The Extremis of Gore

[TheMonotonePuppet]

I'm curious, from a purely logical writing standpoint, thinking of all of the cut and dry rules you remember from English classes, how would you go about writing something - not small or short - where the point of it is portray the extremis of gore, violence, and squicky matters in fine detail?

You cannot imply it. You can imply some parts, but otherwise I would like to know how you would organize it without hiding it away for the readers to think about it.

You must attach the emotional sensation of coming face to face with someone, who was once your lifelong best friend and mutual crush, and who is now a madwoman. One who is genuinely invested in seeing you suffer to make themselves feel better about who they are as a person. Someone with the same level of investment as a person working at their life-calling, as emotionally tied to creating torture for you as a person participating in communion (there is a difference between emotionally and spiritually, of which the latter is greater in church worship. Don't worry, I'm not putting it above anything. Chill), etc.

So... How would you do it? What structure would you give someone coming face to face with gorey insanity itself? Would it just be continual escalation, where it gets worse and worse until fade to black? Or something more complex?

Edit: What meaning, what themes, can you see in horrific bloodshed that speak to you?

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

The most gorey I've read is two or three Maxime Chattam's books, so I don't think I am able to help much. But I think the most important thing is the perspective of the narrator. For exemple : with Chattam it's often police investigation stories, and the narrator is analytic and methodical. When the police arrives, he describes the corps as it is, with all the gorey details including the maggots and the gas bloating the body and breaking the skin. The gore has a purpose : Explaining the condition of the victim, and explaining why the police is so mad and actively wants to track the killer.

Now, let's say that the narrator is your MC. What do you want to focus on ? His sanity slowly disappearing ? His despair taking over until there is no hope left ? Or is it the pain that numbs his brain until there is nothing but pain anymore : breathing is pain, looking is pain, even thinking becomes pain.

Or maybe there is a third person narrator ? In that case, what type of person is it ? Does he like seeing the MC suffer ? Or is it horrified by what is happening ? It's really important to know that. The way you will describe gore and in which direction you will go, it all depends on your narrator

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

The most gorey I've read is two or three Maxime Chattam's books, so I don't think I am able to help much. But I think the most important thing is the perspective of the narrator. For exemple : with Chattam it's often police investigation stories, and the narrator is analytic and methodical. When the police arrives, he describes the corps as it is, with all the gorey details including the maggots and the gas bloating the body and breaking the skin. The gore has a purpose : Explaining the condition of the victim, and explaining why the police is so mad and actively wants to track the killer.

Now, let's say that the narrator is your MC. What do you want to focus on ? His sanity slowly disappearing ? His despair taking over until there is no hope left ? Or is it the pain that numbs his brain until there is nothing but pain anymore : breathing is pain, looking is pain, even thinking becomes pain.

Or maybe there is a third person narrator ? In that case, what type of person is it ? Does he like seeing the MC suffer ? Or is it horrified by what is happening ? It's really important to know that. The way you will describe gore and in which direction you will go, it all depends on your narrator

Currently, I'm focusing on a variety of things! At times they are written in surreal detail as various things begin inducing delirium and others in rigorous, methodical detail. Hold on, I think I have the trigger warnings I wrote somewhere.

Ah, here we go!
Trigger Warnings ( had fun writing these because there's just so many): Grievous bodily harm. Being eaten alive. ~Gore, gore, and gore. Gore and more, oh yeah.~ Goring ain't boring, so moar gore, moar gore, moar gore!~
Starvation and malnutrition. Dehydration and corresponding inhospitable environmental conditions. Claustrophobia. Suffocation/Drowning. Entomophobia: Scoleciphobia. Trypophobia.
Involuntary drug use. Bad drug trips. Sustained isolation. Sensory deprivation. Sensory overload.
Parental neglect. Abandonment. Betrayal. Suicidality. Abject despair. Oh yeah, and a metric fuckton of dead deer.

And then I should have the various scenes and elements organized by a type list somewhere... beyond the organization according to the trigger warnings that are perhaps more informative.
Hm, hm, hmmm... *looking in notebooks* Riiight about here, and here, and here.
Type list: Blood, Rust, Tetanus, Oxidized, Hard, Stiff, Rigid, Flaking, Razors, Brine/Salt, Orange, Cut Flesh and its taste, Bone/Impalement, Abandonment, Reminiscence. Oh, and Squelching.

Reminiscence is the only part from third-person. The rest is first-person.

Edit: I found the other types! The ones I haven't written out in the notebooks yet. Hidden in my phone's Note function!

• Excised types (ones displaced to other scenes surrounding the Shipping Crate Incident): submerged in oceanic water, Rust-red, Iron. Grief, Dark lighting, Shroud. Algae, cyan, blue-green, slimy, spirulina, scum.
• Types for a brief moment of contemplation and peace near the end to hopefully make it all the more poignant, because you'll remember that all the while she is bleeding out and drowning in liquifying deer guts: Bright, Sunny, Blue Sky, Sunset Gold, Cracks of Light, Orbs/Pearls of Light on on a String of Light/Gold/White/White Light.
• Sounds Outside of crate: Seagull Caws, Water Lapping

Then there will hopefully be a guiding focus on the irony of being a dockworker's daughter being stuffed in a shipping crate near her father's office.

 

[Thraben]

I tend to take the more clinical approach, describing the morbid and unpleasant in cold, logical terms first, because to a certain extent the visceral morbidity, the knowledge that you and everyone else around you are fundamentally just meat animated by particularly complex slime, and you can be reduced to ever so much a mangled mess of those things, that's the part I find easiest to do first.

Following that is how characters react to it; perhaps the protagonist gets only halfway through that visceral description before it's interrupted by retching or cold, soul-bearing vulnerability, or perhaps they are distant, numb with the understanding that they will be horrified or haunted by this, but aware that they can't bring up those emotions now.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

I tend to take the more clinical approach, describing the morbid and unpleasant in cold, logical terms first, because to a certain extent the visceral morbidity, the knowledge that you and everyone else around you are fundamentally just meat animated by particularly complex slime, and you can be reduced to ever so much a mangled mess of those things, that's the part I find easiest to do first.

Following that is how characters react to it; perhaps the protagonist gets only halfway through that visceral description before it's interrupted by retching or cold, soul-bearing vulnerability, or perhaps they are distant, numb with the understanding that they will be horrified or haunted by this, but aware that they can't bring up those emotions now.

Yeah, I try to achieve a truly emotionally devastating impact with it, only to come up wanting compared to other people like rottinginachair (spacebattles user) who just do it so much better. They have a grasp of medical terminology, or other terminology describing interactions with the flesh, that enables them to describe it just so much better (they are a meds student).

I appreciate the impact of your comment and the thought behind its writing!

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I frequently include some gore, as I tend to gravitate either towards horror, dark fantasy or superheroes (kind of an odd mix, I know) but have never gone that far with it - just a few nasty scenes so far (that may change if I get to Jack Diamond book three - the Demon he's after there, in Boston, is described by one character as "If serial killers had a patron saint, she would be it.").
If I wanted to push the limits and go all-in, I'd probably create a character like Dexter (of the series Dexter, not of the cartoon Dexter's Laboratory - a serial killer who kills only criminals who escaped justice) and have the story told from his or her POV. Or maybe I'd do a cat and mouse thing with that character getting half the "focus" and the cop hunting that character getting the other half (and probably ultimately being little better than the serial killer in the end).