Bumping off a Million Red Shirts

By making the outcome of those deaths matter to the Hero.

I thought this was going to be a hard question.

Luke: "What's wrong, Obi-Wan?"
Obi-Wan: "A great disturbance in the Force. It was like a million redshirts crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced."

Just an example, but that one had significance because we saw it mattered to Leia and to Obi-Wan. I think if you show that a character cares, and we care about that character, then the deaths will have significance for us.

If the MC doesn't know them, are they still the same culture or countrymen? Not only is it the MC's 'people', but it could have been him/her.

Also, if your MC is in a leadership position, they can feel responsible, however irrationally.

But I don't recommend having a million people going around dressed in red. It will create a real eyesore when your book is made into a madeforTV movie.

DeleyanLee said:

By making the outcome of those deaths matter to the Hero.

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Ditto. It doesn't have to be a personal "oh, those poor souls" kinda deal, but those deaths should affect the hero and his goal in some way. It should cause him trouble -- literal goal trouble, emotional trouble, guilt, fear, whatever. Life can not go on the same now that they're dead.

How did you feel when the towers went down? I didn't know any of those people, but I felt like something had just been torn from inside me.

The truth is the human mind cannot comprend the significance of numbers higher than 37. We can count higher, but we cannot understand what any higher number means. That's why Lincoln was able to lose more than fifty thousand casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg alone (total for both sides) and still keep fighting the Civil War. A million red shirts will never mean anything.

RJK said:

How did you feel when the towers went down? I didn't know any of those people, but I felt like something had just been torn from inside me.

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I understand what you're saying, but I felt nothing of the same thing. A great tragedy, but not one I really care about.

Which illustrates my earlier point--it has to affect someone the reader cares about (hopefully the MC/hero) in order to matter.

You can't. 200 is too many.

What you do is show one, and let the reader multiply up. One boot on the ocean floor helps people 'get' Titanic. One shot of a naked girl running helped people 'get' Vietnam. One little girl picked out in a red dress by Spielberg helped people see the Holocaust.

One image, one individual, one bereaved relative, one artefact left behind. If it's powerful enough it'll stand for them all.

Louise

Snivscriv said:

The truth is the human mind cannot comprend the significance of numbers higher than 37. We can count higher, but we cannot understand what any higher number means. That's why Lincoln was able to lose more than fifty thousand casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg alone (total for both sides) and still keep fighting the Civil War. A million red shirts will never mean anything.

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This is so deeply true. There's a line from one of my favorite songs "The death of one is a tragedy / The death of millions is just a statistic". That's why the key in any large battle scene is to make a few of those deaths matter.

It's easy to make readers care about the 'red-shirts' on the hero/heroine's side, because (if you've done your characterization right) the readers will care because the MC cares. I took it a step beyond that in the last battle sequence I wrote, though. I wanted the readers to feel sympathy and horror on the behalf of everyone, not just the 'good guys' (actually, most of the 'good guys' are girls in that scene).

So, we've been fighting with guns and swords on the deck of a ship. The heroines have basically accomplished their mission, slaying the enemy and recapturing the stolen ship. And this enemy soldier is laying on the deck, screaming for help as he bleeds to death. This man never did anything to the MC. The country we're fighting has required military service, so this man never even had a choice about serving and fighting. He's dying because he was born in the wrong country, and forced to wear the wrong colors on the wrong day. It's not a particularly long scene, but it's enough to sour what could've been a purely sweet victory for the protags. Because battles shouldn't be sweet, ever. They're horrible, even when the 'good guys' win with few losses on their own side.

Of course, that scene works because feeling sympathy for the enemy is in my MC's nature. He's not a trained soldier and doesn't have that kind of mentality. The professional military women doing most of the fighting certainly wouldn't react the same way.

You can count to a million, if you see it for yourself. A million is only a statistic if you're sitting in front of a fireplace with a glass of brandy in hand.

Fifty thousand Gettysburg casualties may have been statistics to those who weren't there, but I guarantee the soldiers in the battle didn't feel that way.

If you see the actual battlefield strewn with bodies, or the mass graves, or the field so covered with skulls that you can't avoid stepping on them, a million deaths has a million times more impact than just one.

If you're there, of if you see it for yourself, it matters. They all matter. If you want impact from the death of two hundred, you just have to make it personal.

Chasing the Horizon said:

This is so deeply true. There's a line from one of my favorite songs "The death of one is a tragedy / The death of millions is just a statistic".

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Just to let you know, that quote is attributed to Josef Stalin. It doesn't make it any less true however.

Pardon the interruption, Carry on then.

Phineas said:

Just to let you know, that quote is attributed to Josef Stalin. It doesn't make it any less true however.

Pardon the interruption, Carry on then.

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Is it really? That's ironic.

