast for weeks.

The next time, lying on the ground, you think you're going to lose the limb afterwards.

The next time, lying on the ground, you DO lose the limb, before you can get to the medics.

Etc.

posted over 6 years ago

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Shawn V. Wilson‭

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Powered armour of some description is a boon to any author who doesn't want to kill off characters, the armour can take debilitating damage without ever harming the occupant making it easy to put characters out of action without killing them. With high-tech armour there are so many things that can go wrong that you can go a long way without repeating yourself. In a fantasy setting there's less you can do in terms of the root cause (i.e. it almost always comes down to magic) but endless different descriptions and details that can be applied. In fact when it comes to magic there are a lot of non-lethal effects that are kind of "standard", putting people to sleep, locking them in their body with Hold Person and similar effects so you don't need to do any damage in the first place.

Alternative approach:

Now while you don't have to kill people to write a good story by the same token you can and still have them around. Dead characters don't have to stay dead. One of the best moments in Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber comes at the end of The Courts of Chaos when one of the Nine Princes who's been "dead" for several books comes back to save the day. Now in that example the set up is exquisite and spans about 600 pages and you miss most of the clues the first time you read it but you do understand that there is at least one missing piece before the big reveal. This question has some good material if you're looking to use that particular mechanism.

posted over 6 years ago

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Ash‭

320 reputation 9 41 62 0

If X gets hurt in a fight, recovers, gets hurt in a new fight, recovers again, etc. that is going to start to get boring.

If you want to avoid boring your readers, fights need to have consequences. In your story, that's not death, but it could be a lasting injury, or a damaged plot relevant item.

X doesn't have to recover, or not completely. Especially if they're getting hurt badly. Even with sci-fi medicine, plenty of injuries probably can't be healed instantly. Not to mention the mental traumas such as PTSD that can happen.

If there are lasting effects from the fight that affect X in later scenes, it gives the fight scene a better sense of purpose. Maybe the leg wound they got in chapter one prevents them from climbing to safety in chapter three. Or the concussion they got means they're unable to drive and can't follow the bad guy.

posted over 6 years ago

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prosepraise‭

50 reputation 0 9 10 0

In real-life warfare, number of wounded normally exceeds significantly the number of fatalities. Which is good.

There is, however, far more going on when a soldier is wounded than "get him into cover". Consider field surgery under fire. Consider triage (that's when your medic needs to decide which one of several wounded soldiers he helps first). There's getting pinned down and waiting for rescue/reinforcement, and wondering whether help would arrive before your wounded friend dies. There's said wounded friend screaming in pain while you're trying to keep you both safe. And then he's not screaming any more, which is worse.

Once a wounded soldier gets evacuated to a hospital, there's his friends' concern for him: will he make it to the hospital alive? Will he recover? It can be a while before the soldiers in the field get any news, and once they do, the news might be "he's in a coma, we don't know anything more yet." It's very hard to function when you don't know whether your friend would live or die, and yet those soldiers have to.

Then there's the recovery. Consider dealing with loss of limb. Consider learning to walk again following an extended period of not being able to. Consider the loss of basic human dignity, when due to a spinal injury, for example, an injured man must lie prone for a month - bowel movements still need to happen.

Or, there are the light wounds - the lying in a hospital while your friends are out there, risking their lives, and you can't wait to get back out there, not because you crave the fighting, but because you know you're needed, and one of your comrades might get killed because you weren't there to watch his back. While at the same time, your family are all around your bed, so happy you are not right now where the fighting is, so glad you're alive.

And don't forget the mental trauma: from getting shot, from seeing your friend getting shot, from being the medic who couldn't save everyone, from walking around covered in somebody else's blood.

None of it is easy. If you describe the effects and consequences with honesty, it won't get boring, but would instead build up tension. And as you can see, there are many diverse ways you can treat injuries, so the situation need never get repetitive.

posted over 6 years ago

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Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

Ditch the cliché altogether. Stop talking about recovery or pain, stop any worry of the character not recovering, even if they are screaming don't let that affect the other characters. Treat it like humans really would treat such a world, as one in which injuries are temporary and fully recoverable and everybody knows it, including the injured.

That would make sense in this world, and the reader can sympathize. You can still have harrowing danger in such a world, if Joe gets exploded and is unconscious, you still need to limit further damage by injecting the STASIS agent and and get him back to cover and evac to a hospital for repairs. But his comrades can be braver and take injury themselves saving Joe; because some of them have been shot, cut, smashed, blown up and are so accustomed to it, they can keep moving anyway and will.

Don't try to have it both ways. Embrace your world: Technology has advanced to the point lethal injury is a risk but exceedingly rare, so soldiers and everybody else have adapted to this truth and fight and think accordingly, with this in mind. The risk of death is no longer what drives the tension; the risk of losing and the dire consequences of losing must drive the battle. The temporary loss of heroes that provide unique and valuable skills becomes an obstacle to victory that the team doesn't know how to surmount. Recriminations about letting Joe get injured, compromising the mission, cause interpersonal team conflict and resentments.

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

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