I have this premise set in the 1970's of these two hero protagonists, one who was a former martial arts expert and one who was a former Vietnam spec ops soldier. Who both now own an animal rescue shelter. This bad guy along with his henchmen raid the shelter one day, killing the clerk, many of the animals by stomping them and shooting them, while stealing some exotic ones to sell on the black market. Once our heroes find out about this, they prepare to go Quintin Tarintino on their @$$s. The bad guy also uses gerbils and mice as as one of his forms of torture for his victims by shoving them up the victim's rear ends to make them suffer because he's also mentally insane and a complete psycho. Is this too disturbing? Does it sound like it would cause me trouble if I wrote this in my book?
What kind of trouble are you imagining? Have you seen the Saw films? Have you read The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker? It's the book from which all the Hellraiser films were made. Much, much, much more disturbing things happen in those franchises.
nothing is too disturbing for someone who wants to to write 'too disturbing to sell easily' is a different matter, as is 'may get you ripped apart by the twitterati' (if you care what they think) George orwell in 1984 uses rats in torture - although admittedly going for the eyes of a man who has a rat phobia. Shaun Hutson is another example that springs to mind
Yes I saw most of those movies but this involves more than just humans being slaughtered as it has animals being murdered in the beginning like being stepped on to death. But this has them being shoved up people's @$$s is that worse?
it depends how graphic it is... i mean shaun hutson features child abuse and necrophillia and he still got a publishing deal
It's not really that bad. The anal stuff just seems like you're trying too hard to make the guy psychotic. Yeah killing animals generally gets a reaction out of people but this just seems gratuitous. It'd be far easier for the bad guys to break in after hours to steal the animals so you need a reason for them to break in when the receptionist is still there, generally they'd be the first to clock off as they only need to be in the office for office hours. So the operatives would still be in the shelter. The killing of the animals can be explained away by the fact that it's probably mostly dogs and dogs bark when they see intruders. So it makes sense to kill them. But I think you need to workshop your psycho a little more. Take Carter Verone from Fast and Furious. He's got a generally easy going exterior except when he's got a cop held down on a table and puts a rat under a bucket on the cops stomach and starts heating the bucket, he then explains that the hotter the bucket gets the more the rat wants to get out and the only place it can go is down, through the cops stomach. That is a psycho with animals. But at the end of the day it's all in the delivery of the idea that makes it acceptable, not the idea itself.
I'd read that book and wouldn't mind the gerbil shoving. But I'm the kind of guy who reads about a man having pulverized pig intestines forcefully funneled into his mouth until his stomach ruptures and thinks, "That's a great idea, I've gotta use that." Maybe I should write horror. That could be why I suck so bad at writing. Because I'm not writing horror.
Sounds like the modern horror I have seen on amazon. But then again I read Clive Barker, so gross out and shock and awe gore are not really my speed. Ambience and execution are much more terror inducing than gratuitous gore. I would recommend you check out Barker's The Inhuman Condition, a collection of shorts that is not apart of his multi Books Of Blood series, though they are pretty good too. The Hellbound Heart is a must for any Horror fan.
just to point out two things a) the reason the OP is banned is not to do with the subject of this thread (we don't discuss individual banning reasons so that's all I'm saying 'bout that) b) this subject is acceptable to discuss, but as with the recently deleted 'most fucked up ways to torture someone' thread there are limits. So far no one has stepped over them, but just saying. If you need guidance on where these limits lie, I would say that in film terms things that you might see in a normal 18+ movie are fine, but things that you would only see in a dodgy imported porn flick sold from beneath the counter are not.
If you want a good way of using mice as torture the old burrow into your chest to run away from a hot bucket from that one movie whose name i forget right now is more is way more expresive and tension building then up the ass. And as always you can always tweek the torture to fit the person. What works on one man will not work on another. Best example of this i've seen is the blacklist. Sure it uses it as a plotpoint more than anything. But it works. (Not torture... the plot developement. ) Sometimes the simplest thing to remember about horror for me is you can go for shock value and jump scares as much as you want but nothing beats a good, slow buildup. You don't even need "the main attraction" but the fear of it. Peak the curiosity of the reader, entise it with short sentences, and a slow pace making them focus on each detail one by one then introduce a delay... let the reader imagine the things the character will do and always make the tortured person relatable. These are my thoughts on the matter at least.
