Violence in historical fiction

CWatts

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I mostly write mid/late 19th century and there is a lot of gunplay in my fiction. Taking stock of the current moment, I'm rethinking how I should portray violence, especially when I have civilians caught up in it. I worry that Hollywood tropes creep up too much. But the whole gun mythos is baked into the American psyche.

Basically, I'm reflecting on how we should respectfully portray eras when life was cheap and justice often nonexistant.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

So where is this set? Hunting would be common in many places. Therefore guns would be available.

One thing: If you're going to use guns, make sure you get your facts right. Mr. Siri recently informed me that some (or maybe it was all) guns prior to a certain point didn't have safeties. That's one small example.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

CWatts

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

So where is this set? Hunting would be common in many places. Therefore guns would be available.

One thing: If you're going to use guns, make sure you get your facts right. Mr. Siri recently informed me that some (or maybe it was all) guns prior to a certain point didn't have safeties. That's one small example.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Good detail. Apparently people often kept their revolvers on a empty cylinder for that reason, except the Remington let the hammer rest between the cylinders so it wouldn't go off.
 

Tocotin

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Violence is horrifying and traumatic to everyone exposed to it, from victims to perpetrators to witnesses. If you are worried about its portrayal in the media, go realistic to the hilt. In most media violence is meant to be gritty and realistic, but is not. They show a little blood on the ground, a person dying in seconds – no wonder that people are desensitized to death.

I'm writing about a similar time period, and also have quite a lot of violence, no gun deaths though, and little death in general. I don't have a particular respect towards my time period, but I dislike suffering as plotting device. If it's there, I want it to have impact and consequences.

If you don't know it already, I recommend a Tumblr blog "How to Fight Write": http://howtofightwrite.tumblr.com
 

CWatts

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Violence is horrifying and traumatic to everyone exposed to it, from victims to perpetrators to witnesses. If you are worried about its portrayal in the media, go realistic to the hilt. In most media violence is meant to be gritty and realistic, but is not. They show a little blood on the ground, a person dying in seconds – no wonder that people are desensitized to death.

I'm writing about a similar time period, and also have quite a lot of violence, no gun deaths though, and little death in general. I don't have a particular respect towards my time period, but I dislike suffering as plotting device. If it's there, I want it to have impact and consequences.

If you don't know it already, I recommend a Tumblr blog "How to Fight Write": http://howtofightwrite.tumblr.com

Thanks Tocotin. Yes I am trying to be realistic and subvert a lot of those media tropes.

That blog is awesome. My interest is already piqued about Savate and there are several good threads about female combatants.

I need to reread Violence: A Writer's Guide by Rory Miller https://www.amazon.com/dp/1481921460/?tag=absowrit-20. He goes over a lot of the sensory and psychological effects from first-hand experience. (Things like what brains smell like... Our poor characters may know but I hope to never really find out.)
 

The Black Prince

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I don't overdo the violence in my books (even though my latest features the Battles of Fulford Gate, Stamford Bridge and Hastings). For me it's all about the plot and the characters. Violence happens but mainly in brush strokes and proportionate to the evil / ruthlessness of the characters involved.
 

greendragon

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The vast majority of people (not in a war zone) lived out their lives in boring ways. Violence was often visited upon travelers, war zones, oppressed peoples - if your story is of one of these, lots of violence is understandable. The lonely farmer in the middle of nowhere might need more justification for a pogrom upon him.
 

ishtar'sgate

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Thanks for the recommendations Tocotin and CWatts. Getting it right is important. I have one or two violent scenes in my current WIP and this info will be helpful.
 
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R.A. Lundberg

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It also really depends on where your characters are. If they are in, say, rural Pennsylvania then violence is going to be relatively rare. If they are in a mining boomtown in the west, then there is going to be more of it. It's interesting to note that there wasn't nearly as much violence as we have been brought to believe there was in the old west. While it was there, no question, it wasn't quite the daily shoot-out in the street movies and TV would lead you to believe. Places like Dodge City, Wichita, Deadwood etc were indeed violent places for a time, but eventually the decent citizens of the cities would get together and either hire "good" law enforcement (who weren't always as good as one might hope) or would band together in vigilance committees and hang a few miscreants. Nobody wants to have bullets flying around the streets their kids play on.
Probably the best cinema representation of a genuine old west gunfight is Kevin Costner's "Open Range". Everybody shooting, mostly missing, clouds of smoke obscuring everything, people getting wounded multiple times and living (guns, especially pistols back then, were not exactly death rays. Given the state of medicine at the time you might die a few days later, but you'd still be ambulatory for a while after being shot), people losing their nerve and running away, all of this is authentic and based on real things. Also authentic and still valid today, when the bullets start flying, the townspeople just get their heads down and try and stay out of the line of fire (For the most part...it's a movie, after all). But it's mostly confusion, smoke, noise, people running around, reloading (it takes forever to reload a Colt SAA in combat), etc.
 

benbenberi

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The vast majority of people (not in a war zone) lived out their lives in boring ways.

And there was often a lot of boring, everyday violence. Anywhere that court records survive, you see the evidence. Men beat their women. Parents beat their children. Masters beat their servants, & sometimes servants murdered their master or robbed them blind. Everyone beat their animals, and often made hurting animals a game. People drank alcohol whenever they could and got into bloody drunken brawls. A football match or a pie-eating contest between two villages? Broken bones, broken heads, generalized mayhem & carnage. (I think I mentioned the alcohol...) People assaulted & killed each other out of jealousy, or grudges, or for money or boots or just because it was Tuesday. Ah, the good old days...
 
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frimble3

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To follow on benbenberi's post, a lot of people were hurt, not because it was Tuesday, but because it was Saturday. Or whatever your market day is. Farmers come to town, both to buy and sell, the workers: miners, cowboys, whatever, have a chance to come to town, and what does 'town' have? Liquor! Have your big whoop-up on a Saturday, back to church, or resting up for the coming week on Sunday.
Drunken brawls when there are few guns, shoot-outs when guns are available.
The town could be perfectly peaceable the rest of the week. (Except for the routine and domestic violence.)
 

Masel

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Show the consequences of the violence. The tropes of Hollywood do not show about who has to bury the body, how much lost productivity (for lack of a better word) there is for those repeatedly exposed to violence. My hometown erupted in riots when it looked like the violence inflicted by the police had no consequences.
 

rainyman

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Dear CWatts, I write modern-historical, (my own pasted-together description of my work), novels, two to date so far. Personally I don't care what Hollywood does or doesn't do, they don't control fiction literature anymore than they control space technology companies. That being said, if you're not killing everyone on the street by maniacal gunman or insane random gunfire, if you're using gun violence sparingly and concentrating more on building character, conflict, plotting and well thought out endings, you are on the right track. I can't say my novels have sold a lot, they haven't to date and I don't expect they ever will. I've found over the years it's not talent that counts with the publishing industry any more than it is talent that counts in film and stage production. It's, A. how much cash have you got, and, B. who do you know in the industry? Just a reality check from an unknown writer with what I consider, (modestly, I hope,) a modest amount of talent. J B Bergstad
 

konstantineblacke

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I'm reading about the Taiping revolution in China (1860) at the moment. Yes, it was a bloody massacre and very violent, but the author concentrated more on details that were less generic to show the horror, madness and mentality of the situation at the time. In example, a man accused his wife of cheating. The wife and the man she was found with were beheaded and their heads placed into a barrel of water. The water was stirred. When the water calmed, if the heads were facing each other, the accuser was correct in his accusation and was let go (avoiding beheading himself).