By: Shanna Hovley
Let’s say you are writing a murder mystery and your protagonist is starting to get too close to the truth. You have someone jump up behind them, place a sickly-sweet smelling rag over their mouth. The protagonist struggles for a moment before they are overcome by darkness.
Pretty great right? Now you can have the protagonist wake up to their new, dangerous situation.
Buuuuuut, that’s not how actual chloroform works. Chloroform can take up to 5 minutes to work (and that’s if you’re covering their mouth and making sure they are breathing it the whole time). What if you up the dose so it will work more quickly? It can be fatal. Not to mention that the person may wake up vomiting or not wake up at all.
Alright, you still need to knock them out so they can wake up tied to the chair James Bond style. A good blow to the back of the head with the butt of a sword or by breaking a bottle should work, right? Wait just a minute though. Any blow to the head can cause brain trauma and even a minor blow to the head can be serious.
I can hear you getting frustrated and turning to your tranquilizer dart gun for a solution. They use those on real life animals after all. After shooting an animal with a tranquilizer dart, they will trail the animal for a few minutes for the drug to finally take effect. Not exactly the right pick for a quick knock-out. And you can’t up the dose there either. Just like with chloroform, you can accidentally administer a fatal dose.
Okay, now I know you are frustrated. If you're writing fiction, what does it matter if you use these tropes as they appear in other media and not how they work in real life, and, to be fair, you can use them however you like in your writing. Why it matters remains.
Some readers are going to know how these things work. They may get bumped out of your story because of them. The more grounded in reality your story, the closer you need to be to the way the real world works. It creates the illusion of the world for your readers. Those details can make it more vivid and visceral, and even make the dangers for your protagonists more real.
Another reason is to avoid cliches. We all know what a rag over the mouth means. While this shorthand can move your story along more quickly, it’s also predictable. Anyone can read about someone getting knocked out by a blow to the back of the head, what are you going to do that readers will remember as distinct?
So, how do you do it right?
You should still use chloroform.
Let me explain. As a reader, we’ve seen the rag cover the mouth. We’ve smelled the smell. We’ve faded to black. How do you make this different? The chloroform soaked rag goes over the protagonist’s mouth and the smell is there, but it doesn’t work right away. They fight, trying to break free. The reader isn’t expecting that.
Be intentional with your use of tropes and more importantly, whenever possible, be surprising. Your readers will thank you for it. Editors are really great at finding cliches or boring, predictable plot points. Ask yours for help spotting where your own writing is weak. If you don’t currently have an editor, send me an email and get on my list.
“Once you’ve got to the end, and you know what happens, it’s your job to make it look like you knew exactly what you were doing all along.” Neil Gaiman