It’s hard not to see movies or read books without death. Once upon a time this was rather like sex. One seldom saw the dying.
And then of course dying became like sex, only worth having in a book /movie if it was publicly viewed. It started in war movies, and spread across the rest like a sort of plague, with about the same casualties. The splatterer the better as it were. And of course print had to be as descriptively graphic or more so.
I remember the military movies of my youth, when to boy who had never seen any large vertebrate dying by being shot they were all so ‘lame’ as we all informed each other in post movie bravado of the foyer. People fell over backwards. Staggered back. Did summersaults, usually backwards. Went on running and fell dead. kicked their legs in the air. We were all really impressed when the death was not spectacular. When the soldier clutched his eye and fell over. When the character went ‘uh’ and pitched forward. When the stagger was forward. And indeed, unless there is a massive explosive death
The point I think was to the little barbarians… death by gunfire was not something we really knew. Death tended to be in a hospital bed, and we didn’t actually see it. We might, possibly, have seen a dead person, or even the gory aftermath of a traffic accident.
But we knew all about what death looked like. Not.
But none of us were ever going to admit to that.
That was long ago. I drive for a professional wallaby shooter now. Yes, I have seen bi-pedal vertebrates die. Maybe a thousand or more.
And here is the bad news. Some of them do backward summersaults. Some of the deaths happening in those open fields forty yards from me have the same ‘special effects’ as we poured scorn on, all those years ago. I can only assume that the people making those special effects so long ago had seen it happen, maybe in real warfare. Not every death of course, but enough, now for me to say that I was wrong.
But we brats knew better of course. We knew that wasn’t real. And of course, the modern generation of writers and movie makers also know better. I know for instance a very popular sf author… most of his knowledge of ‘real life’ outside of the cubical he worked in as a geekish IT type… is derived from computer games or reading. His books set my teeth on edge, because he’s just getting it so wrong. But actually, I am the only one (well, among the few) because the cubical life part he gets right if he uses that. I am sure that his readers, given one of my deaths, or even my horses, or hunting food, and his… both believe and prefer his version of these things. Because they are much more likely to know and recognize as right those bits of cubical geek-life… and his version of horses, hunting and death are a lot more what they believe is real. That’s why he sells a shed-load of books, is very popular with NY publishing (who also have the same illusions), who push it very hard.
So at the end… well the illusion of what death is like will persist.
Until we meet it.
But as books are not training for meeting death (well sometimes by irritation, or boredom) but for entertainment, maybe he’s doing it right?
Mad Genius Club 
25 responses to “Dying in print.”
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. His books set my teeth on edge, because he’s just getting it so wrong.
I know how this goes. I once spent most of a week arguing with someone that insisted that old “list of facts” for writing heroic fantasy was correct in saying that stallions attack women during “that time of month.”
Not only, when asking dozens of ranchers I know who’ve ridden since they were tiny, could I not find someone who’d heard of “stallions attacking women” at all– none of them had even heard of the claim. (Which got me points for sharing a “strange thing townies think.”)
We all know of a horse that didn’t like men, or didn’t like women, or would attack someone in a blue button-down shirt, or something like that…but the state of his tackle and state of the person didn’t come into it.
I often wonder where the heck he got that “fact.”
The riding master I trained with cautioned me that I might hear the same hoary legend from other people because I was riding and training a stallion. He thought the story began because of a coincidence: at some place and time, a woman got mauled by an upset stallion, she happened to be having her menses, and therefore . . . We both laughed about it. It may be one of those things that never got around the Western riding folks but that circulates in the racing/English/dressage/jumper barns.
As far as I know the show/racing horse breeds are more inbred and quirky than the working breeds of ranchers. Ill behavior like biting folks would also probably be more allowable in one that can jump/race/dessage/show well. Combine with what I suspect are more ‘clueless around horses’ folks being near them vs working horses on ranches and you could have a lot more opertunities to start such stories.
My husband and I figured it was probably some folk-knowledge based on war horses— I have heard of horses getting freaked by the smell of blood if they’re not accustomed to it, so possibly that got crossed with the very, very true knowledge that wild stallions are DANGEROUS if you’re on a stallion or a mare that’s in heat, or are too near their herd.
I can definitely see someone training a war horse to attack humans that smell of blood, and taking care to warn women away just in case.
Quite right about horses getting away with stuff when they’re for show instead of work, BTW.
But it’s absolutely true. At least that’s what I was assured… could it be she wanted a few days off stable-duty every month? 😉
*laughs*
I didn’t mention it, since I over-explain everything anyways, but my mom suggested that some folks might’ve heard the story and accidentally trained the horses into following it. She’s seen it happen with horse related folk-stories before.
Never having been in war (though I have been in the vicinity of people getting killed, the crowd was thick and all I saw/heard was some noise and people going down) I base my dying in books (And arguably A Few Good Men IS a war book) on my reading of diaries/biographies (mostly of world war one) of people who were. Even so I will never write full mil-sf, because I don’t think that can be faked. “Talented amateur gets in trouble and sometimes saves the day” is my range.
Perhaps that’s the meaning of “write what you know”?
Oh, just like anything else, if you do your research right it can be faked, IF (and this is a big IF) the reader has not been there. There is a very popular mil/sf writer (not sure if it’s the one Dave is talking about, I suspect not, his description doesn’t QUITE fit) who I and many others enjoy. Although I haven’t been to war, I have some of the same experiences with animal death as Dave (well different animals, different continents) and agree that his deaths are not always real. Anyways, as I was saying, he is very popular, but I have not heard a single former military, war veteran, say that they like his books. His research is good, and as I did here one veteran author say, “he’s popular, because he’s a damn fine storyteller.”
