You’re too calm

 One of the things I’ve always struggled with in my writing is making my characters emotional enough during big scenes.

Our writing comes from our own character, and its style is shaped by who we are.  In my case, that’s a generally calm person.  I can get very angry about a narrow range of subjects, but most of the time my reaction to the majority of things I encounter is one of calm indifference.

I have friends who value the fact that I don’t change, that my personality is constant.  And while that helps me to keep my friends in real life, it presents me with a challenge in writing fiction sometimes.

My characters are often too calm.  This week I’ve written a scene where a decompression takes place in a room on an orbital shipyard.  Some renegade priests have acquired a weapon, which they’re using to breach the outer wall of the station.

My viewpoint character is ex-military, so he’s used to combat and to weapons being fired, but there are two hundred people in that room, none of them wearing spacesuits, and the air is evacuating out into space.

What would people do in that situation?  They’d panic, and most likely scream.  But I had to give conscious thought to what their reactions would be.  I couldn’t put my mind into the frightened shoes of an innocent person who thinks he or she is going to die in the next few minutes.

In fact, only six people are sucked out of the hole and die.  The rest survive.  Having done my research on decompression, I discovered that the fierce current of air which sucks people out only affects a small area immediately adjacent to the breach.  So I could have my character yelling at the people to get back to the walls of the very long room.  There they’ll be able to breathe normally and be safe for quite some time.

I realised that the next reaction they’d have would be shock, so I wrote about them sobbing and shivering in a huddle by the walls.

The breach in the wall is plugged swiftly, and most of the atmosphere in the room remains, so no more fear and panic are needed.  I dislike wholesale death and destruction scenes in books, which is why I would never write military SF.  It’s also why I dislike a lot of space operas which have destruction on a huge scale.

Having put in those emotions, I have have a draft of that chapter to type up.  When I review it I will need to keep a keen eye on whether there’s enough emotion and reaction in the scene.  This is one situation where no character should remain calm.

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