*cough* So...how do you write somebody getting decapitated without having to write somebody getting decapitated?

See...I have this terrible peeve with detail, I love my reader to see everything that is going on, so I describe everything. I can't do that in this scenario. So I was shuffling around, grumbling to myself about what to do, until I finally broke down and made a thread. Now, besides just discussing my little predicament, y'all can feel free to discuss writing scenes like this in general. How do you go about them? Do you try to avoid them? When you read them do you not like them?

All right. Thanks!

Bethany Faith

That's a tough one. I've read a lot of books with violence (and sometimes decapitation) in them but if you just say "he was decapitated" it feels more callous as though the killer has done a lot of killing and this is nothing new. If you want it to be that decapitation isn't normal you sort of have to make a big deal about it. I'm not quite sure where the medium lies here.

http://www.holyworlds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=632&start

There is some good answers here for this as well Bethy. There are different topics on the thread but violence is one of them and people have given good indepth answers. Hope it helps!

My personal preference would be, instead of sacrificing your normal level of detail - write the book so that the POV character isn't seeing anything explicit.

There are a lot of creative ways to do that. You could make it so the event happens entirely off-screen and is only mentioned in retrospect. You could describe the scene building up to the moment "where the blade comes down" (or whatever) and then cut out, ending the chapter and picking up again in the aftermath. That could have a lot of power while leaving the graphic details unsaid. You could also make it such that your POV character can't see clearly, or see at all; perhaps they can only hear, or perhaps they purposefully turn away so they won't look.

Hmmm...
I agree with Philadelphia. Have the character not be able to see what is going on. And I agree that

Her cry went unheeded. The sword came down.

is more powerful than a lengthy, detailed description of the decapitation. Less is more.
Also, if I were standing there, I couldn't bear to watch the whole thing. I'd close or avert my eyes, either during the blow, or at the point where the head started rolling away from the body...
(See? A decapitation is disturbing enough without much detail.)

Another way to do it is to focus on emotional detail, rather than physical detail. Blood and pain can both make a reader squirm, but blood is graphic where pain is emotional. You can have an emotionally intense execution that's not graphic at all, and like Aemi said, it can be more effective.

(And it has the added benefit of crazy nerds like Jay being unable to comment on your lack of knowledge of this or that technique, because they aren't actually 'seeing' it.)

My favorite trick (one of many): leave the room. Just go. Let it happen when you aren't looking. Have the POV character look away and just hear the sounds, or look away and cover his/her ears. They don't sense it, the reader just might anyway.

Thank you for all the suggestions, everyone! 'Twas very helpful! I liked the suggestion of cutting off the chapter and also Vanya's suggestion of focusing on the emotional impact of the scene rather than the looks of it so I sort of took those two and added my own twist...which...is now in my siggy.

That was excellent, Bethany. There was practically zero gore.