Hello and welcome back. Today I will talk about writing abduction scenes.

First thing to ask when writing the scene is which character’s point of view are you telling the scene in the abductor or abductee?

If you’re writing from the abductor’s point of view what is the motivation for the person to kidnap the other? Is it a jealous ex lover who can’t stand that another man has taken what he considered to be his? This is the “if I can’t have her no one can” mentality.

There might be a ransom demand in here. Often the victim in this case is the child or spouse of a rich business person or celebrity.

Those are two possible motives behind the kidnapping.

Next how does the abductor gain control of the victim?

This can be done in a blitz style attack where the victim is physically overwhelmed before he or she can respond. Another way is for the victim to be drugged and taken away. Or there could be a weapon involved like a gun or a knife.

A fourth way that a kidnapper could gain control of the victim is through a threat to the victim’s children or other loved one. For example let’s say a woman is sitting on a park bench while on lunch break from her job. A man sits down next to her and shows her a picture on his cell phone of her daughter tied up and blind folded. Then tells her if you want to see your child alive again you’ll come with me.

For writing from the abductee’s point of view describe the fear the victim is experiencing. Don’t just say, Sheila was scared when she woke up in the strange room bound and gagged, it would be a given the victim would be scared. Put yourself in the victim’s place and think about how you would react to this situation.

Scared? Definitely. Angry? Probably. The character might be thinking why is this person doing this to me. At this time the victim might renew a relationship with God. Have the character start praying “God if you let me out of this I promise to be a good Christian forever.” Anything along those lines.

Think back to a time when you were scared and/or angry and what were the feelings going through your body. Often times in high stress situations our fine and complex motor skills are lost and we only have gross motor skills.

How do you convey this? One way is to have the person’s hands shaking, their fingers will likely feel cold. The heart starts racing. To come up with some ideas do a Google search on the body’s reaction to high stress situations.

Someone who doesn’t have the training to deal with this will react differently than someone who does. A civilian teenager will have a completely different reaction than would a military combat veteran who was training and experience to deal with stress.

Hopefully this helps.