How The Boys and Game of Thrones Get Away With Gore
How to Write Violent Sci-Fi Without Reader Backlash
While the popularity of brilliant and hyper violent works like Amazon’s The Boys and HBO’s Game of Thrones rule the big screen, some science fiction and fantasy fans are seeking the softer side of stories. They are tired of writers that throw violence into their stories constantly.
In the past five years, I have noticed an increasing number of authors saying that readers have complained about violence in their books. Some readers complain that it takes away from the story or even turns the book into more of a horror experience. While gore might not be as viscerally shocking in books, it can sometimes stick with a reader when they read disturbing descriptions. I have even seen readers comment on Amazon that books with too much cursing or sex have convinced them not to continue reading a series.
What do The Boys and Game of Thrones get right? They both started out as works of fiction and both gathered large mainstream audiences. This was due, in no small part, to marketing and publications by big name companies. The Boys, a comic book series written by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson was published by Wildstorm (DC Comics). Game of Thrones, a length fiction series by George RR Martin, was published by Bantam Books. I will state that Game of Thrones took a very long time to become mainstream popular and both works gained in popularity when they were turned into successful television series. The question we need to ask is why they were able to appeal to mainstream audiences that might otherwise be turned off by hands being ripped from bodies or explicit rape?
The key with writing extreme violence, and even gore, is to do it with purpose. Imagine for a moment that you are reading a book and the main character loses a child. Their child dies violently, and the character is horrified. The experience takes up about a chapter and might get a few mentions later on in the book like,” Remember Johnny? Ah, good kid.” But the main character remains relatively unchanged from the experience and the story is more or less separate from the child-dying incident. Most readers would probably feel that this was gratuitous violence; written in solely for shock value. It serves no purpose to the story as a whole.
Now, imagine a story where the main character loses a child in a horrific explosion. The main character is then driven to find the cause of the explosion and finds a cover up by the local government. They might spend the rest of the book trying to take down those responsible for their child’s death and in the end gets justice. The violence in this story has purpose. It doesn’t just make the reader sympathetic to the main character; it makes them want to root for them. It gives the character unwavering motivation.
For both The Boys and Game of Thrones, the stories take place in hyper violent worlds. It sets up readers (and watchers) to always be on the edge of their seats in wondering who will die next. Each death must move the plot forward or make it twist and turn in unexpected ways. Every death much mean something, or readers will be left disappointed.
If any writer wants to include extreme violence in their works, and their name is not Terry Goodkind, then they must make the violence a pivotal moment. Readers can accept the violence and move on from it without closing the book and feeling disgusted, if it serves a purpose. Otherwise your only goal is to shock your reader and most readers won’t come back for more of that.
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