Writing/plot element opinions solicited - complicated

Cafe Society
1

So I’m working on my first fantasy book. I had no idea before I started how difficult that would prove to be. I’ve written parts of/finished novels before that were based in the world as it exists, so I never imagined how difficult it would be to create an entire world from scratch. I started it about a year ago and I’m pretty sure I’ve got at least 2 years to go before I have anything resembling a finished manuscript.

Anyway. I’m struggling… ethically?.. with a major event that takes place in the book. To give some background, it is a romance. The book takes place at the beginning of a civil war between a nation called Asalta and the state that nation annexed, Levia. It touches on things like political oppression, genocide, racism, poverty, activism, etc.

The plot is very complex so I’ll have to gloss over some stuff. But basically the novel starts when a young woman, the daughter of the ruling leader on the oppressor’s side (the Asaltans), murders her brother, who is a genocidal maniac (I don’t mean she accidentally kills him in self-defense, I’m talking about straight-up 2nd degree murder.) She flees immediately, literally crawling out the window and into the woods, where she spends the majority of the book as a refugee. The problematic thing is that she has a distinctive tattoo on her hand which marks her as belonging to the ruling family. So anybody who saw it would know immediately who she was (she wears gloves a lot.) She now has two enemies - her own government and the opposing Levian Liberation Front.

Anyway, she ends up on a journey toward Levia, which is the country that was annexed. Nobody in Levia has any idea that she was working for the Levian revolution underground, so she is pretty much universally despised by Levians and their sympathizers. I don’t want to make this more confusing than it already is so I will just say she has good reasons for going there despite the danger.

Anyway, there is a point in the novel where she is discovered and brutally attacked. This is where I am having a hard time. On the one hand, I really want to stay away from the ‘‘damsel in distress’’ trope to the extent that I can, because it irritates me. On the other hand, I’m trying to write about war. To use a very rough analogy, her situation is tantamount to Malia Obama being discovered in Taliban territory. In other words, it is not likely to go well for her.

So initially when I wrote the scene it was like one Levian guy recognized her and lured her back to his house where his friends were waiting in ambush. The way I wrote that scene she basically got the everliving shit beat out of her by five men, but one of the men turned out to be a secret ally (he shows up later in the book but is not really central to the plot) and orchestrated her escape before she could be delivered to the Levian Liberation Front. I drew the line by not having her be rescued by the male protagonist, at least. She does get away but at the end of that scene she is nearly dead. Serious concussion, fractured ribs, etc.

There are some rapey elements because in a situation like that I figured there would have to be. I’m also a little stressed over how that is handled because it’s a pretty stereotypical plot device and that isn’t the kind of book I want to write. Neither do I want to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with the aftermath of sexual trauma. But the only way I figured the ally could get her alone so he could help her escape was by pretending that he was going to rape her and drag her off into the woods (this is all taking place near the woods.)

I was annoyed that I had to use a man to get her out of that situation, but on the other hand, I can’t imagine what reasonable chance any one person would have against 5 people who absolutely despised her. I was worried that it made her look weak. It would be awesome if she was just spitting in their faces and taunting them the whole time, but I don’t see that as a realistic response to such an entirely out of control situation. The way I wrote it, she never had a chance in hell and was pretty much a blubbering mess. I couldn’t write that scene and not have her be fucked up mentally from that experience. I don’t think you could have an experience like that and not be forever changed as a person. But I don’t want her reaction to overshadow the entire rest of the book either. She has some serious ass-kicking to do down the line and I need her to be in good condition.

So I was thinking, maybe I should rewrite the scene as more of a one-on-one thing where she barely manages to escape without help, and is maybe not quite so pathetic or gravely injured. I’m just not sure that is as realistic.

I just want to know if I go for the more difficult scene I am not selling out my character. And yes, it is absolutely because she is a woman that I’m worried about portraying her in a way that might be perceived as weak.

Does anyone else struggle with shit like this? Any thoughts?

2

As an easy option, try and write it both ways, and see which one is better.

3

Did this - at least partially.

It actually felt more gimmicky giving her the easy way out.

Why do characters always have to wreck our plans for them?:mad:

4

FWIW, I think this single assailant scenario seems a lot more realistic than having one member of a gang turn out to be a secret ally and the heroine managing to escape despite her nearly fatal injuries.

5

Could her attackers (or a good proportion of them) be women?

6

The single assailant who she outwits, and presumably kills, before he can drag her to his compatriots, makes much more sense. It also avoids the extremely dubious device of intriducing some character whose sole purpose is to provide a means for her escape.

7

My point the first: the GRRL hero who never needs help from a person who happens to be male is cheesy, kitschy, hackneyed, and overdone. Also it’s not realistic. People help each other. Sometimes the helpers are male. Sometimes the helped are female.

My point the second: the harder you make things for your heroine the better; it makes both her and the story stronger. Having said that, don’t fall into the cheesy, kitschy, hackneyed, and overdone trope that someone who has been raped/beaten has to be forever destroyed by the experience. I’m way more impressed by a heroine who is taken down and manages to pick herself back up and keep on truckin’ than by being expected to believe she could have fought her way out of the situation in the first place.

My point the third: Jamie makes a point like this, to a character I shan’t name, in the fourth Outlander book. You’ve maybe heard of them. Oh, and another female character I shan’t name also gets raped and beaten in book 6, and more or less keeps truckin’ afterward.

My point the fourth: when you’re done with all 8000 pages of Outlander you’d maybe be interested in my first novel, to see how I have my heroine handle a similar situation.

8

To be fair, that’s not his sole purpose. She’ll need him later on. In fact, if I decide to write him out of the attack scene, he’ll still be in the book. He’s one of the handful of people who knows who she is (in relationship to the revolution.) I didn’t really mean for him to be a person but he became one.

