1. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    Breaking your FMC?

    Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Catrin Lewis, Aug 30, 2020.

    I've run up against an unexpected problem. I'm nearly to the conclusion of my romantic suspense novel, and I've come to the point where my female main character is being held hostage by a terrorist group (German Communists, 1983) and they're going to force her to make a video to be released to the press to further their demands.

    I need this video to be published for plot reasons, and I'd conceived of them forcing her to "confess" to all sorts of BS crimes. At this point she's been without food for 24 hours, has been beaten, and been made to spend the night ill-clad in 40 degree F temperatures. So she's pretty out of it, but not so out of it that she'd willingly tell lies to save herself from being hurt further.

    I'm kind of stuck, because I don't want her to come off too impossibly noble to exist; i.e., that she refuses to say anything at all. But I don't want her to betray her country and everything she believes in, either. And, due to the genre, I can't have my terrorists go too far with the torture, and I don't want to traumatize her so badly that her relationship with the MMC, whom she has recently married, will be jeopardized after she's rescued.

    Have I painted her (and myself) into a corner? I was thinking of making her willing to tell lies against herself, but would that cause readers to lose respect for her?

    Comments, please.
     
  2. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

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    Seems so. If you have her stuck between two impossible choices and can't write your way out of it, you should perhaps stick her in a different situation. Though a rock and a hard place is narrative gold.
     
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  3. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Is the MMC one of the terrorists?
     
  4. Laughing Rabbit

    Laughing Rabbit Active Member

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    Would she be capable of blinking Morse code - explaining she's being coherced - while telling the lies or has the torture been too much for her to carry on two separate types of communication at once?
    Or speak as if reading from a script, completely monotone voice, with 'dead inside' eyes staring blankly at the camera.
     
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  5. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    Nope. He's working with his old Army commander, now a general in the Pentagon, to get her back. But she can only hope something like that is going on.
     
  6. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    The latter was what I had originally thought, because the idea was that they were going to make her read from a script. Previously, when they were trying to get her husband, too, they allowed her to write a letter to him in her own words and she was able to code it to tell him not to go with the bearer, it was a trap. He took the warning and the terrorists don't trust her not to pervert the message.

    But if she's able to read, she's able to know it's all lies and that would be galling.
     
  7. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    During the first (second dammit!) Gulf War (George HW Bush vs. Saddam Hussein) a US military aircraft was shot down. The pilot was captured and forced to record a "confession" of committing war crimes against the Iraqi people. He did so in a fairly thick Southern US accent despite hailing from a Northern state. His captors were either unable to hear the accent or unaware of the disconnect, but it made it clear to folks back home what was happening.

    An even cooler example was during the Vietnam war when a captured US aviator was forced to confess, live, in front of (working from memory here) the North Vietnamese leadership, the North Vietnamese press, and the international press. At the end of his confession, he was ordered to bow to each group. He bowed to the enemy leaders, turned a quarter turn, bowed to the local press, turned a quarter turn, bowed to the international press, turned a quarter turn, bowed to the curtains behind him, turned a quarter turn, bowed... and was lead of the stage, still robotically bowing as if he had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

    There are more ways to pollute your message than having to know Morse code.
     
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  8. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Going even further back during ww2 the Germans tried making captured British pilots transmit on the haw haw wave length... they went down the very polite but completely impractical route

    "how are you being treated.. It is wonderful, everyone here is very kind to me"
    "How is the food - "its tremendous, just like it is at home"
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
  9. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    Bwahahahahahahahhahahhhh!!! :supergrin:
     
  10. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    What, you trying to make me think? :supercheeky:
     
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  11. Aled James Taylor

    Aled James Taylor Contributor Contributor

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    Have your female main character join the terrorists. She asks them all about what they're fighting for and she enthusiastically agrees with what they say. Is she genuine or just pretending? Do the terrorists think she's sincere or bluffing? Turn the page to find out.

    One technique to inform the authorities at home that you're being coerced is to use the wrong terminology. Details your captors wouldn't know but those at home would. Your errors would be noticed.
     
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  12. GraceLikePain

    GraceLikePain Senior Member

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    When the USS Pueblo was captured by the North Koreans, the prisoners told the NKs that giving the finger was a Hawaiian salute. They got beat up pretty bad when the NKs figured it out.

    One that didn't get figured out was "paean." That word means to praise someone, but it's pronounced like "pee-on", so in their messages they would say something like "we paean Kim Il Sung."
     
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