The Big R: How to Deal With Rape in Your Fiction

Fiction is often a mirror onto the reality in which an author lives. Even in the most outlandish fantasy or the most far-flung sci-fi writers have to inject realism into the thoughts, behaviors, and actions of their characters. Not all of those actions are pleasant. In fact, some of them are downright horrendous. Rape is one of those actions.

Let us make no bones about just how common rape is. The numbers reported by the Department of Justice (and found at the homepage for Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network here) estimate that at least 1 in 6 women are victims of rape or attempted rape in America today. That rough 16% is based off the reported numbers, and common wisdom says the numbers are even higher than that because of the number of rapes that go unreported. Additionally, 3% of American men are also victims of rape, with the same caveat that rape is a severely under-reported crime. So yeah, including rape in a story does inject an element of horrid realism. That isn't the problem. The problems are some of these other things.

Problem #1: Making Rape Sexy

Rape is a total violation. It is the use of someone's body without their consent, often through violence. It leaves scars that can damage someone's psyche for life, and it represents a complete betrayal of someone's trust. I don't know why someone would try to put a glossy coat of sexy on this, but apparently there are writers out there who have. It is for that reason that even the most salacious erotica publishers have in big, red neon "No rape for titillation" on their submission guidelines.

Under. No. Circumstances.

Let's clear the air on this one. Lots of people enjoy forceful sex. They enjoy holding their partners down, or being held down, and being taken hard. However, rape is not about the type of sex someone has; it's about consent. Rape is not sex; it is an act which happens to involve penetration, but it is not about the intercourse itself. It's about someone's willingness to participate, and about that person's volition. It doesn't matter what physical form rape takes, whether there's leather and chains or candlelight and mood music; once that consent goes away, the act becomes rape.

On the one hand, yes, there is a marked appeal of rape as a fantasy. According to Psychology Today's entry here surveys of women's sexual fantasies consistently turn up at least a 40% of women who regularly have rape fantasies. On the other hand, I would personally be willing to wager that none of the women surveyed who are of sound mind and body would like to be raped in real life. That's the difference between fantasy and reality.

But isn't my story just a fantasy? some writers might ask. Yes and no. On the one hand if you're writing a piece of fiction, then yes, you are creating events that did not happen. On the other hand, authors have a responsibility to create a real, believable world. The depiction of that world is important, and by attempting to make rape into something sensual, by focusing on the pleasure the rapist feels or paying an inordinate amount of attention to the victim's body and reactions, authors are sure to snap the suspension of disbelief. Or worse they'll create a world in which raping someone is considered the sexiest thing one person can do to another, thus giving it the social rubber stamp that normalizes it.

Problem #2: Definition by Rape

This is perhaps the simplest example of lazy writing I can think of, and it is given a pass time, and time again. I'm looking at you Nora Roberts, and at least the first few books of your "In Death" series. A female character (sometimes a male character, but that's very rare) is raped. Maybe it was a random man at a bar, maybe it was her father, maybe it was even multiple persons, but whoever it was the rape changed her. It made her what she is today... and that's the problem.

Something's missing... I can feel it...

Once again, rape is a horrible experience. It can alter the way a person sees him or herself, and it leaves wounds that will be a long time healing. It is not, however, the only reason a person becomes who they are. Your characters, just like real people, are a collection of a lifetime of decisions and choices, experiences and actions. Being raped is often important, but so is losing a child, suffering from a terminal disease, going through a warzone, or recovering from drug use. None of these traits should wholly define who a character is, even if some of them are more visible than others.

There's one last, important note on this section as well. Defining a character through the short hand of the rape survivor is used almost exclusively for female characters. On the one hand, yes, women are victims of rape more often than men. Don't be fooled though; this insidious bit of sexism is used to create an optical illusion that a shallow character with a single, defining trait actually has depth. There are no shortcuts to making a rounded character, including a horrible back story.

Problem #3: Trauma Drama

If you were to ask an average person-on-the-street what the worst thing one human being could do to another was, rape would be near the top of the list.

Because average people lack twisted imaginations.