Not a mil sf writer 🙂
Ya know, I got back from basic training about a week before I saw The Rock with Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, et al. That movie killed me. Why? The rank insignias were wrong. They clearly identified VX gas as a nerve agent (which it is) and then gave it all of the symptoms of a blister agent, except that blister agents aren’t intended to kill people. The VX in the movie did. The M16s in the movie fired on full auto, and the US government stopped making fully automatic M16s not long after the end of the Vietnam War. No movie (including The Rock) has EVER gotten a grenade explosion right. They’re much smaller in real life. I could go on…
The bottom line is that everyone else I know who saw the movie loved it. At the end of the day, it’s about entertainment. The details matter, but they’re not the end all be all. If he’s selling books he’s doing something right. His fans obviously enjoy his work. That counts for a lot.
Husband and I are Navy vets, and he’s in the AFR ATM-
only show that’s military themed we watch is NCIS. It’s not perfect, but it is…savvy.
Sure, it’s about entertainment, but entertainment means not breaking suspension of disbelief.
I can’t remember the TV show, but they had a no-knock raid where the homeowner was shot, because someone had called in that there was a hostage situation. My husband and I defended the poor SOB leading the raid, while my folks were calling for him to be crucified. Difference being, my husband and I were familiar with the “controls” in place to prevent that kind of BS, and from what was shown there was no way the raid leader should’ve expected that the home owner was not a confirmed baddy. From my folks’ point of view, the raid leader was the first line of defense for investigation and evaluation– something that was true 30 or so years ago. (rough guess) It was SWATing, and a lot of the details were…totally wrong, but given the in-character facts the folks on the ground did right.
Which made the Main Character (that red-headed smarmy SOB cop with sun glasses?) walking up and attacking them a TOTAL shattering of suspension of disbelief.
If you can’t get details right, AVOID PUTTING IN DETAILS!!!!
I can’t watch anything that has someone blustering their way past a security checkpoint wearing a fake general’s uniform without a proper haircut. Blustering past a security checkpoint is bad enough. I know what my own training was and I’ve talked to too many other people who told stories about Admirals forced to apologize to entire aircraft carrier crews for failing to heed a seaman’s order concerning access to restricted areas (generally the flight deck) or poor privates on guard duty keeping an officer without proper code clearances at “forward leaning rest” until the OIC arrived to straighten it out. But hey, maybe it could happen, probably does happen, no matter how someone is trained to NOT let it happen.
Getting the haircut wrong is just… wrong.
I liked The Rock, but the VX symptoms bothered me, and why do movies ALWAYS get rank insignias wrong? It is such an easy thing to check. The full auto M16’s I gave a pass as authorial license, and I’ve never seen a legitimate gernade explosion (I have seen homemade ones, and worked with explosives blasting rock for about a year; uncontained explosions are always overdramatic on film)
why do movies ALWAYS get rank insignias wrong?
It’s illegal to impersonate a military member. Thus, getting the stuff right means you need permission. (R. Lee Ermey always gets this.) Thus, royally screwing up uniform matters is something to aim for.
Ahh, if you take into account that it is our royally screwed up government making the rules, this makes sense.
It is illegal to film a movie with the correct rank insignia, but it is a legal exercise of free speech to falsely claim military awards you never recieved.
Yeah… no comment other than yeah….
Well, maybe “correct rank insignia without authorization” but yea….
good grief!
“If he’s selling books he’s doing something right. His fans obviously enjoy his work. That counts for a lot.” – my point exactly.
We all have areas of expertice, and the writers and/or filmmakers getting it wrong bugs us. :: sigh ::
And sometimes we aren’t as expert as we think we are, and we are wrong about how we think something works.
Oops. Left out “And sometimes we have to write what people believe, not what we know. So they’ll believe it.”
YES. It needed saying.
This extends to a lot more than dying. My mother once put her hands on her hips, and delivered a fundamental truth to me in tones of bitter conviction. “Never! Never watch a war movie with soldiers, or a flying movie with pilots!”
From the living room came the sound of rousing scorn and sarcasm, with pointed hilarity as a private put a sergeant in his place on the television screen.
There are authors / artists / actors I like despite their hilariously bad attempts at the things I know – if it’s a good enough story, I’ll groan when the hero changes the magazine on their revolver, but I’ll pick it back up and keep reading. They are still better than the books that are perfect on the details and lacking on the story.
Speaking strictly as a reader, I prefer an author to write things as they actually happen – no matter how much you scorned the movies as a kid, it didn’t stop you from watching, did it?
Stagecraft and its conventions are very useful for communicating with an audience when you don’t know the real thing – but don’t sacrifice your authenticity on the altar of approval by the ignorant. In fact, the utter authenticity an author brings to the parts he knows well, and knows cold, are what help carry the story through the parts where he’s trying to fill in with research and handwavium. And if I’m presented with a wide range of truth and convention, at least having the truth presented as an option leaves me far less surprised when I encounter that truth in real life… after which I’ll prefer the writers who write the real thing.
(As far as dying itself, my husband says the “flung backward by the bullet” happens very rarely, and when he’s seen it, the person was just starting a backwards leap when the bullet entered the nervous system. The backwards leap interrupted by a dying spasm looks like the person was flung backward. I know nothing, and am grateful to the people like him who came home with new scars, missing parts, or didn’t come home at all to keep me safe and ignorant of these experiences.)