Daniel Kalder notes that many writers describe murder in their stories, but few have actual experience with it, or if not murder, then killing on the battlefield. More writers do kill themselves, but that usually diminishes their future creative output. In the U.K. Guardian, Kalder writes:
Writers, by and large, are a boring lot – even more so now that so many are employed by the state (or states in the case of the US) to teach middle-class youth how to tell imaginary stories in prose. Yes, yes, the academy is a fascinating subject and you can’t have enough tales about college politics or balding, paunchy middle-aged lecturers lusting after young girls.
But if you want your work required for undergraduate modern novel classes, college politics is a great topic. Isn’t it? (via Books, Inq.)
A scene in the expanded DVD edition of The Return of the King apparently benefits from an actor’s killing experience. In one of the DVD documentary features, Peter Jackson (I think it was he) related that while filming a scene in which Wormtongue stabs Saruman, Christopher Lee refused to act it out the way he was told, and said, “There’s a very specific sound that people make when they’re stabbed, and this is it …” Knowing that Mr. Lee had served in some type of special military unit, they asked no further questions about it, and he proceeded to act out the stabbing in the way he knew was authentic.