While the horror writers might have chuckled at that, the sentiment isn't very funny when you look at it. So often in fiction characters are raped not because it's an important part of the story, but because the writer wants to create tension. Rape does this, without question... but is that all you could come up with?

Rape has become the knee-jerk reaction when lazy writers want to do something terrible to characters without killing them off in order to keep the plot interesting. Just shop around for a little bit and read how often this happens. Ask yourself why? Why rape? Why not having someone's good looks permanently ruined with a scar and missing teeth? Why not having their house broken into and a cherished family heirloom stolen? Why not losing a limb in a car wreck, or developing a mental condition that makes the character struggle just to get through the day? If it isn't crucial to your story, cut it out and move on.

Problem #4: Making the Victim a Means

One of the worst things about rape as an act is that it turns someone from a person into an object. They are acted upon, and thus they were stripped of identity, of meaning, and in a real sense of their personhood. With that said, why would a writer do that accidentally by making rape in a story about anything other than the rape itself?

There are better ways to make villains evil.

This happens a lot when the writer is looking for ways to make the bad guy seem more vicious or evil. This in turn makes the hero all the more heroic when he defeats the villain, and sets his victims free from a life of sexual violence and objectification. Notice something in this setup? The rape victims are pawns; set pieces whose only purpose is to cast brighter lights on the good guy, and darker shadows on the bad guy.

Don't. Just don't. If you're including rape in your story, then take a long, hard look at what that rape is doing. If it's only purpose is to make the bad guy twirl his mustache, or the hero step up to protect a nameless, faceless woman, then you are doing it wrong. If you want to make better bad guys, look here instead.

Problem #5: Not Doing Your Research

Writers are consistently hammered with the idiom "write what you know". However, a more useful maxim is "know what you're writing". If you're going to include rape in your story then take that second one to heart. Write it on your wall. Tattoo it on the back of your eyelids. Carve it into the skulls of your enemies.

Whatever you need to do.

Jim C. Hines makes a big point out of this in an entry he wrote for Apex Magazine here. Hines says when it comes to rape he's seen so many mistakes in who commits rape, who gets raped, and what decisions lead to rape that it reads like a formulaic guide on how to write an offensive scene. It isn't that someone is being raped. It's that someone is being raped by a scruffy nobody in the back of a deserted parking garage when the victim had been drinking. And the guy has a knife. Because symbolism.

It's your world, and it's your story. If your character is one of the remarkably few cases of stranger rape (most rapes are committed by persons known to the victim), and if that rapist is an angry, recalcitrant thug unable to approach women (it's much more common for rapists to be normal people, or even highly charismatic ones), then that's your business. But if you're going to take on the task of portraying rape as part of your story, then don't shirk at your due diligence.


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Under the Black Hat: Writing Believable Bad Guys

Heroes and heroines tend to be the characters readers root for. Whether they're ass-kicking monster slayers, knights in shining armor, or everymen and women placed into extraordinary circumstances, it's their collective duty to get the job done. Without villains though (who see no need to differentiate based on gender), the whole story falls apart. What's the hero going to do without an evil count to oppose, a shady corporation to investigate, or a monster from the depths to slay? Absolutely nothing, that's what.

More often than not though, villains get the short end of the stick when it comes to an author's creativity. They receive stock lines, ham-handed backstories, laughable motivation, and dozens of other hiccoughs that render them paper tigers to be slain by charismatic leads. Great villains make the heroes up their collective game though, and they create better stories overall. So here is the Literary Mercenary's guide to helping you make your antagonists more awesome, brought to you courtesy of Notes From the Editor's Desk.

1. Avoid Accidental Tropes

Let me guess, you call yourself...

Every writer's first step when creating a villain should be to carefully read this list. Go ahead, I'll wait. Did you read it? Good, then I don't need to go over every trope you've just seen.

The Evil Overlord List hits on some of the biggest, most common tropes that writers have used for villains in novels, comic books, movies, and television for decades. These tropes aren't inherently bad, but they are tropes for a reason. Sometimes recognizing one of these tropes, like the hero stealing a bad guy's uniform to sneak into the castle of doom undetected, will end with readers rage-quitting and not even reading to the good part.

