K.O.: Writing Characters Who Are Unconscious

Let’s say your character is fighting a battle, and they slowly start to bleed out, until their vision fades to black and they fall unconscious.

Or perhaps the villain is about to do some dastardly deed, but the hero hits him really hard on the back of the head, and the villain crumples to the floor.

This trope is super popular in every genre, from fantasy to historical fiction to steampunk to romance.

However, there are a lot of errors in the usual “fade to black” trope, as well as the “hit on the back of the head” trope.

So in today’s post, let’s talk about how to knock out a character.

But first, let’s talk about when you shouldn’t knockout your characters.

The Rules of Unconscious Characters

There are plenty of times when your characters should be awake and kicking.

Now obviously, these are not strict rules. If you break these rules, I’m not going to call the cops on you. These rules are based off of my observations, for when your character should be unconscious and when they should be awake.

1. Don’t Skip the Action

If your story is in the middle of an action scene, don’t knock out your character just yet!

I know, it’s tempting to hit fast forward and have the story be done when your character wakes up.

But don’t do it. Just don’t. It’s a lazy way to end a story.

If your story’s climax is so dreadful that you feel like you have to knock out your narrator (and thus, your reader) in order to skip over it, that means you need to come up with a better ending.

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the author (Jules Verne) skipped the entire climax by knocking out the narrator. When the narrator woke up, the story was over.

It made me so mad. I got cheated out of (what should be) the best part of the whole book!

2. Don’t Pretend The Character is Dead.

If your character lives, don’t make the reader grieve for them prematurely.

That’s a good way to make your readers angry.

Yes, I know, franchises like the Avengers do it all the time. But the truth is, your story is not a multi-million dollar franchise. You have to work a lot harder to gain your reader’s trust.

When your character is injured or unconscious, don’t make it seem like they are dead. And especially don’t make the other characters mourn their “death” when they’re obviously still alive.

You can read more about this in my post, Reviving Your Characters.

And the third rule:

3. Don’t Make It Last for Days.

When a character is knocked unconscious, the other characters won’t have hours of time to transport them to a new location.

They won’t be out cold for hours, or even minutes.

Of course, how long it lasts completely depends on the method used. So we’ll talk about the specific time frame of each KO method in detail.

Just know that it’s not long enough to skip huge chunks of story.

Now that we’ve covered those ground rules, let’s talk about each of the different methods for rendering your characters unconscious.

Passing Out / Fainting

The easiest way to knock out your characters is to have them faint.

So what is fainting, and what are some reasons that your character might faint?

• According to WebMD, fainting occurs when there is a sudden drop in blood pressure.

This can be caused by:

• Sudden fear
• Pain
• Loss of blood
• Heart problems
• Severe anxiety
• Pain
• Hunger/dehydration
• Alcohol/drug use
• Hyperventilating
• Standing too quickly (for people who have blood pressure problems)
• Diabetes
• A condition such as micturition syncope, when you faint during or after urination.

(Usually, characters don’t faint because of micturition syncope.)

Have you ever seen the trope where the love interest stumbles into the room, covered in blood, and faints in the arms of their beloved?

I love this trope so freaking much.

This is a realistic reason for your character to faint. Loss of blood (over an extended period of time) is dangerous and would probably cause the body to faint, or even start shutting down.

If your character literally swoons whenever a cute guy walks into the room, that’s not a realistic reason to faint.

What Does Fainting Feel Like?

When your character faints, they will probably start by feeling a bit dizzy. The level of dizziness can change from person to person.

They might also feel light-headed, like if they stood up too suddenly, and they might try to grab onto something to steady themselves.

Their vision might start narrowing, either growing fuzzy or getting “tunnel vision,” where the peripheral vision turns blurry/gray.

• When you’re writing a character who’s about to faint, just pick one or two symptoms and keep it super fast. Like one sentence.
• There is no “fade to black,” at least according to people who have fainted before. Instead, it’s more of a slow fade to blurriness, and then you suddenly wake up.

Also, the character shouldn’t be talking about “before I succombed to the darkness” or “everything slowly faded to black” if they don’t know that they’re going to faint. They might get cut off mid sentence, or just think, “I’m a little dizzy,” and next thing they know, they’re waking up on the floor.

How Long Does Fainting Last?

It depends on the person and individual case, but usually, someone who has passed out will wake up within two minutes.

Most of the time, they will wake up within five to ten seconds.

As you can see, there’s not a lot of time to be moving the character to different locations, tying/restraining them, etc.

What’s The Difference Between Fainting and Knocking Out?

There is a difference between fainting and being knocked out.

Fainting is your body’s natural reaction to a loss of blood circulation. It has nothing to do with evil intent.

