STABBED IN THE BACK!
The blade slams home. The searing pain is intense, but strangely it’s not burning your kidneys or the area of your spine where you’d expect it to. Instead it’s your heart that’s left ripped open and bleeding…
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this very human phenomenon and I’m wondering how a writer could construct a scene to capture this very real and totally raw emotion on the page. I mean, the cut of betrayal your heroine might sustain from someone she placed her trust in isn’t the same as being hit by someone she shouldn’t have trusted at all. Think about it. If I had to put a visual analogy to this I would say the wound the heroine withstood from the person she put her faith, who consequently betrayed her, cut less like a knife and more like a scalpel. Making an invisible incision that’s precise. Quiet and yet, deep enough to pierce straight through all her protective layers. While the injury she sustains from the person she shouldn’t have trusted at all? I see that as more as an OJ Simpson (crime of passion) type attack. You know? Strike anywhere you think you can to hurt. Sure the blade might tear the skin in places. The metal might touch bone a time or two, but nothing in this attack can compare to the other because your heroine was prepared for it.
Hm. That being the case, there’s all kinds of emotional mining to do with this type of scene isn’t there? Heartache and anger are the forerunners I’d think. Because if I were going to write this scene I’d be smart enough to know that it’s what isn’t on the page that’s important. Sure I could describe the pain and fury. The outrage, even for what happened in my made-up scene, but that’s too easy. That’s external happenings. Yeah, I’d make the situation bad and my reader would no doubt sympathize with my heroine on some level, but not on the level that would make it human if I left it right at that. No, if I wanted a visceral reaction from my readers to emotionally connect with my character I’d start digging into the internal. I’d highlight the sense of grief and loss my heroine has to endure from this page forward because she’ll never be the same as she was the page before. It’s that simple and completely complicated at the same time. Change is never easy. And forced change a person has no control over? Brutal.
Fortunately, if I were writing this scene I’d make sure that my heroine was a survivor. Oh, she’d have been knocked off her feet initial, but she’d suck it up without complaining and refocus with a vengeance. In fact, I’d probably write this so that her OJ Simpson type attacker would look a little naïve in the eyes of my readers. I mean, surely that character would have to know that I’d write this so that the villain will get theirs in the end. (They always do) But really, and I don’t want go all Freud on you here because, meh, it’s only fiction. My heroine would know the second after the incident happened that she already had her revenge on good old “OJ”. You see, the win for my heroine would come exactly at the moment that person felt the need to attack her in the first place.
Wow, there’s two more things to add to my emotional mining list. Fear and insecurity. Kewl.
Riley.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this very human phenomenon and I’m wondering how a writer could construct a scene to capture this very real and totally raw emotion on the page. I mean, the cut of betrayal your heroine might sustain from someone she placed her trust in isn’t the same as being hit by someone she shouldn’t have trusted at all. Think about it. If I had to put a visual analogy to this I would say the wound the heroine withstood from the person she put her faith, who consequently betrayed her, cut less like a knife and more like a scalpel. Making an invisible incision that’s precise. Quiet and yet, deep enough to pierce straight through all her protective layers. While the injury she sustains from the person she shouldn’t have trusted at all? I see that as more as an OJ Simpson (crime of passion) type attack. You know? Strike anywhere you think you can to hurt. Sure the blade might tear the skin in places. The metal might touch bone a time or two, but nothing in this attack can compare to the other because your heroine was prepared for it.
Hm. That being the case, there’s all kinds of emotional mining to do with this type of scene isn’t there? Heartache and anger are the forerunners I’d think. Because if I were going to write this scene I’d be smart enough to know that it’s what isn’t on the page that’s important. Sure I could describe the pain and fury. The outrage, even for what happened in my made-up scene, but that’s too easy. That’s external happenings. Yeah, I’d make the situation bad and my reader would no doubt sympathize with my heroine on some level, but not on the level that would make it human if I left it right at that. No, if I wanted a visceral reaction from my readers to emotionally connect with my character I’d start digging into the internal. I’d highlight the sense of grief and loss my heroine has to endure from this page forward because she’ll never be the same as she was the page before. It’s that simple and completely complicated at the same time. Change is never easy. And forced change a person has no control over? Brutal.
Fortunately, if I were writing this scene I’d make sure that my heroine was a survivor. Oh, she’d have been knocked off her feet initial, but she’d suck it up without complaining and refocus with a vengeance. In fact, I’d probably write this so that her OJ Simpson type attacker would look a little naïve in the eyes of my readers. I mean, surely that character would have to know that I’d write this so that the villain will get theirs in the end. (They always do) But really, and I don’t want go all Freud on you here because, meh, it’s only fiction. My heroine would know the second after the incident happened that she already had her revenge on good old “OJ”. You see, the win for my heroine would come exactly at the moment that person felt the need to attack her in the first place.
Wow, there’s two more things to add to my emotional mining list. Fear and insecurity. Kewl.
Riley.
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