2. What's Their Motivation?

But why is he tying Nell to the tracks?

This is a major problem I've seen both as a reader and an editor. Readers understand villains are doing bad things... but why are they doing them? Sometimes that why is just as important as the actions themselves.

I'll give you an example. In Shakespeare's "Othello" (if you haven't seen it there's a fantastic film with Lawrence Fishburne, which I highly recommend) the title character's life is ruined by the meanness and duplicity of a fellow soldier named Iago. Iago pours poison in the cast's ears, raising every hand against Othello until the big O murders his loving, loyal wife, alienates everyone he once called friend, and is driven to suicide. Why did Iago do this? Because of rumors that Othello slept with Iago's wife, and because Othello passed Iago over for promotion.

Is that petty? Of course it is. The reason such a petty motivation makes sense is because Iago is a man playing for very small stakes. His reputation and livelihood, neither very great to begin with, are trod underfoot. Othello didn't do this maliciously, but Iago needs someone to blame for his problems. Once he has someone to blame he uses every resource at his command to bring absolute ruin to that man as a way to lash out and feel like he's getting revenge. A villain's goals, and the reasons for those goals, have to make sense in the context of that character's story. Otherwise the character is pushing the big red button without provocation, and that is the surest way to bore readers.

3. Just Because They Are Bad-Guys, That Doesn't Mean They Are Bad Guys

Art Thou Wroth, Brother?

Generally speaking, no one thinks of themselves as the villain. Dr. Doom views himself as a benevolent dictator, taking care of his people and his country. Dracula is an ancient being leaving behind a country that's killing him to seek out richer opportunity among the fresh blood of the new world. Darth Vader is the right hand of the emperor, a man who brought order to a galaxy that was tearing itself apart with war and corruption. Every character on this list, and thousands of others besides, could very easily have been the hero if the book was written with a slightly different take. No one sits around twirling his mustache and laughing wickedly about the wrongs that have just been successfully perpetrated.

It is important to mention this rule only applies to human characters who possess all of their mental faculties. A character like the Joker, who suffers from mental instability, can perpetrate acts of wanton destruction and murder for no reason other than the sheer, personal pleasure it brings. Other characters, like H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu or Clive Barker's cenobites, are not human. The idea of good or bad as humans know it doesn't really apply to forces of nature, or beings with a truly alien view of reality. That's why characters like these tend to have human followers whose motivations and purposes we can more clearly understand.

4. The Sliding Scale of Villainy

Just how big of an inconvenience is awakening the Old Ones going to be...?

Villains come in all shapes, and sizes. They come with a bevy of motivations, desires, goals, and wants. They are characters. It's also important to remember that villains dictate the scope of a story. Bad guys always make the first move, and they're the ones who decide just how epic a story is going to get.

Take one of the oldest stories in fantasy; the knight in shining armor fighting a dragon. The dragon has kidnapped a girl, and the knight steps in to save her. This basic setup is exciting, but the stakes are only the lives of the knight, the girl, and the dragon. Maybe the knight's horse as well. Now, say the dragon stole a princess. This implies the bloodline of a royal family, and possibly a nation, is also in the balance. Take it one step further; say the girl who was kidnapped is tied to the well-being of the world, and if she dies then the world's life force will also be snuffed out.

Villains can always escalate a situation, but writers need to ask why. What will be added to the story by increasing the stakes? Do the villains need to be on the big screen, or are their motives and goals meant for a small scale? Take Jack the Ripper. Jack terrorized White Chapel, killed a dozen women, and carved a reputation as a fiendish serial killer that lives to this day. But how much of a threat could a lone, knife-wielding killer be? Could he affect the fate of an entire city? A nation? The world? Probably not, and especially not without some serious plot-stretching or historical re-touching. This is why murder mysteries tend be very small, and very personal. By contrast, a character like Azathoth (pictured above) simply cannot work on anything less than an epic scale. A crawling chaos who devours worlds and rends souls from galaxies without truly noticing is a major league force to be reckoned with. Just the implication of his existence ups the ante.

