: Writing an abusive scene My character is getting physically abused by her father . I tried writing fight scenes and violent scenes before but they always seemed .. very weird . Can you give

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Some points to add from A.bakker :

You can always start small with the abuse. In some cases, the abuser escalates and find it's enjoyable or rewarding to do so. The father's behavior will worsen upon finding out the MC can get away with more and more, while the MC might be too afraid of her own safety or too afraid of the consequences of making waves (fight back, or "ruining" the family, etc) to speak up.

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There is not much to go on, but a "trick" to write about abuse/horrific acts is to not write about them at all, instead of write about the aftermath.

Something that horror movies do wrong nowadays (if you ask me at least) is that they show to much and leave no room for the imagination. If you see how the person get's mutilated you will have some shock and awe at how it is done but if you only see the result you will be left the imagine the horror it took to get to that point yourself.

Same goes for abuse, if you lay bare the physical and emotional trauma your MC received from the abuse it will be able to carry more weight then the acts of abuse themselves. Then you will only have to slightly elaborate on the method (cigarette burns,cuts,rope and so on) and the reader can fill in the blanks themselves. They might even fill in the blanks with something they themselves would fear giving it a more emotional experience for the reader.

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