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Writing: Gross Stuff

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    How do you write about gross things? Say your characters are in a hospital, full of moaning surgery patients and feverish plague victims. Do you go into great detail about the pus dripping from their eyes, or do you simply describe it as “the horror around them”? How do you deal with the squick factor?

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    I describe the gross stuff. I had one character who had a dream where her face was coming off sort of. I described it. I don’t think I made it overly gorey, but I went into it more than just saying, “It was horrible.”

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    I think it depends on the point of view, but in general, I’d try to describe a bit more than “There was repulsive stuff around me I tried to look away ew ew.”

    So, you know, if you’ve got a character who wants to be a surgeon, has been training themselves to become desensitized to“gross stuff” by watching gory films since they were seven, in “a hospital, full of moaning surgery patients and feverish plague victims,” I think you’d get some interesting results.

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      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeSep 21st 2009
     

    I think it depends on the tone. Are you trying to emphasize how REALLY AWFUL TERRIBLE EWWWW the scene is? Then go into gory detail. Is it just more of a “by the way, there was also gross stuff there” thing? Go for a more general tone.

  5.  

    Think about the character’s reaction to it as well. Picture these two different circumstances (I’m just using a soldier in battle as an example):

    You have a veteran soldier in the battlefield. Let’s just say that he’s been fighting all his life and is pretty much as used to the horrors of war as he’s ever going to be. In this case, he probably wouldn’t dwell as much on the viscereal gore of the whole situation.

    Now, let’s say you have a rookie kid, fresh out of high school, thrown into the battlefield. Now this person would definitely be impacted by the gross stuff around him. Here I feel it would be more appropriate to give the surroundings all the gory detail they deserve.

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    he probably wouldn’t dwell as much on the viscereal gore of the whole situation.

    I’m not so sure about that. I think I’ll use the surgeon for this example though.

    Someone used to violence probably wouldn’t just ignore it or fail to really notice it. They would probably describe it more matter-of-factly. Example: “The scalpel peirced her skin with ease, leaving a thin trail of blood in its wake. The incision was beautiful—perfect in every way.”

    Someone not used to it: “Blood oozed around the edage of the blade as it went deeper and deeper into the flesh. I never expected that such a routine procedure would be so savage.”

    Those probably aren’t the best examples, but it’s hard to write things spur of the moment.

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    I’m not saying he wouldn’t notice it. It’s just that if it was something he’d experienced multiple times, then it might not be as upsetting. Then again, I’ve never been in battle.

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    ^^Me neither. “Notice” probably wasn’t the best word for me to use. I just meant that he would still describe it, just maybe in a more detached manner. I do realize what you mean now, and I agree.

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    “The scalpel peirced her skin with ease, leaving a thin trail of blood in its wake. The incision was beautiful—perfect in every way.”

    That sounds vaguely serial-killer-y.

    “Blood oozed around the edage of the blade as it went deeper and deeper into the flesh. I never expected that such a routine procedure would be so savage.”

    While this is a mix of “EW” and “Wow, the horror.” I like both, and I see how both apply.

  10.  

    I mostly did the first one that way because of my impressions from Grey’s Anatomy (I know it’s a TV show, but it was on my mind) is that doctors (or some of them anyway) think that blood is cool and surgery is fun.

    I’m glad you like them. I didn’t realize that the second one was all that “EW.” I considered it to be very mild ew.

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    Yeah, I squeamed. That’s the response you want.

    Also, I think smells get a good response.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2009
     

    My characters are all in some way hunters or otherwise exposed to animal viscera on a regular basis, so it’s not so much of an issue with them, but —human— viscera is a different matter, and none of my characters have any experience with that, save for one retired soldier who’s too tired/cynical to be bothered by it.

    I agree completely with Windmere’s post, it depends on what I’m tring to convey with the scene. Is it about gore, or is the gore a passing detail?The context is also important. Gore on a battlefield is going to be more horrifying than gore in a kitchen from a freshly gutted chicken, so they’re going to be described differently and in different tones.

