research
I try to make my books as accurate as possible. There’s nothing more annoying than trying to take a movie or a tv show seriously that keeps violating physics, or hacking incorrectly, or having dance ‘experts’ that don’t know that the leads right hand does not belong at the girl’s waist. It makes me twitch.
I’m writing at my computer, and I get to a place where one of the characters gets stabbed. … Morbid, perhaps, but… I write dark fantasy and kill characters. It happens. The guy on the receiving end of this deal has thick clothing, but no armor.
So what does that sound like? Before the other guy starts screaming? Does it make a cracking sound? Crunching? Does it slide in silently? I have swords, but it would be such a bother to hunt down the neighbor’s dogs…
(Just a joke. Really.)
And do I want to get too close to the person that can tell me?
Saint Know-All said,
April 16, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I’ve never stabbed anyone (muhahaha!), but I’ve always taken cues from what meat sounds like when I cut it (kind of mushy unless the blade scrapes bone).
Then again, if basing description on info that isn’t the real deal still feels too skeevy, what about replacing it with a sound that you know would be accurate? Like, the heartbeat pounding in one’s ears, or the grunt of the attacker or victim from the force of the stabbing covering the actual stabbing sound?