5. Kill Your Darlings

Yes, editing feels like this. Every Time.

To paraphrase the great sage and eminent junkie Stephen King, "kill your darlings". Nowhere is this truer than with your villains. If a goal makes no sense, if dialogue feels forced or grandiose, or if the bad guy is making decisions that don't jive with the setup you've given, uncap the red pen and get to work. Most importantly, ask yourself why. Why does your villain want to rule the world? Why does he keep murdering his lieutenants when they fail? Why does he play chess, collect art, or give the hero a fighting chance? In the end, why is the most important question you can ask.


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Making Immortals Interesting

A long time ago, when I was still fresh to the author mantle and light-headed from being added to Goodreads (my page is here if you're curious), I began my first ever blog. It was called "Notes From the Editor's Desk", and it was meant to provide a humorous look at all the things editors have to look at that writers might not even know they'd doing wrong. It was short-lived, but while it was around it was liked by several people. Not only that it gave me a chance to be snarky, and to say the things I wasn't allowed to say to writers I was editing. Well, now that this blog's been up and running for a while I'd like to bring back the spirit, but hopefully garner a little more interest than I did the first time around.

All that said, we're going to tackle an immortal question today. Namely, what the fuck do you do with them?

Immortal as Lover

We've seen this trope from Tolkien to Twilight, and yet it never seems to creep other people out the same way it does me. A character whose age is measured in centuries somehow falls in love with a person who lacks experience, along with the ability to shrug off time, and it is very rarely questioned. Vampires, elves, demi-gods, djinn, demons, angels, and the list goes on and on.

Because this just screams long-term commitment.

This is, at least for me, where the suspension bridge of disbelief snaps and my imagination takes an Indiana Jones style tumble into croc-infested waters. On the one hand, sure, it's a nice sentiment that love might stretch across gulfs and unite two souls. But when Hugh Hefner does this we call him a dirty old man. In purely human experience anything more than a few decades one way or another tends to make people look askance, and wonder how long that older partner is going to dote on his latest play toy before moving on.

That's kind of the problem with immortal couples when one partner is very obviously outside the bicentennial club. Unless both characters have similar longevity, or the immortal in question is very young, chances are good that what we are seeing is simply a passing fancy. Because when one lives for several hundred years, humans are kind of like kittens. They're adorable, they're cuddly, and you can have some good times, but one day you turn around and they're just giving up the ghost. That's how time moves when you're ancient, and the more times you've gone through the process, the less and less attached you're capable of becoming.

Possible Fixes

While I don't advocate people do this, there are ways to make this more believable. Two were already mentioned; make both partners immortal, or make your immortal a younger member of the breed. This can make the inevitable loss truly heart-wrenching, rather than just more run-of-the-mill grief. However, if a writer insists on going the Lolita route with this, the best possible fix is to make the connection believable.

Why do people fall in love? Well, once their brains have calmed down and gotten all that pesky dopamine cleaned out, it's because of respect, similar feelings and opinions, shared activities, and what they add to each other's lives. Have the younger character win the immortal's interest and admiration by standing out in some way. If you have an elven general who wrote the book on tactics, have her out-flanked by a younger, but talented human. The competition and respect for skill creates a starting place for a meeting of the minds, which might lead to a meeting of the hearts. Remember it should be because of what a person does, not because of what they are. For Twilight fans, smelling good doesn't count.

Immortal as Time Capsule

Of all the ways to depict immortals, this has to be one of the most ham-handed in existence. Writers essentially treat characters like a snap shot of their last heyday, and the immortal has refused to progress further for some unknown and unknowable reason. Sort of like your grandparents.

In my day everyone wore brown robes, and we were happy.

Think about your grandparents for a minute though. Sure you probably had to explain Google to them a few dozen times before they could do a search without finding a hundred porn sites and a thousand viruses, but I'll bet you they figured out how a DVD player worked just fine. They probably dressed in fashions that made sense for this day and age, and they probably spoke in modern vernacular. I'd lay you odds they even did weird things like read the newspaper and watch the latest in television programming.

