ScriptTorture: Torture For Writers

The truth is that after (fuck) nearly five years of running this blog I really really need a break.  Sure I’ve taken time off before, but it’s usually been for something. Moving house, flying to a different country, going on shift work, and so forth.

Over the past few weeks looking back it’s been… kind of incredible to see how consistently I’ve kept this running despite everything that’s been going on in the background of my life. I haven’t really talked about it much on here but some highlights have included losing my job, moving house, massive ups and downs in my mental health, being attacked and a stabbing victim turning up on my doorstep at gods-know-what-time in the morning.

(Huh, the police still have my towels.)

Oh and there’s been two years of a global pandemic while working in medical testing. That’s been an interesting mess of high pressure and sudden changes.

The point is it’s been a lot. And I’m trying not to feel bad about not keeping up posting at the rate I used to or taking some time out.

This isn’t good bye. This project means a lot to me and it isn’t ‘finished’ to my satisfaction yet.

But I am taking some time out for the moment and I imagine things are going to be much slower for the next few months. I’m also stopping updates on the wordpress back up site for now. It never seemed to have much of a following and keeping it up to date was a huge source of stress.

This question is probably a lot broader then you imagine Anon so this may take a while. :)

 As a general rule torturers avoid whipping the face and genitals. And this was the case historically as well as today. The reasons are purely practical: blows to the head are more likely to kill. Injuries to the face are more likely to result in things like blindness and injuries that limit the ability to breathe (leading to deaths).

 If we’re talking about historical slavery damage to the genitals reduced the value of enslaved people. If we’re talking about situations like historical European armies injuries to the genitals were viewed as ‘extreme’ and might have resulted in legal action. If we’re talking about modern torture injuries to the genitals are obvious and unlikely to be caused by anything but torture.

 Let’s take a quick tangent on types of whips in a broader sense.

 When I talk about whipping I categorise whips based on the kinds of injuries they’re likely to cause. (The main material of all the whips I’m describing is leather, because that’s what was predominantly used throughout history and the sources I’m drawing from here are mostly historical.)

 First we have non-scarring whips, these are lighter, rounded whips like riding crops. They can still cause serious injuries and they can kill but they’re less likely to break the skin because of their shape.

 Secondly we have scarring whips, these are longer whips with a squared edge. Picture a long, thin rectangular piece of leather rather then something braided into a round shape. The shape of these whips meant they were more likely to break the skin and as a result often left obvious scarring.

 Both of these types were in fairly frequent use historically.

 The third type was used more rarely, lethal whips. These were/are whips with metal embedded along the body of the whip. Picture those long leather strands from the scarring whips. Now imagine them with metal studs embedded throughout. Or hooks on the tips. Or spikes. Lethal whips tore the skin from the victim and often resulted in death.

 Whatever the other details in your story if you’re writing whipping I suggest choosing the type of whip in your story based on the results you want.

 Clothing isn’t going to make a difference in terms of protection for a lethal whip. It might make some difference for a scarring whip, but scarring whips would probably tear clothes anyway. Clothing would probably reduce bruising from non-scarring whips.

 In general clothing won’t change the injury pattern too much, although it could make a difference for the non-scarring whip. Historically a lot of victims were striped or partially stripped before being whipped. Which works in your favour because you’ll probably be able to find a lot of accounts.

 Once you’ve accounted for the type of whip the other big factor for the injury patterns is where the character is hit by the whip. Regardless of the type of whip you’ve chosen for your story some areas are more likely to cause disabling injuries.

 Blows to the joints can cause complex breaks and would often lead to disability. Blows to the stomach area can easily cause internal injuries to the organs and these can be fatal, especially in a historical setting.

 Blows to the head, regardless of what is used, have a significant chance of causing brain damage. This is not always fatal. But it is a complex, disabling condition with no prospect of improvement.

 I’ve been writing a story where the main character is injured and becomes brain damaged and I’m actually really enjoying it. However it’s not something I’d advise writing if you’re unsure about it or don’t have much experience writing disability. It’s complicated and effects a lot of different things.

 Blows to the head can also straight up kill someone.

 Blows to the front of the head/face… Well any kind of whip striking the eye means the victim is probably going to lose that eye. Blows to the face are also very likely to damage both the nose and jaw. This can easily kill in a variety of ways. Swelling can block the throat leading to suffocation. Bleeding from the inside of the nose can fill the lungs, leading to drowning. Broken jaws and lack of treatment can lead to death by starvation. I haven’t even considered infection-

 Blows to the neck from a whip have a high chance of killing someone. They can break the neck or cause swelling that limits a person’s ability to breathe or eat.

 Blows to the hands can break bones and I think they often ended in disability, ie being unable to use the hand.