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    Ron walked into the kitchen and stopped dead at the sight of a chicken being chopped up, so matter-of-fact. He could see the head. That was—Henny! No!
    The smell of gore hit him like a 5 000-ton tractor. A white intestine was flicked, unnoticed, onto the floor, where it sat in a small pool of slowly-congealing blood. He couldn’t take it any longer.

    Protagonist context is also important, one might add.

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      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeOct 31st 2009 edited
     

    Very true, Steph. although one thing I noticed “an entrail”? “entrails” is a mass noun and cannot be divided. Like “a scissor” or “a cutlery”. :P

    But I digress. Very good point about protagonist context.

    EDIT: I think “an intestine” runs into exactly the same problem. “intestines” is a pluralised noun (again, like ‘pants’, although that example has been subverted in recent years), unless you’re specifically referring to the small or large intestine. I’d go with “a blob of offal” or something. “a fleck of meat”?

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    o okay. it sounded fine to me.

    feels stupid

    EDITED: fixed.

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    My characters don’t really have experience with gore either, though they have more as the story moves along.

    The protagonist’s attachment to whatever is being killed or hurt is very important.

    Back to the chicken thing (mostly because I want to write something):

    I was hit by the stench of raw meat as soon as I entered the kitchen. An abandoned carcus lay on the countertop. As I approached, I froze in horror. “Henny,” I whispered, bringing a hand to my mouth. My beloved pet lay dismembered on the kitchen counter, blood dripping down the cabinets and onto the floor. I felt hot tears gathering in the corners of my eyes. It was like a car accident; I couldn’t look away. Then I heard footsteps approaching. The butcher was returning to finish the job. I hurriedly fled the kitchen.

    This stuff is easier to write than happy stuff. I don’t know why…

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    Because shocking people is fun.

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    ^^Precisely.

    I might have to post a couple of scenes from my crap novel that are meant to be disturbing/gross just to see if they actually are.

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    That could be interesting.

    Just out of curiosity, what WAS Henny? Apart from dead, that is.

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    I thought it was a chicken still. I just used Henny because you did. I was carrying on the chicken theme.

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    Oh, I see.

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    An abandoned carcus lay on the countertop…. My beloved pet lay dismembered on the kitchen counter, blood dripping down the cabinets and onto the floor.

    Umm, not to be an ass but if this chicken was properly disposed of it wouldn’t be dripping on the counter. Back on the ole’ farm we would bleed ‘em dry ‘afore we ever took ‘em in fer cleanin’. The gore’s goin’ to be at the choppin’ block.

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    ^^I really don’t know anything about how chickens are killed. I was just going for gross. In my version, the person left it there and was going to come back, but I didn’t know that it would’ve been bled and everything before being brought in.

    I’ve learned my one new fact today: Chickens are bled and dried on the chopping block before being cleaned in the kitchen.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeOct 28th 2010
     
    I'm wondering how I should do this, because a major character in my book dies a rather nasty death at the hands of a fire-throwing monster.
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    Unless said character is alone, I would focus more on the emotionsof the other characters than the actual gore.

    Or if it’s from the PoV of the dying guy, then maybe talk about the pain of it.

    Or if they’re finding him later you could go more into the gore, like talk about his charred body or something.

    And a fire monster sounds awesome by the way.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeOct 28th 2010
     
    Its in the middle of a battle, and the heroine and a bunch of other people are trying to save him. So thanks for the advice.
    I like my fire-throwing monsters. They make good enemies.
    And later in the story someone else is fighting one, but it shoves him off a tower.
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    How To Not Do Gore, Example I: The Eye of Argon.
    Read it and weep.

    How To Not Do Gore, Example II: My first draft.
    Warning – some of this is xtremely scray rather graphic. I know this is the right thread for it, but still.

    I can’t believe I created such a festering pile of vomit when I was a kid. Not only because of that scene, but the overall story sucked viciously. Maybe I should spork it sometime…

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    I can get pretty…detailed when I describe violent things. for instance, in one of my holocaust stories, a little boy sees a dead body for the first time. Since he’s never seen anything like it before, I did my best to make it sound horrifying. And he doesn’t forget it, either. It’s an image that keeps coming back to him, even after he’s seen other horrifying things.

