I’m taking a break from writing until tonight since there’s nothing on television tonight. This is for two reasons. One is that my son will be home within 20 minutes, so I can’t get my chapter section done in time.
The other is because I just can’t take this scene any more. It isn’t bad and I’m only 2 pages into it, but it’s just . . . wow. The Lich showing a spine in the previous scene was one thing. This is . . . let me explain:
Around the fourth book, I had a villain captured one of the heroes and torture her, but it was rather mild. Also, it was Nyx who comes off as being someone that can take it with an arrogant smile and plot her revenge. This time it’s Sari and it’s miles beyond what was done to Nyx. She’s in her mind while her body is being experimented on and tortured by one of the newer villains. I wanted this guy to come off as an evil, heartless monster, but this is driving home the fact long before I expected to do it. You see, she’s feeling the pain and the injuries are appearing randomly as she tries to figure out what is going on. I’m really wanting to kill this guy off for doing this to Sari. Doing anything to Sari is like kicking a puppy, but this is at the level of kicking a puppy into a vat of acid. It’s just rough and soul-snapping and this is ONLY the first draft. I still have to finish writing the scene, but I keep jumping between crying and wanting to throttle my villain. Worst part is that this makes too much sense for him to do.
There is a question here: has anyone ever had a villain that went too far for their sensitivities, but it fit them so well that you couldn’t rationalize changing it? I’m at that point here. I don’t want to put Sari through this, but this is what the bastard would do.
For now, I have to stop before I approach my son’s bus with a few tears in my eyes and have to explain things to the bus driver.
Legends of Windemere 
Oh, gosh, the current villain in this new book I’m writing is beyond cruel and insensitive. I’m certainly not changing it. If anything, I’m intensifying it in the revisions. Those are my favorite villains anyway, the ones so cruel they don’t even need a justification for being cruel because it wouldn’t explain anything anyway.
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This is my first villain to go this far and I had a lot of nasty stuff planned for him. I think the fact that he’s doing this to the one of the happier characters is making it tougher. He’s not actually in the scene and it’s just her trying to figure out what’s going on while parts of her body break and fix themselves. I think I captured her terror and pain better than I expected.
This might just go down as the most horrible thing this character does. I was banking on his final act of evil being the worst, but I think he’s setting the bar pretty high for himself.
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I understand completely, sometimes no matter how you approach the scene, you know it has to be a certain way, even when it is heart wrenching to write. Each of the characters are part of you, so you feel the scene as you fight to type the words. I sympathise, I have a scene that strikes a nerve but the story would be incomplete without it. Be brave and take the time you need to do the scene justice.
Life is a journey, sometimes you just have to go there!
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Thanks. That’s exactly it. The strange thing is that this isn’t the first hero being tortured scene I’ve written into the series. I’m thinking it’s the sheer brutality being done to such a happy, positive character. The victim isn’t taking it as well as her friends have. They showed defiance and resisted showing their pain. This one isn’t hiding a thing, so the scene is filled with terror and pain without the softening of a defiant nature. Like you said, I’m going to have to take my time and muscle through the scene to do it justice.
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Sounds painful.
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It really is and it’s starting to make me feel like I need my brain washed out with soap and cayenne peppers.
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Honestly? The nastier the villain the better – in my opinion. But you don’t want to push yourself too far. Laurell K. Hamilton killed a character the first Anita Blake novel and it tore her up. After she finished crying she swore to pretty much never do that again. So the moral here is … please don’t become LKH.
The villain is your character, and if he is moving you this much, imagine how he is going to move your reader who is also (hopefully) just as emotionally invested as you. As long as the villain gets his due for what he did to poor Sari, then I can only see this as being as good thing, even if it is hard.
This is easy for me to say, but I can never lift a pen against Pharun.
And as far as explaining it to the bus driver … free advertising! ;D
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Didn’t know that about LKH. Sari isn’t going to die from this. I’m a big fan of doing everything, but killing a character unless it’s suits the plot. Never been a fan of shock value death. I’m just not sure how Sari is going to come out of this. It’s hard to think of her as anything, but the happy, friendly . . . I just realized she gets to go one-on-one with this villain at the end of the book after she gets a massive power upgrade. I entirely forgot about that and now I worry for the fate of my villain.
Pharun really is hard to go up against even if you’re the author, huh?
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Oh, poor Sari! I don’t like it when villains are too, well, villainous. It makes the reader hate them (okay, so maybe that’s the point) but it could also be a turn-off to some readers.
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Just a thought, but maybe you could sick him on Malcolm. 😉
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Not sure I want to give this guy any more attention and power than he already has. I could lend you Clyde. 🙂
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That’s what I’m worried about, but I can’t play the scene out any way. This guy was made to be despised. In the game, we hated him more than the main villain.
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I understand that sometimes you have to have a really bad, bad guy, and I suppose that if he gets punished (or killed) for doing whatever he did to Sari, everything will turn out fine.
