Emotional pain is one thing, but I'm talkin' like, bruises, broken bones, and deep cuts and other stuff beyond that today. How far do you personally go to let your readers know "aye, they ain't invincible just bc they're my baby"? Just wondering~
Mar '19
Mar '19
One of my character dies in the first story arch. And one of them almost drowns. But it's okay because magic lol. But I do believe I gave the villain some visible bruises. It's not that much of an intense story so the risk of harm, like broken bones, isn't going to come up. They do spend a lot of time using their brains trying to avoid those sort of things from happening. LOL
I don't want to give out spoilers for the next season of my show, but one character dies off who's very important to the story. 'nuff said.
The main character from my webcomic was actually transpassed by a sword XD But he's a vampire so he's kinda okay. But I would kill one of my OCs if it's the best option for the plot.
my side kick often looses the ability to sit down in comfort , I also have a magic talking shield that has had knife thrown at it by a moody teen. oh and i also killed a kid off by having him eaten by a plant.
Hmm, thinking back I don't tread the middle ground between "light injuries" and "dead" very often in my writing 
The closest was probably this isekai style story I wrote in middle school, like ch 5 some of the chars get ambushed by a werewolf in the forest and one of them gets beat up pretty bad... but even then he's better like 1-2 chapters later lmao. I'm currently writing something that has a lot of metaphorical death, but I haven't yet decided how physically beat up most of the characters will get in the process... definitely something to think about 
I definitely tear up my characters. The main male lead in my comic lost his foot, (and no, it ain't comin' back. XD) lots of other characters get mangled, there's all kinds of shenanigans going on. I don't make it gratuitous but, when the damage is done, it's mostly forever.
No broken bones or wounds(YET), but my MC has gotten his ass handed to him a few times...at the end of the 1st chapter, and in this current chapter I'm working on(havent gotten to the scene yet, but...).
I try to leave damage, bruises and blood stains during fights in my comic. I mean its kind of essential, but i only just finished the first chapter and havent drawn up the fight scene for chapter 2 yet, but for a convincing scene involving physical pain its necessary to be as detailed as possible with continuity
Heck YEAH!! I love physically wrecking my characters. When I get the chance, I'll Write or Draw my characters being mangled, beaten, blown up, destroyed, chainsawed, ripped apart, or just straight-up thrown into the dumpster. It's a lot of fun.
My MC has scars on his arm and cheek and a big ass one on his side and he has yet to get them in the plot. I think that answers the question. xD
I can mess up my characters a lot if we're talking about physical pain. I kind of enjoy drawing blood, bruises and scars, nothing too graphic tho.
Yes, I do.
I have to say I recently realized that a lot more painfull and real are the scars that the readers see them get. At one point, my MC is tortured with burns and is left with a scar on her forarm.
Another one of the main characters is already covered in scars, since this is routed in this background story.
Actively seeing my girl go from untouched to scared was a real process, since now I have to remember about the scars everytime I draw her. It´s very visible, and I think that´s the same for my readers. It feels very real.
Still, this is all within the walls of a fantasy setting. I am thinking of making a Slice of Life style comic next, set in the real world and tackling a lot of forms of abuse, and with trying a more realistic aproach, I will dive a lot deeper into how physical trauma really affects a character.
My poor baby Saive never stood a chance from the start. In fact, I’ve effed up just about every single one of my mains. My MAIN main, Roenan, starts out on the floor in a pool of his own blood. I’m evil. But they’re also living in a very bad country, two are prisoners of war and one is a soldier.
Yes I do physically wreck my characters. Two of my main characters are about to die pretty soon. Others will die in the future. Some of the characters won't be returning either.
I know that this type of story telling isn't popular, but I'm doing something a little different to make defeats, deaths, etc. mean more in the story.
I like a good mix of physical and emotional pain myself, haha.
All of my characters usually end up walking away from their adventures with at least a couple of scars, maybe a broken bone or two. Depending on the tone of the story, it's possible they might end up dead, though I'll admit that's rare for me. I often give my characters injuries that they can't recover from, or will leave a visible scar. They have to suffer for their goals, and their goals have to come at a cost. Most of the time, anyway. I guess it really depends on the tone and themes of the story, like I said above. Sometimes you just want a nice happily ever after where the characters may suffer, may face serious challenges, but they win in the end in a satisfying way. And sometimes, Luke has to lose a hand. Though admittedly he got it replaced by a perfect robotic replacement, so it's not like it really impacted him that much, but you get my point.
In a big novel I'm working on, I really put one character in particular through the ringer. He gets choked out, attacked by a dog, rips his own skin off with his bare hands, his head smashed onto a brick wall, he gets shouts about four times, he gets poisoned by silver and has to have it purged from his body he almost gets his soul sucked out twice, he gets his nose broken by his own brother, he gets a nasty magical shock, several of his molars get cracked, and he ends up losing his hand at the end of the novel.
It's fantasy and he has healing powers, so several of these things are just minor annoyances, but quite a few cause some lasting damage. Plus he's slowly falling to pieces because of his magic that he isn't supposed to have, so he's going to die in the final book of the trilogy.