    Of course, my vision of what is violent has changed over the years.

    Like this is from when I was 12 or 13. It’s a scene in which my Mary Sue gets tortured. I thought it was really violent/blood/gruesome:

    I was silly.

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    my bear feet

    hee

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    Stuff I wrote when I was sixteen (not that long ago, but all my really old stuff was on our old, now dead computer):

  31.  
    I always go into deep and loving detail when it comes to blood and gore.

    But I don't do diseases, they freak me out :P.
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    I always think it’s better to describe what’s going on in the interests of good authorship, but I’ve never really been good with knowing how much is descriptive and when that crosses the line into gorn. I just don’t translate very well from text to visual images.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeNov 16th 2010 edited
     
    I don't like it when its described too much
    I sometimes get a sort of pleasure from putting characters through horrible things.
    But I generally go back and change it later.
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    ^^ See, I’ve never understood that. I dislike writing things in which the protag has misery upon misery heaped upon him/her.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeNov 18th 2010 edited
     
    Well, it won't be written precisely like that any more, because I've realized that I was going about his character all wrong. In the original version he was a big jerk who seemed to dislike nearly everyone, but I've realized that he's actually quite nice. So I intend to back off on that. He will retain his vision. I'll back off on the whole torture thing. He also successfully resists the Big Bad's Mind Control. And its easier just not to have him die than it is to resurrect him.
    To rephrase my above comment--I sometimes heap a ton of misery on one character, only to change it because its ridiculously overdone. I think you have to be careful with this. After a certain point, you start to tune out all the bad stuff.
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    I think you have to be careful with this. After a certain point, you start to tune out all the bad stuff.

    Truth.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeFeb 24th 2011
     

    And this is especially relevant to me because of the book I’m working on now, Elwen. It is a prequel to my first book, The Black Galloper. The first wasn’t really violent at all, except for one or two scenes with giant birds and creepy invisible cat-wolf things. It was more creepy than violent. But the prequel goes off into more blood, battles, near-murders, and fire-throwing monsters, among other things. The other book I’m working on, Thiswold Thyster, is sort of both. Its violent—especially in this one pivotal scene—and has this totally creepy revenge-obsessed villain who sometimes scares even me.

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    As long as you focus on your characterization enough, I think you’ll be okay.

    My stuff is usually pretty violent, but I try to keep suspension of disbelief going.

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    I think the description of gross things depends on the impact the writer desires. Describing the grotesque-ness of certain sacrifices, rituals, dark stuff, etc. can emphasize on its brutality and squickiness.

    Sometimes describing the disgust and horror creates a far greater impact than just the word. Describing the pain a characters wound is causing can create greater impact than saying ‘it was agonizing’.

    Along a similar line; the impact a certain grotesque event causes can emphasized with details. A fresh soldier seeing war for his first time and seeing his friends die will be heavily traumatised. Describing the sights and gore around him is generally better here.

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    I’m in the middle of a scene where one of my main characters gets their skin fried by corrosive gas…. Yum!

    Maybe I should translate part of it and post it here?

  41.  

    Sounds sexy, Emil.

    • CommentAuthorNo One
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2011
     

    That reminds me, someone should write about someone dying in the Lake of Death (found in Africa… somewhere on the Great Rift, I think). The acids in that red lake is corrosive enough to actually dissolve human skin or something like that.

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      CommentAuthorMaese Delta
    • CommentTimeJun 11th 2011 edited
     

    Mmh… my only experience would be trying to write what I saw from watching wrong films (and not at the wrong hour and place, luckily). If you’re into medicine and anatomy, and you have a strong stomach, it might work for the better, and of course, the hard to earn experience of evolving with the writing and actually achieving and sense of great disgust when it comes to that stuff…

    Oh, and Brutal Death Metal bands’ lyrics.

    Although, I like the idea of a T-shirt saying, Entombed in a Womb... Mmmh, it reminds me of abortion.