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He’ll get killed eventually after taking some massive beatings. Though, as I just mentioned in another comment, Sari gets a one-on-one fight with him at the very end of the book. Technically, she’s the first champion to actually fight him and this early scene is going to make that very interesting.
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I have an antagonist who will be responsible for a character’s death in the chapter that I am currently working on, but as bad as he is, what is going to happen to him at the hands of a character who is on the protagonist’s side is far worse. In fact, a key part of my planned multi-book arc is my narrator realizing that the person he is working for is more of a monster than any of the alleged “villains” out there.
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That’s going to be a hard thing to accept. In a battle between devils, good really doesn’t factor in.
This villain is going to have a lot of karma coming his way. In fact, I have one plan where I get to kill him twice in the series.
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I like the idea of killing him twice in the series! I think that when our heart wrenches while writing a scene we know that we will evoke a response from the writer. As to if it’s too much, I can honestly say the one or two times I’ve run into that while reading I simply skip the “too much” and continue reading! Go where your heart leads you Charles 🙂
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Well, it’s leading through the scene where she’s trying to hold a conversation with a god while her body random snaps or dives into mind-numbing pain. Oddly enough, the two characters slated to give him his two deaths aren’t that close to Sari.
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Hmmmm…that is interesting. But they say Karma is a you know what!!! 🙂
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Definitely. This guy is going to have enough bad karma that killing his twice is practically mandatory.
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I like how you think, Sir Charles!!! Definitely glad I let you keep your head! lol
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It’d grow back over night anyway. 😉
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I’m yet to tear up over anything I’ve written, but I’ve been disturbed, freaked out and terrified by my writing, sometimes all at the same time!
In the first draft of Night Link I had to write multiple scenes where the main character gets an anxiety attack. As someone who used to get them often and has only had one in the past 12+ months, it was a strange experience opening up that door again and getting it right. I’ll have to do it properly when I edit it, too. There’s also a scene at the end where he falls into a ditch and has to claw his way out of the thorny hell while the inch long fiends tear into his hands. I made is nice and gritty. 😀
Whenever I get around to finally writing up the first draft of the second book in my epic fantasy series, the ending will most certainly be the first to make me tear up. Even now I can just sense it…
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Don’t you love it when you just know you’re going to bring yourself to tears?
This scene was unexpected because I didn’t originally plan on the torture part. It was a last minute idea that has worked extremely well. Probably too well. I do a lot of emotional scenes where a character is in anguish or pushed to their mental limits, which takes a toll on me. The first book is rather simple and mild compared to some of the later events.
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It’s an incomparable surreal feeling to be so heavily effected by your own writing. It’s one of those rare emotions in life that so many people just won’t experience.
I think it’s the unexpected ones that are so effecting, too. The one in Night Link that I mentioned with the thorns was shocking for both me and the character. He just cut across a golf course to catch up with the villain who escaped in a car with his lover. He was meant to intercept the vehicle and save her. Next thing I knew he was nearly run down and fighting his way out of a hellish ditch, only to be met by the villain at the top. Damn, that twist gave me chills…
Apologies for the rant, it’s currently 4am and I can’t sleep. Throw in my need to edit, which finally starts next week, and you’ve got one rambling writer!
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No problem. Though, I’m about to pass out in a few minutes. Finally managed to finish that scene and ended it with a foreboding atmosphere. Probably won’t go back to the character for another chapter or two. I’m still deciding on if I should spread the dream sequences out until she wakes up or if I should stop them when she’s no longer being tortured. Maybe I can switch them to pleasant dreams once she’s back with her friends, but still asleep. It’s too late and I’m too tired to figure this out.
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Time for your own dream sequence. 😛
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You got sucked into the character you’ve created.
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More like being disgusted. I’d hate to be sucked into someone this disturbing and psychotic.
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Could you maybe … allude to what’s happening to Sari, but not explain it outright? That way readers would still get the gist of what happened to her, and be righteously outraged, but they wouldn’t have to suffer through the torture scene. Just a thought 🙂
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Dang. I wrote a long response and WordPress simply deleted it.
Basically, I need to maintain the oomph of the scene and I’ve already had it that she isn’t bleeding. The scene doesn’t show her actually being tortured, but she’s in her mind trying to figure out what is happening to her body. Sudden agony or a limb twisting unnaturally are what happens. The worst is a bone protruding through her skin, but I might get rid of that in editing.
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It’s perfectly valid to allow a villain to cross the line, but, the question is whether or not to foil the villain, but, a villain gets only so many chances before he must be dealt with, and, even fewer when he beats the heroes into a life altering crippling position before you overplay your hand.
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Thankfully, this only caused mental trauma and he’ll be dealt with at some point. I’m starting this guy out as a really nasty guy. There aren’t many places he can go from here, but I need him for the next 5-6 books at least.
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