Violent Consequences

This is the problem I'm having with heroism. With action, with escapades, with all the violence and crazy doings that are all across genre fiction and are what make it fun to read.

Because in the real world, the stuff has consequences. Sure, anyone can chose to drive a car really, really fast down a crowded highway. And crash and get arrested and their car impounded and...

It is exciting because it is out of the ordinary. And it is out of the ordinary because it generally doesn't turn out so well and most people are smart enough not to try it in the first place. The two are flip sides of the same coin. Driving real fast on a closed-circuit track by a trained stunt driver just isn't the same thing. It is precisely the violation of norms that makes it, well, "heroic." (For certain definitions of the word!)

This ties a bit into genre tropes (but isn't dependent on them). Many of the things that occur over and over in an action movie are things that go badly in the real world. In the movies the bad guys shoot a cop to show they are serious. In the real world, every cop for six states around agrees that it is, indeed, serious.

And this isn't just a scaling problem. Sure, things are over-the-top in an adventure. But heroes are over-the-top within the world of the adventure movie as well. The characters might be barnstormers and they are frequently shown as flying in ridiculous dangerous ways that few dared in the real world. Well, our protagonist does something even MORE ridiculous and dangerous. Because he's the hero. Because it is practically part of the definition of being in a thrilling action scene that what is taking place has gone outside the norms.

Heck, there's often a brief scene after the giant shootout which left an entire warehouse district littered with bodies that the Good Cop says, "They had it coming. Now get the hell out of here before I have to arrest you." So it is even recognized within the genre that the norms have been violated and the expected consequences have been magically evaded.




So what I've put my protagonist through already could easily, probably should have, resulted in news coverage, legal actions, fines, arrests, publicity, and yeah an awful lot of time sitting around uncomfortable rooms talking to unhappy authorities. Yet, on the scale of a rip-roaring adventure, she's barely passed the threshold of "my worst travel story."

Yeah, minor stuff ends up being a huge inconvenience. I personally know more than one person who has been stuck in a country for over a week with the wrong paperwork, talking to the American Embassy every day and just hoping to get it all cleared up somehow. Heck with continuing on to the adventure, they considered themselves lucky just to get back home.

So how can you in a story have your hero do something heroic then get back on the boat? I just don't know.

(Again, this isn't about "yes, there are dangerous occupations and dangerous places in the real world." This is specifically about exceeding ordinary circumstances. This isn't "I was in World War 2 and I got shot at," this is, "I was at the Louvre and I got shot at." And La Gioconda save the writer if what is wanted is, "I was in a running gun battle down the halls of the Louvre.")



(In an upcoming chapter, on my current novel, what I think I am being forced to reach for is an admission that heroes are given a get-out-of-jail-free card. That my protagonist has implicitly been promoted from "tourist who is now going to spend the rest of her vacation in a police station" to "larger-than-life hero with friends-on-the-force who can get them out of the consequences of their actions." It works within the larger themes so, sigh, okay.)