    Goals to aim for: Evoking a true sense of disgust, adding more visuals to the narrative, tongue-in-cheek, or maybe it’s a hilarious attempt at being gross.

    I think it should be nothing pleasant for someone who has synesthesia. XP

    Well, not that much, if by the words read or said, the person can get even weirder sensations:

    Someone says words like pus, blood, spit, etc.

    A person feels aroused because the words (or better said, the sounds) are touching him (and yes, it could be that way of touching)

    Or for a WTF:

    A person hears those words, and says they taste like cake.

    I’m gonna go the morgue or an abbatoir. XP

  44.  

    The acids in that red lake is corrosive enough to actually dissolve human skin or something like that.

    Long, long ago, I once wrote a story in which some of the bad guy mooks were vampires (yeah…) wearing spiky iron armour (no, seriously). So they ended up being owned by a couple of good guys (coughStuscough). One vamp got roundhouse kicked (no, seriously) by an anthropomorphic mutant baby dinosaur (no, seriously) and he hit a rack full of chemicals. One bottle broke and the contents burned straight through his helmet into his head, killing him.

  45.  
    WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAhaahha...

    ... hahha.... hah.....

    Dude, that's priceless.
  46.  

    Klutor, you need to rewrite that with the Stus fully aware that they are Stus. I would so read that.

    •  
      CommentAuthorEmil 1.4021
    • CommentTimeJul 12th 2011 edited
     
    Hey, I had to pluck some eyelashes that were growing inward the other day. Isn't that sort of gross?

    ... just wanted to say.

    •  
      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeJul 12th 2011
     

    Hey, I had to pluck some eyelashes that were growing inward the other day. Isn’t that sort of gross?

    Having a headcold sucks. Woke up 15 minutes earlier than usual, was still half-asleep in the shower. Blew my nose on the washcloth without realising, then proceeded to wash.

    Woke the hell up then, I tell you.

  49.  
    bq. Woke the hell up then, I tell you.

    I'm sorry, but that's really funny.... (chokes back laughter)

    Let's be gross together, bro.

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    Are we talking about gross body things now? Can I join the gross club, ‘cause it that’s time of month again. There’s not much more gross than that.

    Speaking of, girls never have their periods in books. (unless you count Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret).

  51.  

    Or it’s Tamora Pierce.

    Taku and Emil—I laughed. Oh, how I laughed.

    ...uh, that’s a whole new level of grossosity, isn’t it?

    •  
      CommentAuthorSpanman
    • CommentTimeJul 12th 2011
     

    Speaking of, girls never have their periods in books.

    And that’s how it should be.

    In other news, I will never set foot in this thread again.

  53.  

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHA! sniffs pits and decides never to shave ever again

  54.  

    Female gossity is great!

    But actually, I sort of mentioned it because I like comparing the gross stuff I write about to stuff in our everyday lives that we can all relate to. I like to think that that way your reader feels the level of disgust more instinctively….

  55.  

    Instinctive disgust. Yay.

    I tend more to making an atmosphere of pervading horror that you can’t escape from, rather than disgust.

    • CommentAuthorNo One
    • CommentTimeJul 13th 2011
     

    I like to try and give people nightmares. It starts off with disgust then horror.

  57.  

    Dude, that’s priceless.

    Glad you enjoyed the moment, Emil. The same fight scene also featured a talking witch cat (think Salem) killing the boss vampire and a wizard burning another vamp to death by blasting out a globe of liquified garlic.

    Klutor, you need to rewrite that with the Stus fully aware that they are Stus. I would so read that.

    Are we talking like Cleolinda’s Movie in 15 minutes stuff? With everyone lampshading everything?

    unless you count Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

    Or Carrie.
    How the hell did you forget Carrie?

  58.  

    Oh right, Carrie!

    I haven’t actually read that one yet (Shameful, I know, since I’m a King fan…). I know all about the musical flop, though!

