Limiting the Graphic Reality of Warfare

Psalm 137:9 Happy is the one who seizes your babies and dashes them against the rocks.

Ouch. That pretty rough psalm was written by the rivers of Babylon. In the Messengers series, B'vel was very loosely based on Babylon. It was more the general idea of Babylon than the city or empire. The next two books in the B'vellah War series take place during the war. That's not really a spoiler. ;) I've been wrestling with a lot of things for those. One of them is how to wage war against the enemy in a way that won't shock readers. In modern times we have all these rules and restrictions. In the U.S. people aren't used to the realities of combat. In real warfare soldiers do whatever they have to do to win. There's no coddling of the enemy. It can be merciless.

In Messengers, I tried to have the heroes treat prisoners very well but be somewhat ruthless in combat. I didn't describe body parts and rivers of blood or that sort of thing one could find in other books. I don't want to write stuff like that. However, the sequel is a full-blown war. Messengers fight to win, as was stated in the first series. Winning against a superior enemy requires drastic steps. That psalm came up in my Bible reading today. I think that sets my limit on what I'm allowed to do. There won't be any scenes where people smash babies against rocks while smiling.

That Don't Work
I'm seeing some progress for my That Don't Work YouTube channel. The greenscreen stands and clamps arrived today. I'm still waiting on the smoking pipe, which will be for gags not a corrupting influence on kids, and microphone batteries.

I need to dedicate the corner of a room for the "studio", but I don't have a lot of room to spare. I've been trying to make it work. I have some cheap studio lights. The stands have a certain footprint, as does the greenscreen setup. I'll be sitting in a chair. The space required is adding up. There are more problems than that, but it's kind of depressing.

As all this has slowly progressed, the concept of the channel has, too. It's going to have to be a show, at least the writing stuff. I'll have other videos like my Star Wars song. What's Darth Vader's helmet really for? If something could go viral, it would be that. If there's viewer mail, answering some of it on the show would almost automatically be funny.

There's money to be made on YouTube, but I'm not sure how universally appealing my concept is. Here's what I'm thinking. If I can make any money from it, great. The real value might be in book sales. It would take somewhere around 1,000,000 views to equal about 486 sales of the $2.99 books. If I had a million views, the value could mostly be in the promotional aspect. Some writers have YouTube trailers, etc. Some have blogs and websites. The show would be my version of that.

And, of course, I'd have to write it. It would all be writing practice. If everything goes well, I'd be devoting at least several hours a week to produce a show that might run 10 minutes or less that would make enough money for me to write full time. If I could get anywhere close to 1,000 sales a month, that would be possible.