 For blows to the feet see falaka.

 Genitals… I’d have to guess. I’m sure this has happened but I’ve honestly never seen a source. There are much easier ways to destroy a person’s genitalia.

 I would say internal tissue damage is likely. Cuts and severe bruising with one hit. I think there’s a decent chance of ripping the tissue and possibly tearing bits off. Honestly it seems a bit of a weird way to castrate someone or cut their clitoris out? Especially when globally people have been doing exactly those things for centuries in a much more straightforward manner.

 If you really want to use this I guess remember that female genital mutilation doesn’t necessarily effect fertility and does not effect someone’s hormones and while post-pubetal castration effects hormone levels and fertility it does not produce the same effects as a pre-pubertal eunuch. (Seriously look it up; the bone growth aspect is kind of cool in a ‘why did we do this to people?’ way.)

 As a general rule I tell writers that if they want a character to plausibly survive they should avoid describing a lot of blows to the head, face and neck.

 Can people survive these kinds of attacks? Yes, it has happened, but it’s a lot less likely. And I think it’s important to know when you’re writing whether your character was unusually lucky.

 Now there are areas of the body that are less likely to be straight up lethal and less likely to cause disabling injuries. The buttocks, thighs, shoulders and calves are usually… less lethal areas.

 But… beating someone to death doesn’t depend on where you hit. The ultimate cause of death when someone is beaten is often kidney failure and this happens because muscle cells are destroyed and the proteins they release into the blood destroy the kidneys when they reach a high enough concentration.

 I think that leaves time frames. And on that I don’t have solid answers. There’s a lot of variation because the deciding factor is often stamina.

 How long can you punch a pillow for without stopping for a breather?

 I think I did an experiment a while back and managed about 15 very quick blows with a belt in about ten seconds. And well, if we’re talking consistent, quick blows that’s the time frame beatings usually take place over. Seconds.

 Half a minute of continuous hits is a long time for any beating. A minute or several minutes is possible but pushing it. Both in terms of the stamina of the torturer and in terms of the victim’s chances of survival.

 When whipping was used historically as a public punishment, a display, the way this was typically done was by spacing out the blows and the number of lashes. So the torturer might take over two minutes to deliver ten blows. Because giving people time to take in what was happening was a large part of the point.

 But the punishment itself would also take place over several days, weeks or months. The victim might be brought out, given twenty of the hundred lashes they were sentenced to and then recuperate in jail for several weeks before it happened again.

 This wasn’t always the case, but it’s what people tended to do if they weren’t trying to kill the victim. And it’s the most common practice today in countries that still sentence people to flogging.

 This feels like a rather rapid fire over view but it was a very broad question. I hope it’s given you a starting point to think about what you want in your story.

 Remember to look through the tags on whipping, falaka, clean beating, scarring beating and caning for more information. :)

I’m not a great source for either of those. I talk about sexual slavery occasionally but that’s very different to both consensual sex work and most sexual abuse.

 Scripttraumasurvivor’s archive has resources on sexual abuse and how to write survivors of sexual assault. I believe Scriptshrink also has some resources on the topic.

 I’m afraid I don’t know anything about consensual sex work or where to find resources on it. I use Kara’s collection of work on modern slavery for questions about sexual slavery, I also use interviews and studies by charities like Amnesty International and MSF for sexual abuse/slavery in war zones or during genocides. But as I said this is very different to consensual sex work.

 I think I’ll open this one up to the audience. Do any readers know of some useful resources?

I suggest not using the term ‘psychological torture’ because it uh… it’s got some baggage. It’s a term that’s usually used by torture apologists to dismiss and belittle the harm caused by certain torture techniques. Usually clean torture techniques, which are those that don’t leave lasting obvious scars. These are the majority of tortures today.

 I understand what you’re saying, and I understand most people don’t know this stuff. But uh… most of the time when someone says ‘psychological torture’ what they mean is ‘I don’t believe this is physically harmful.’ And most of the time it really is.

 There is not really such thing as ‘psychological torture’ as a separate category. There’s a whole host of ways people can be manipulated, coerced or abused without inflicting physical injury. These are wrong. But they do not necessarily fall under the legal definition of torture.

 I’ll talk about the legal definition first but I think that what you’re interested in isn’t exactly the question you’re asking. Because whether something meets the strict, legal definition of torture or not does not necessarily tell you whether it is harmful, wrong or illegal but covered under other laws.

 You can find the legal definition of torture here.

 Briefly: the UN Declaration against Torture defines it as: ‘any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes a obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating him or other persons.’

 I know this is a little dense but what it basically means is that for an act to be torture it must:

Be done by a government official, group that controls territory or someone that represents them.