Stunted said:

If you had to kill off a couple hundred people who your MC didn't know, how would you make the deaths feel more significant?

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What do you want to accomplish in terms of story? Is the MC reaction to the death of 300 people the most efficient way to reach your story goal?

RJK said:

How did you feel when the towers went down? I didn't know any of those people, but I felt like something had just been torn from inside me.

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Well, to me, I was upset when the towers went down because the towers falling (though they weren't a great symbol of the american people) represented not only death, but the vulnerability of the country. It was as though someone had taken a knife and jammed it into New York.

So if you're killing that many people, it could also be attributed to some sort of symbol for the hero. Many people dying to get him safe. The death of a lot of people representing the death of his country. Ect.

Is it really? That's ironic.

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How is that ironic?

ElaraSophia said:

Luke: "What's wrong, Obi-Wan?"
Obi-Wan: "A great disturbance in the Force. It was like a million redshirts crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced."

Just an example, but that one had significance because we saw it mattered to Leia and to Obi-Wan. I think if you show that a character cares, and we care about that character, then the deaths will have significance for us.

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lol, I clicked onto this thread with the intention of posting that very same Star Wars quote!

Kill kids and innocents.

That is always guarenteed to make anyone with half a heart feel angry, and if thier death was part of an attempt to get to the hero, then all the better, because now he's responsible for them.

I'd be really careful about killing kids and innocents solely for shock value or a reaction, though. I do agree that sort of thing will get a reaction, but I've also seen people do it such that it's obviously over the top. Besides, every character is going to be different and be affected differently by different things.

On the other hand, I think I'm going to go invest in a company that sells red shirts.

Jamesaritchie said:

If you see the actual battlefield strewn with bodies, or the mass graves, or the field so covered with skulls that you can't avoid stepping on them, a million deaths has a million times more impact than just one.

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I respectfully disagree with someone who has been involved on this forum far longer than me. Even if you walk a battlefied with a million casualties yourself, your mind becomes overloaded with suffering before you walk by a few hundred casualties, much less a million. We may understand a million in the abstract, but our emotional minds simply can't.

By the way, in my last post, I didn't mean to show any disrespect to the victims of 9/11. The comment by RJK hadn't posted when I was writing my post.

I lived in NYC, and I was in the World Trade Center hundreds of times well before 9/11. I think that part of the reason those attacks were so traumatic was that it wasn't just one plane crashing into one building. That was horrific enough. Then we get a second attack like the first. Then the Pentagon is hit too. Then we hear about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania which apparently was headed for the White House. With each new attack, we could feel even worse, but I don't think it mattered to most Americans whether there were a few hundred people in the first tower attacked or a thousand. It certainly mattered to the families of the victims, but not to most Americans.

In short, I think the only way you can convey real loss to readers is to make an individual character important to the reader first. You can develop that emotional connection with a few characters, or a few groups of characters, but I don't think you can give a reader a strong emotional connection to forty individual characters unless you're going to write another War and Peace.

Even if you could establish such a connection, how many readers could stand to finish a book where you wipe them out, one by one? If you wipe them out in groups, maybe that's different, but we can only comprehend so much suffering at one time. Thus, I don't think the death of forty people can ever have forty times the impact that the death of one important character.

Stunted said:

Hey guys. What's up? This is somewhat related to the thread with a similar name. If you had to kill off a couple hundred people who your MC didn't know, how would you make the deaths feel more significant? Thanks.

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I had one MC kill off an entire attacking army. She felt bad before, she felt bad after, but the main consequence is all of the relatives of the slaughtered, who now hate her. Some of them have pointy sticks.

It's hard to answer your question more specifically because I don't know the specifics of your story. Is your MC doing the killing-off? Is s/he going to publicly admit to responsibility? Was it for personal gain? Or did a bunch of people just die and you want to pull our heartstrings? You could have your MC think that maybe someone your MC _does_ know was among the dead. You could have a riot of bereaved relatives who trample your MC's best friend's favourite poodle underfoot. Or your characters could have a water-cooler discussion about it.

If the deaths of these people aren't relevant to your MC, then they will just be a statistic to your MC. But I suspect that a few hundred people dying all at once would, at the least, make people afraid the same thing will happen to them.

PoppysInARow said:

How is that ironic?

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I was just expecting that quote to have originated from someone with, uh, different ideals than Stalin, lol.

shaldna said:

Kill kids and innocents.

That is always guarenteed to make anyone with half a heart feel angry, and if thier death was part of an attempt to get to the hero, then all the better, because now he's responsible for them.

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I strongly disagree with this. Killing kids and innocents is a cheap trick which savvy readers aren't going to fall for. Why would the villains kill people who aren't a threat to them? In 99% of cases it doesn't make a damn bit of sense. If you can't make normal adults, even soldiers, sympathetic, then you need to work on your writing skills.