    •  
      CommentAuthorEmil 1.4021
    • CommentTimeJul 17th 2011 edited
     

    Speaking of gross stuff in writng, has anyone here read Haruki Murakami’s “Wind of Bird Chronicle”?

    Seriously, that scene where they took the skin off a man nearly made me faint. Murakami didn’t really write all the gory details, but his minimalistic, straight-to-the-point style of writing is what really made that scene so absolutely horrifying. I read it out loud to a friend on the plane yesterday, since he asked what I was reading and all, and he said that those little airplane snacks nearly made their way back up again….

  60.  

    Yeah, sometimes the flowery language takes away from the image of what’s really happening. I mean, straight to the point with something like ‘his arm was ripped off, raw, jagged ends of bloody flesh and bone still remaining at the place where it had joined his shoulder a moment ago.” and you actually get it. Can you post an excerpt?

  61.  

    Listen to me, all bloodthirsty-like…

    Are we talking like Cleolinda’s Movie in 15 minutes stuff? With everyone lampshading everything?

    Yeah, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’d be awesome :)

  62.  

    Can you post an excerpt?

    About that…. I’m reading it in swedish, but I’ll see what I can do about it

  63.  

    Okey-dokey, so this is an excerpt from the chapter “Lt. Mamiya’s long story”, told from the POV of said Lt, in which a small group of Japanese soldiers are caught on a reconnaissance mission (the nature of which hasn’t at least been revealed as far as I’ve read) in the Outer Mongolia, 1938:

  64.  

    Ewwww, that’s gross.

    I think the grossness and the horror combined together make it something memorable.

  65.  

    I remember it having more of an impact when I read it in Swedish, but perhaps that’s just because it’s easier to take words to heart when I read it in my mother tounge….

    I was sitting on the plane, already a bit worn out and all that from traveling, and I hadn’t been eating properly all day. Then that section came along while I was reading… Suddenly it felt like I was going really cold, and sort of… y’know, like averything was tingling/prickling? It felt a lot like when you get a heatstroke. Just from reading that bit. Sheesh….

  66.  

    Yeah, sometimes the flowery language takes away from the image of what’s really happening.

    And sometimes it’s so bad that the horror is completely absent.
    Like Rosalie telling Bella her backstory in Eclipse. Bloody ridiculous – she was gangraped to death by her drunken douchebag fiance and his buddies, which would be an unimaginably horrible experience IRL....
    ....but the purple prose, the dumb and unnecessary details, the way she recites direct quotes from everyone involved, the stupid adjectives she throws in for no reason – all of those (not to mention Smeyer failing history forever, making Royce and Co. cartoonishly evil and skipping the actual rape because she’s too “sensitive” to write it) make the scene boring and infuriating at the same time.

    Which I previously thought to be impossible.

    Yeah, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’d be awesome :)

    Cool. “Screw the rules, I’m a mutant dinosaur!!!1111!!”

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeJul 22nd 2011
     

    Well, right now I’m writing a scene where the heroine is hearing about the destruction of a village. The man who’s describing it is not squeamish by any means, but even he was freaked out by it. This is the scene that pushes my pretty, somewhat spoiled princess to fight. I don’t want to go into all the gory details, but I have to show what kind of creatures they fight, since this provides a lot of my character’s motivation. (She’s not really a rebellious princess. She’s more of an I-have-to-stop-these-horrible-creatures-because-what-they-are-doing-is-wrong type of princess. And she doesn’t actually enjoy fighting that much.)

  68.  

    True story. Happened to me this…. Wednesday. I think. Lost my grasp on time in the hospital.

    Sort of gross? I feel sort of fed up with grossity and horror at the moment, I can tell you. And my right hand is out of use for 6-9 months. Sigh

  69.  

    I blew off my fingat with thermite once and had to go to the hostpital.

    • CommentAuthorDeborah
    • CommentTimeJul 27th 2011 edited
     

    And now I’m trying to figure out how to do that scene. Its supposed to be important, and I know what it looks like, but I can’t describe it in more than a few words.
    There’s been an alteration, and now the heroine is seeing the destruction of the village in her dream.


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