Is this too much MC beating?

I dunno, it looks to me like he's having enough fun but not too much to survive. If you can maintain oodles of suspense between moves it should generate a nice sigh of relief. One doesn't want to put all one's tension into one bit of action (I assume there's lots more fun to come).

I think any two of the obstacles you describe would be sufficient, if this bug-planting scene is just one chapter. Using all of them would be total overkill, unless it was the big final scene with lots of twists/reverses.

The Lonely One said:

On the docking pad, he's battered by an old friend (loose term), has to fish the tracker bug from below some grating, has a run-in with the guy he's wanting to track, then another run in with one of his associates, then finally gets the tracker bug on a landing strut before the antagonist takes off. He wakes up and the guy's gone and the old friend is gone.

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I would do away with the bolded part since it seems redundant to running into the guy he wants to track (unless you have some reason why he actually needs to meet this other guy). Otherwise it sounds like a nice set of obstacles, assuming planting the bug is an important plot point.

Depends on the plot. Putting too much stuff in the way is just as bad as not enough. Readers can tell when an obstacle is genuine and when it's just unimportant things placed in the way for the MC to trip over. If not getting the bug placed deepens the story in some way, or forces the MC to act in a way that furthers the plot or deepen the stakes, then you might do that. If all it does is add one more layer of stuff before the plot can continue, I'd skip the stuff. It'll just stall the story.

I blogged about this a while back with some examples if you're curious for more details.

I'll go in a totally different, but appropriate direction. Injuries suffered in the course of a novel too often disappear with what can only be supernatural healing powers. For example, if a character is hit on the head hard enough for him/her to lose consciousness, that person is going to be one sick puppy for many hours, but more likely a few days. Having that character "wake" up and immediately do something heroic that requires even mild coordination, strength, and stamina is unrealistic. If there is one place where concussed individuals would be rushed back into physical activity it is the National Football League. But concussed players are pulled from that game and usually don't return to practice for days. Some even miss more than one week. And these are highly trained athletes. Other things to remember about injuries:

Keep track of the injuries you have your character sustain and look for a realistic healing times. If there are multiple injuries, keep track of all of them, don't forget one or two. Readers will notice.

Carry that injury through in the character's activities for the appropriate time if the story spans a time frame shorter than full healing time (too often, injuries are forgotten by authors so the characters seem to make those superhuman recoveries)

Match the severity of the injuries to the activities the character will experience and don't lighten up those injuries when it is merely convenient for the story.

Make sure you, the author, know enough about human anatomy and physiology to properly describe the injury and the carry through the impact of the injury.

If writing a series character, be sure to carry the long-term/permanent effects of injuries, scars, and memories of injuries into later books.

If he can breath, you're not treating him too badly.

I have one character exphixiate another so he will be able to be revived more easily than the drowning they two characters who are underwater should have happen to them.

I have a main character shot in the head and have to wear incontenence products before they 'recover.'

I have a MC who's skin gets burned off and her husband kills his stepdaughter so there will be a good DNA match to sew his wife back together.

Oh, and everyone dies. That's the way I roll, baby.

To be honest, it's hard to say without knowing the rest of the story and whether or not such a failure would drag out the plot and impede the overall arc of the tale.

The Lonely One said:

On the docking pad, he's battered by an old friend (loose term), has to fish the tracker bug from below some grating, has a run-in with the guy he's wanting to track, then another run in with one of his associates...

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Are you saying he gets beaten up three times in one chapter?

I wonder what the Indiana Jones movies would have looked like if Spielberg had followed Neurofuzz's guidelines.

Seriously - you make an important point, but we should also remember, our heroes are supposed to be bigger than life, expecially in high action thrillers.

RJK said:

I wonder what the Indiana Jones movies would have looked like if Spielberg had followed Neurofuzz's guidelines.

Seriously - you make an important point, but we should also remember, our heroes are supposed to be bigger than life, expecially in high action thrillers.

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And I contend those characters will be ten times as heroic if they both accomplish those wonderous goals and do it within the confines of realistic human capabilities (anatomical, physiological, and medical). Good writers can do both. The fact that good, established writers have skimped here doesnt' mean we should follow their paths. Writing excellence means we should strive to rise above that kind of skimping. This, of course, is genre-dependent. Supernatural, horror, and others can take complete license with this.

I agree with you in principal, but it wouldn't be much of a story if the MC spent every other week in a hospital bed. The author (and the reader) assumes there was some recovery time, and that was condensed for the story's sake.

RJK said:

I agree with you in principal, but it wouldn't be much of a story if the MC spent every other week in a hospital bed. The author (and the reader) assumes there was some recovery time, and that was condensed for the story's sake.

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Or...make the injuries a little more reasonable in terms of recovery. The MC doesn't have to be within in inch of his/her life to have the injury create a significant challenge to his/her heroism, although an inch difference in the position of a bullet wound or a knife stab could significantly change the outcome in terms of recovery. We could choose to just back off a little bit. It doesn't take much. It can be done. And you are right, recovery time can be shaved down a little as long as the author doesn't forget the injury (which happens more often than one would choose to believe **cough...Patterson...cough**).

Of course, we are in the business of suspending disbelief, so that allows some stretching. If it's too much stretching, I'll not read any more by that author. He/she will lose one future sale on each book, so my reaction is probably no big deal. As an author, however, I'd like to be known as someone who gets it right, or at least within realistic bounds. Someone who doesn't use that leeway. We each decide where we want to stand on issues like that when we write. Look at the heat Dan Brown has taken for a variety of inconsistencies and errors. But he's incredibly successful because he writes damn good stories (even that is subject to debate, but he is a good storyteller). People (no one here that I know of)ask if we'd rather be accurate or successful. What the f**k. Since when did the two become mutually exclusive?

If everyone here at AW remembers the injuries they inflict on their characters and carries them through their stories with at least semi-accuracy of impact/recovery, I'll be happy with their writing (as a reader).

RJK said:

I agree with you in principal, but it wouldn't be much of a story if the MC spent every other week in a hospital bed. The author (and the reader) assumes there was some recovery time, and that was condensed for the story's sake.

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You can have them suffer more that way. Not only can you beat them more, but they can fall behind on whatever mission they needed to do and fail, thus causing a worse situation. Hell, let him get stabbed at the hospital, or have a knock-down, drag-out in his hospital room. The baddie could go out the window [long fall] but the IV has tangled our MC, and, ooh, the catheter...

Or not, whatever.

I had a cortizone injection in my shoulder last week. the doctor poked me at least half a dozen times. I was hurting for two days. I'm not a hero, but I certainly wasn't ready to take on any bad guys, and that was from a few needle pokes.
A realistic gunshot wound or stabbing, would put me out of business for weeks, no matter how slight others thought the injury was.