This is where the time capsule immortal sort of falls apart. In order for a sentient individual to remain so firmly planted in the past there cannot be any change in its surroundings. One of the main reason Dracula wants to go to London is that it's the future, and he's sick of being the lord of a dying past. He adopts English speech, English dress, and while he's exotic and foreign, no one remarks on how 3rd century he is. He successfully blended in with the Victorian era despite having been alive and slaying since a time when the newest cultural development was the crusade.

How to Fix This

The easy way is to take that desire you have to make a quirky character who will act as a mouthpiece for charmingly out-of-date statements, and crush its windpipe with a cinderblock. That is a bad reason to make a character, and doubly so if he or she doesn't actually contribute to the story at large.

Next, decide whether or not the character is capable of changing. It's been suggested for vampires in certain role playing games that they are frozen in the moment they were destroyed, which makes it hard for them to adjust. But even if that's the case, camouflage is important to someone who lives forever. So, if the character can't change, then he or she needs to go somewhere that fact won't be noticed or remarked upon. Wild mountains, crumbling castles, isolated frontiers like Alaska or Siberia make sense. If you're in downtown New York wearing ruffled sleeves and carrying a sword cane though, people are going to notice. People like the authorities, which could blow apart any sort of cover.

Not all immortals live in modern fantasy worlds. In fact, some of them live in worlds of their own. This is quite possibly the easiest way to make time capsules believable. A wandering sidhe prince, a plane-hopping demigod, or an ancient wizard with a pocket dimension all his own don't have to abide by your customs. In this case the strange differences the audience sees are more culture shock than anything else. Immortals are free to display unusual knowledge like proper spoken Latin, or out-of-date skill sets like broadsword fighting. They might even feel more comfortable surrounded by the art and architecture of their times. Just remember, everyone is shaped by their environments and cultures. Even if they're the ones setting the standard.

Immortal as Deus Ex Machina

We've seen this one a lot too. The Great and Powerful Whosey-Whatsits will know what to do, if only he/she/it/they were here. Hell, the entirety of the character of Dr. Who practically is this trope. That doesn't mean you're allowed to slap it into your story and claim it's groundbreaking.

Everyone forgets that the Tin Man has to watch everything die. After they gave him the capacity to love.

How to Fix This

Immortal characters can, and should, have knowledge or skill far beyond the mortal ken. Elves aren't born with the ability to shoot three arrows simultaneously and bulls-eye with all of them. They got there the same way anyone else did; practice. 150 years of practice just happens to go a pretty long goddamn way. However, it's important to remember that assholes, rejects, the socially outcast, and the downright curmudgeonly make it to old age as well.

How do you think the immortal got to be immortal? Careful planning and sheer determination is good, but cowards can live forever as well. Just remember that any character who is reduced to a set of stock abilities, or a singular purpose is probably not going to be terribly interesting. Sure Lancelot was the guy who had sex with the queen. He was also the strongest of all Arthur's knights, a brutal Gaul, and he enjoyed playing the flute as well. Everyone, even immortals, should be real. Just like real people, not everything about them is positive.

Final Thoughts

Immortality is a very, very messy thing. It is quite possibly the oldest MacGuffin in human history, stretching back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. That said, immortality is kind of like alternative history that's able to walk and talk; you have to figure out every little detail in your head to make it work. Is the immortal also indestructible? What powers does it possess? Is it a ghost in the shell that reincarnates, or is it a single being that was genetically modified through either chance or science to defeat age forever? And lastly, perhaps most importantly, is immortality a requirement to make the story work or is it just a thing you wanted to slap on for a coolness factor?

For those interested in past "Notes From the Editor's Desk" entries, either go to the page on the right, or click this link here. If you're interested in keeping updated with yours truly, follow me on Facebook, or jack yourself in at my Tumblr, where I welcome any and all questions or queries for other elements to add to this newest section of The Literary Mercenary. As always, thanks for stopping by.