Another character dies in the first book of the trilogy, but she gets brought back in the second, so I guess that hardly counts.
I broke my MCs fingers first mini arc and his left leg is gone and his chest is already maimed. My main heroine had a bloody stomach rupture first fight as well. I try not to pull punches.
I've killed several characters now, plus their back story is usually a very unpleasant one...
But they're my baby and I love them. :3
The only ones I've really hurt are Krampus bc he's an ass, and Lucille because she was unfortunate enough to become a zombie at the wrong place and time. One got stabbed in his stomachs, and the other was pinned to the ground with crowbars.
If the story requires that I physically wreck them (which I certainly have ideas that do, as I have a slight joke with myself that someone always dies in every idea I make, no matter how innocent), then I will physically wreck them.
My characters generally tend to have physical ailments.
Emphesema and the lung and heart problems that follow, severe untrealed bleeding stomach ulcers, Severe body dysmorphia and lack of coordination caused by being shoved into a drastically different body.
An illness that's gone untreated for too long and festered,
That sort of thing.
i definitely can connect better when creators both emotionally physically hurt there characters, it makes the story more compelling to me!
for me anyone reading my work will have to read to find out 
Well my readers know Isaac is covered in bandages, the clones are as fragile as balloons, and Henri has already sustained a shard of glass through the leg along with fever and mild malnutrition. And people wonder why i call it The Rainy Days2. Cause it's gloomy. Fun, yet gloomy.
I once had this idea of this character being a complete psychopath, he would send his slaves to fight for their lives and just cure them completely(he inserted a magical stone into their bodies with 0 anesthesia ) just to torture them later by making them fight giants and monstrous being. In the story our mains, a girl and a boy fall in love, want to have kids and all that wholesome things, they would fight till the psychopath gets bored and decides to free them but he would first make sure the girl could never give birth(takes the stone out of her and then stabs her) and the dude has to watch, being unable to do anything, then the psychopath becomes a demon/god of that world.... I never did anything with the idea cause I would have to draw all those things and .... just NO!
I am not a kind writer to my characters =/ (at least I toned it down for my actual comic kao)
I try to make injuries feel impactful, whether they're big or small. My stories mostly center on non-humans, so it's important that it's clear there are still real physical dangers, and potential consequences. Though my current stories isn't too heavy, my next project goes way heavier with emotional and physical damage. I hope I can do a good job expressing that in a way that resonates but doesn't feel gratuitous!
It depends on the story, but sometimes a little violence and danger is good. 
tries to hide pike of corpses under the rug 
Uuuh, so I'm actually really bad to my characters. They always have harsh points in their backstory, lots have serious physical problems and disabilities, and lots of them die or come very close to it! I really don't pull the punches.
I once heard the writing phrase, "kill your darlings". And my own philosophy is that fir a lot characters, especially villians, the greatest honor you can do is to let them die defending their beliefs. It's way more interesting than always getting saved last minute, or worse- going back on their morals.
Although we're only a few chapters in, I can promise a lot of agony in my Current story. 1
I absolutely do.
In fact, I love characters that have different types of genetic disorders or that have disabilities, whether from birth or acquired through battle.
I feel these types of hardships, the loss of one's physical capacities brings out the real personality of a character. Imagine a great warrior who has been put into saddle as soon as he could walk, who has been leading men to battle from age 10, losing an arm or a leg. This unravels a world of possibilities for character development.
A love who abandons the warrior. His spiraling into despair. Him regaining his independence. Finding a new occupation. Urgh, I am having tears in my eyes just thinking about everything a character with a disability could do.
I love hurting my characters. Scars, noticeable impairments, gashes, all of that jazz is right up my alley.
Them coughing/spitting out blood even though the injury they receive shouldn't even cause that is so satisfying to draw.
That is such a fantastic sentiment!! I'm so glad to see another writer that understands that troubled, disabled, or mentally unstable characters are not just background noise. They have vast and deeply human stories to share with us. It's a rich well of pain and truth. I love it! Although that sounds really dark xD
But darkness is also part of life. If there was no darkness, how would we know when we experience light?
I feel that we use art to flee reality, when in fact art could be such a vehicle to sensitize people on the realities of those that share the same space as we do, that share the same oxygen but that we often put aside because they are different, because their disabilities put us ill at ease, etc.
And we forget about the stunning artists like Tjili Grant Weatherhill, Alba Somoza, Anne Abbott and so many more. All visual artists, all amazing, stunning. And all suffering from cerebral palsy. All so inspiring. When Tjili Grant Weatherhill (who is very young and yet got exposed by the Royal Watercolor Society without them knowing she had cerebral palsy) voiced that she was not disabled, just differently abled and when I looked at her art that transcends the very conception we have of color, I can just nod my head and bow in front of her talent.
I actually ended up wrecking one of the main characters of my story in the very beginning. He is undeniably a strong character, but he is far from flawless and far from being the strongest. He falls in to a coma after taking a beating and getting various cuts, bruises and burns on his body. He is eventually nursed back to health but it can be described as one of the character's most vulnerable moments in the story.