Being knocked out is different, because it means that someone intends to cause your character harm.

If your character passes out from dehydration, that’s different than if the villain chokes them to unconsciousness.

Some of the symptoms may feel similar, but the intent is different.

• If you want readers to worry a little bit about one specific character, especially after a big story event, make them faint.
• If you’re trying to set up a major event in your story, and you need the reader to REALLY worry about it, knock out the character.

Now let’s talk about knockout methods, and how to write a character who is knocked out.

Knockout

There are many different ways to knockout a character.

Many of these are focused around malicious intent. The villain knocks out the hero, or the hero knocks out the villain.

However, don’t be afraid to mess around with it and try new things. Maybe the sidekick knocks out the hero. Or the villain is knocked out by his mother.

Some of the most common ways to knock out a character include:

• Magic
• Poisoned dart/injection
• Neck chop
• Choking
• Chloroform
• Hit on the head with an object

Of course, not all of these are very realistic. Let’s go over my top three knockout methods, and how they could (hypothetically) work in your story.

Choking

Choking a character until they lose consciousness is a valid way to knockout your character. But it has to be done just right.

This method is hard to do, because the character who is getting choked will put up a big fight. Also, it takes a little while to set in, and the person might wake up very soon after they lose consciousness.

In this post, when I say “choking,” I mean a blood choke. This is when someone squeezes the veins in the neck, so it restricts blood flow to the brain.

A blood choke is different from an air choke, where someone restricts another person’s breathing.

Some people also use the term strangulation for a blood choke, and asphyxiation for an air choke.

(Thanks to the commenter who pointed this out to me!)

How it feels to be choked:

• You feel blood pounding in your head
• It becomes hard to talk.
• You start to feel panicked.

Choking takes about 10-20 seconds for the person to lose consciousness, 1-2 minutes for permanent brain damage, and around 4 minutes to kill.

The victim will only be unconscious for about 10-20 seconds after they are released.

Chloroform

If you held a chloroform rag over someone’s face, it would take about 5 minutes for the person to lose consciousness. During that time, they would be fighting for their life.

Also, chloroform is a volatile liquid, so it grows weaker the more it is exposed to air. So you can’t have a villain with his chloroform rag waiting in a dark alley for two hours. (https://www.scienceabc.com/)

Chloroform smells sweet, like cleaner. If you catch a whiff of it, you’ll feel woozy and sick to your stomach.

If the character is already captured and restrained, chloroform could be used to knock them out for as long as two hours. They have to breathe the chloroform the entire time.

After the victim wakes up, it would take about 20-30 minutes for them to recover. They will experience nausea, shaking, vomiting, and a severe headache that might last for several hours.

Hit on the Head

If your character gets hit on the head, chances are, it’s going to cause a lot of brain damage.

Hitting someone on the back of the head causes the brain to shut down because of the trauma. The brain literally believes it is dying. And in fact, it’s very easy to accidentally kill someone with a blow to the head.

If your character gets hit on the head, they won’t be unconscious for more than a few seconds, maybe 10 seconds at the most.

If the character can’t wake up after five minutes, they’re going to have lasting brain damage, and possibly enter into a coma.

After they wake up, the character should experience side effects from their concussion, like nausea, vomiting, confusion, grogginess, and a painful headache.

As you can see, there are different obstacles to each method of knocking characters out.

Your job is to see those obstacles and work with them.

For example, a chokehold wouldn’t make your character unconscious long enough to transport them somewhere else. But it could last long enough for the bad guys to tie your character up. Then you could use magic or chloroform while transporting the tied character to the new location.

The Aftermath and Waking Up

After your character faints or gets choked out, what happens next?

When they wake up, your character will probably be disoriented.

They won’t remember falling unconscious, so for them, it would feel like blinking and finding yourself on the floor.

Any injuries they received would still be painful. The pain may take a couple of seconds to set in. Or if they sit up suddenly, they might feel a shooting pain.

When it comes to injuries, consider the method used to make your character unconscious.

• Fainting might include injuries (teeth, back, and head) if the character falls.
• Any wounds (fainting from loss of blood, or getting hit on the head) are still there. Don’t forget about them after the character wakes up.
• Head injuries will have a lot of injury symptoms that can last for weeks after the initial blow.
• Concussions aren’t a one-and-done thing. They can last for years, or even the rest of your character’s life.

As with any type of injury or trauma, don’t just forget about it as soon as the character wakes up. Remember that there will be lasting side effects, and the character will be extra cautious from now on!

Knocking out a character is something that will have a big impact on the character’s life. If you do it right, it can be a great plot point that adds a lot of drama and tension to your story.

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That’s it for today’s post!

How do you render your characters unconscious? Leave a comment and let me know!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back again soon with a new blog post.

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