[QUOTE=Sattua]

My point the second: the harder you make things for your heroine the better; it makes both her and the story stronger. Having said that, don’t fall into the cheesy, kitschy, hackneyed, and overdone trope that someone who has been raped/beaten has to be forever destroyed by the experience. I’m way more impressed by a heroine who is taken down and manages to pick herself back up and keep on truckin’ than by being expected to believe she could have fought her way out of the situation in the first place.
[/QUOTE]

Agree 100% and I didn’t mean to imply there would be eternal destruction. She’s already got a lot going on emotionally on account of killing her brother. But there is going to in the very least be 1-2 weeks of recovery time on the basis of her injuries alone, which kind of puts a wrench in my plot. I just hate writing down time. It bores me. I’ve already got time grinding to a halt while one of my other characters deals with the loss of a limb. I guess every book has to have some down time. But that presents another issue to solve. Because this book is one headache after another. I have never in my life been so frustrated with a novel I’m writing. Neither have I ever attempted one this complex.

And I wouldn’t really describe her as GRRL either. She gets her ass handed to her more than once before that, it’s just that the consequences aren’t as dire. I mean, she’s not really a warrior. The role she’s played in the revolution has been largely diplomatic and strategic. She was a politician. I wouldn’t say she’s been completely disconnected from the reality of the war, but to a certain degree she’s a bit green. She is already relying quite heavily on her male companions as she travels. But she’s also not a complete victim either.

[QUOTE=Sattua]
My point the third: Jamie makes a point like this, to a character I shan’t name, in the fourth Outlander book. You’ve maybe heard of them. Oh, and another female character I shan’t name also gets raped and beaten in book 6, and more or less keeps truckin’ afterward.
[/QUOTE]

Well one of the things I like about Outlander is that it takes the rape trope and turns it on its head, making the male protagonist the victim. I’m only in the 2nd book but he arguably has some long-term issues as a result of his experience. But the first book also has a handful of tropey near-rapes of Claire. So it both panders and is subversive, and I’m not sure what to make of that.

Guaranteed. (8,000 pages? How long is yours?)

Thanks, all. You’ve given me good stuff to think about. Nothing is more uncomfortable than exposing my ideas to the light of day, because I know my strengths, and plot is not one of them.

9

My first novel is a mere 117K words compared to the first Outlander book’s 285K. When I say 8000 pages, I mean the whole series of 8 books.

As for writing down time: I always skip the boring parts, when I write.

10

Me too. That’s how I get into messes like this. I write all the interesting scenes and then have to figure out how to connect them all. And sometimes they don’t connect at all and I have to rewrite everything.

But it’s okay. I really only write because it’s fun. Even when I want to tear my hair out, it’s fun.

(Maybe I should read your thing before Outlander.)

11

Maybe.

I thought about having the ally be a woman. There is currently a distinct lack of women in my book. My fault. I love men.

12

Happy to direct you to it, if you don’t already know how to get there. Contact me in The Other Place.

13

Can you have her manipulate the men by suggesting (offering) the rape herself, figuring she would have a better chance one-on-one? Then the ally could act the most loutish, getting her off to himself in order to help her unobserved.

14

I’m sorry but I don’t buy the actions of the Levians as you present them.

They may hate, hate, hate this girl but she is far too valuable as a pawn/hostage to simply beat her to death. They might treat her roughly but if I were you I would put her in chains and drag her off to Levia proper. If you want humiliation tear her clothes, cut her hair, even rape her, but it makes no sense for them to kill her. If this guy is on her side he should be able to arrange some kind of opportunity for escape en route.

15

Dissension within the group of captors (beyond the ally, that is) might be an option.

  1. The hotheads want to brutalize her in whatever ways come to mind, incidentally extracting any information she might have, and kill her.

  2. The cooler heads recognize her as a possible tool or bargaining chip and want to keep her relatively intact, though they’ve no objection to roughing her up some.

  3. The nervous ones are afraid she might be tracked to their location and want to bug out immediately. Some of these may want to move her to a more secure location, while others want to kill her immediately, hide the body, and run.

It might also be more plausible if she were lured in by a woman, who could then take the stance, “I brought her in, so she’s my prisoner, and I say what happens to her.” She draws the line at rape, because it would set a bad precedent, but lets the hotheads beat the prisoner to let off enough steam that they don’t challenge her over it.

Some combination of these conflicts could provide opportunities either for her ally to free her, or for her to get clear after the ally slips her the means to free herself.

Recovery time is always awkward. Given the injuries you mentioned, she’s going to need days to get mobile again after the initial flight, and longer still to actually heal. Two general approaches occur to me offhand:

  1. She’s on her own, injured but somewhat mobile. She has to struggle against her injuries to do basic survival things–fire, food, water. This leaves her too physically exhausted to think much about her trauma; it goes on the back burner, and by the time she’s healed enough to move on, it’s sort of scabbed over. The psychological trauma comes back to bite her later when something pulls that scab off.

  2. She manages to reach a safe haven, so basic survival is handled. She spends the time mostly coping with the psychological aspects. Post-concussion syndrome can cause odd sleep behavior, including insomnia or excessive sleep. Some people also report that it affects their dreams. She could spend large chunks of the early recovery period asleep, possibly having nightmares she has to learn to cope with.

16

Balance beat me to it, but I was going to suggest that some of the attackers/captors be women to obviate the rapey elements. The men would be less likely to sexually assault her if one of their own women (maybe one of their wives?) was present. She could also keep her from being physically abused to the point where it would interfere with her escape. Maybe you could have the woman’s daughter help her escape because they connect somehow.