Hello, I'm kind of new this scene. I wanted to ask what usually does go on in torture? What tools and methods are used? What is considered to be going too far/unrealistic in torture (like what you sorta mentioned in the ask about the immortal & machine gun torture)? Do you have a list of where I can go to start researching the basics? Also, how/what would you recommend writers do to be respectful to the experiences of torture victims when writing torture? Sorry for the boring questions. thank u
Welcome and don’t worry about the questions. It’s much better to try to find out then assume you know the answers. :)
I’m going to start with the last two questions because those are the easiest to answer.
I’ve got a post on the most common misconceptions about torture over here. I’ve got a post on the common effects of torture here.
Those posts were designed to be a starting point.
I’ve also got a post of sources here which you can use to do further reading.
Going through those posts (and any relevant sources) first should give you an idea of how to portray torture in a more realistic way.
Making sure it’s also respectful is harder. A lot comes down to how you actually write your story.
I think the best thing to do if you’re just starting out is to read as many accounts by torture survivors as you can. Amnesty International has interviews on their website. Alleg’s The Question is available in a lot of different translations for a reasonable price. Monroe’s A Darkling Plain contains interviews with a lot of different survivors.
I think you should also look at this post on researching torture. And take breaks. This is hard and you should be kind to yourself.
What’s ‘usual’ for torture is highly dependant on the time period and place. Torture practices have changed with time and they are different in different countries.
You can read about typical practices around the world today in this post.
Even though there’s a lot of variation there are also a lot of similarities.
The vast majority of torture today is what Rejali calls ‘clean torture’. This means that it doesn’t leave any obvious external marks. Other researchers use different terms for this. I chose to use Rejali’s term.
Clean tortures were used historically but they were usually used with other tortures that left obvious marks or scars. I tend to refer to those as ‘scarring tortures’.
Torture generally (in the past and today) is low-tech. It doesn’t require any training or specialist knowledge. It is not skilled or complicated.
Sometimes tools are used but often they aren’t. Today the tools used for torture are the sort of thing you’d find in most houses and a few items common in police departments like handcuffs and Tasers. But the typical things in use today? Hose pipes, culinary spices, items of furniture, buckets-
And a lot of the most common tools used in the past were also common place. Knives, scrap metal, ropes, pliers, fire.
There were some instruments designed purely for torture historically but they’re not complicated devices either to use or to make.
This is because- Basically torturers aren’t very smart. They’re not inventive, they’re not well trained, they’re not skilled. In fact there’s evidence that torturing people makes torturers less good at the jobs they were trained for, they forget their previous skills.
Torturers are also typically pretty lazy. Most of the time they’re using torture as if it’s a short cut to get around a more complicated job. Now torture can’t work in that way but a significant number of torturers seem to honestly believe that it does.
When I say something’s gone too far or too unrealistic I’m making a judgement based on everything I’ve read. You can build up that sort of sense too if you want to um- spend years reading about torture.
But the simpler way to approach it is probably like this:
Could the torturer character find the tools you want them to use in their home or at work?
Could a 4-6 year old child come up with the torture technique you have planned?
Could someone with no training who has never used the tools before do it?
If your idea meets these criteria then it’s probably something that a torturer could realistically do.
The 500 bullets ask could, arguably, also meet those criteria. But the reason I discouraged that idea wasn’t because it sounded unreasonable from the torturer’s perspective, it sounded unreasonable from the victim’s.
The asker wanted their character to survive a situation that was completely unsurvivable. It was a fantasy ask but my judgement was that this particular fantasy was so far removed from reality that I couldn’t make it ‘more realistic’.
There’s a big tendency in fictional portrayals of torture for writers to present scarring tortures as if they’re the only ‘real’ form of torture.
That’s really dangerous because it dismisses and belittles virtually every form of torture that is actually happening now. It tells survivors that they don’t ‘count’, even if torture nearly killed them, just because they don’t have scars.
Because this is such a popular and problematic trope I feel like we need to question these kinds of ultra-violent fantasy scenarios.
It isn’t because there’s anything wrong with a writer making the decision that they want their character to have scars or they want the torture scene in their story to contain blood.
It’s because when we focus too much on gore and scars we risk losing touch with what torture actually looks like today. We also risk misunderstanding what torture is, connecting it with the gore and the scars rather than pain.
I’ve left you quite a bit to get on with, so I think I’ll leave it there for now.
If you have any more specific questions or want to run a story scenario past me please don’t hesitate; ask. :)
