Teresa’s Book Review: Violence: A Writer’s Guide by Rory Miller

Violence: A Writer’s Guide by Rory Miller

This book is excellent. Even if you aren’t a writer, it’s worth a read to get a better understanding of violence in all its forms. If you are a writer, well! What a fabulous resource.

The author, Rory Miller, is a long-time corrections officer, Army vet, and a martial artist. He knows violence and violent people and what violence does to mind and body. He also knows how little reality there is in movie and book violence.

If you’ve ever wondered, like I have, how tiny Scarlett Johannsson (she’s five-foot three-inches tall) could possibly whip a dozen goons into submission, the answer is she can’t. Not ever. No amount of girl power and coolness factor will make the vast majority of women able to tackle and subdue a typical man. Not without a gun, training, plenty of ammo, and probably not even then. It’s amazing how much punishment a motivated crook, fighter, or warrior can endure and keep on fighting.

Rory Miller discusses this currently fashionable idea and how wrong it is.

He covers everything a writer (or anyone else) could want to know: viewpoints of criminals, the elements of an act of violence, the stages of an assault, what violence does to the mind and body; the list goes on and on in sometimes stomach-churning detail.

He doesn’t pull his punches, based on the reality of what he sees in the real world so if reading that a five-foot three woman can’t outfight a group of men gets your knickers in a twist, don’t read this book.

He covers a lot of ground in this book and there’s plenty of online resources in each chapter to see, via the miracle of modern surveillance technology, what actually can happen in a fight when your body armor fails. When the bad guy doesn’t go down with a single shot (hint: most of them don’t). How hard it can be to actually stop someone from fighting. Most of these videos are gruesome and come with warnings. Even MMA bouts don’t accurately convey how fast, brutal, and messy a street fight can be. MMA has rules, such as no fish-hooking (catching your opponent’s open mouth so you tear the cheeks open) or eye-gouging. In a real street fight, those are definite risks. Real street fights and real wars have terrible odors and horrible sounds to go with the bloody visuals, the pain, and even the tang of blood in your mouth.

We’re a violent species. Get over it. We’re violent today; the difference between modern American life and ye bad old days is that we pay the police and lawyers to be violent on our behalf so we don’t have to do that dirty work ourselves.

That said, not being involved in that kind of dirty work means that as writers, we can get our details seriously wrong. Artistic and acrobatic leaps look good in the movies; they don’t work in the real world. Nobody dies ‘instantly’ unless you guillotine them. If a nail-gun to the head won’t stop someone, why would you assume a bullet will? What will kill your villain (or hero) will be sepsis from poorly treated injuries which takes time. Even bleeding out from a slashed artery takes a few minutes. A vein takes longer so don’t mix them up when you write that battle scene.

For myself, I much prefer to stay safe and learn the ins and outs of violence from writers who do have firsthand experience, such as Mr. Miller. This book was tops. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I did not, I will admit, go looking at the gruesome suggested videos online. I don’t need to see someone being shot to death.

So, if you write scenes of violence and you’d like to make sure they’re somewhat more accurate, add Violence: A Writer’s Guide to your reference library.

Here’s Rory Miller’s website so you can learn more about him.