Painful

Done knowing it would inflict pain

Done for one of the four defined motivations

 Attempting to force a confession is one of the defined motivations. However for the kind of act you describe to meet the definition a prosecutor would need to prove that it causes pain and that the person doing it knew that in advance.

 Triggering someone’s paranoia is not necessarily torture because it can be done without knowing the person is paranoid or knowing the pain triggering paranoia causes. This does not make triggering someone’s paranoia OK. It does not reduce the pain it causes. But it can be done without understanding it will cause pain.

 So, no. I do not think that this would be defined as torture.

 However I think it could be entrapment. Pressuring someone into incriminating themselves is a crime in a lot of places.

 It’s also not… a very accurate way of trying to figure out whether someone actually committed a crime. As you point out, mental illness can effect things making people act in ways that are read as ‘guilty’, which is part of what leads to higher rates of charges.

 There’s also a pretty high rate of false confessions in scenarios like this, regardless of the mental health of the suspects. Coercion of this kind leads to an awful lot of false confessions. Which means that it’s both immoral and bad practice.

 There’s an awful lot of fictional tropes in crime fiction that don’t just depict bad practice but things that are straight up immoral. I watched some Columbo for the first time during the pandemic and while I enjoyed it, I agree that this… isn’t the way real law enforcement should behave. At least not if the aim is genuinely finding people responsible for crimes and holding them accountable.

 I don’t think the use of these tropes and conventions in fiction is always a problem. But people not understanding or recognising the reality, believing the fiction is reality, I think that can be a problem.

 Now obviously my focus is torture. The fictional tropes about torture specifically are often taken to be ‘real’ by readers/viewers because accurate information on torture is hard to find. And that has an effect on everything from reporting to policy.

 My impression is that the situation surrounding tropes in crime fiction more broadly isn’t quite as dire. There seems to be increasing understanding of how investigations are conducted both in fiction and in general public awareness.

 There is still a big stress on interrogation and dramatic confrontation in fiction. I think that’s because it’s easier to write in a way that’s tense and compelling.

 Don’t get me wrong, this sort of stuff does still happen in real life and it leads to a lot of false confessions and wrongful imprisonment.

 As for any stories you want to write- I think that if you want to show a detective as competent and good at their jobs, it’s probably better to show them actually investigating rather then browbeating or coercing people.

 In the scale of things I think Columbo handles this stuff better then a lot of other crime shows made at the same time. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always comfortable viewing, depending on your own limits and comfort zones. And it doesn’t mean that the show is perfect.

 I hope that helps :)

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Work continues to be pretty hectic and stressful. I work in pharmaceutical testing and the latest drug requires round the clock tests to simulate patient useage. Which means I’m currently on shifts and working weekends. (Including this Saturday! Yaaaay :( )

I am still plugging away at answering everyone’s questions. Given the situation at work though I doubt I’m going to start posting again until the end of August. 

I just need the break, there’s only so much my mental health can take. (On a related note can the people who are @ing me about blog related things while I’m taking a mental health related break please.... Stop? Because if you can’t respect my limits I will block you)

Unless it was a very light chain it would probably cause lethal damage in a few strikes/seconds.

 A chain can be made of different materials to different weights and thicknesses. So for the sake of clarity I am picturing a metal chain of width wider then two fingers, with a weight that’s at least several kilos. These are not common torture implements, which means I’m extrapolating based on what I know, rather then consulting a statistically sound modern data set.

 Lethal whips, which are predominantly leather but studded with metal, strip skin and fracture bones.

 A chain would break bones, split skin and probably cause damage to internal organs. I think that in order to survive a character would have to be hit very few times, have immediate access to modern medicine and be very lucky.

 A single blow to the head would be enough to break the skull and cause significant brain damage. If struck in the front of the face it would likely break the nose and jaw, possibly causing enough damage that the victim would suffocate. It could also blind the character.

 This is assuming it didn’t kill them outright. A single punch to the skull can kill someone if they’re unlucky. A blow with a chain could definitely kill.

 Blows to the body would break the ribs and possibly the spine as well (depending on the weight of the chain and amount of blows.) Broken ribs could be forced into the lungs with further blows. A broken spine often leads to paralysis.

 Blows across the belly or lower back would probably damage the internal organs and I suspect that they would be lethal. However I am not a doctor and I am not confident enough in my knowledge to say exactly what would be damaged and how.

 A blow to the hips could potentially fracture the hip bone. Which is incredibly serious.

 I think a blow to the neck would straight up kill someone.

 Defensive injuries to the arms and legs would probably break the arms and legs. They could lead to complex breaks, a very long recovery time and possibly permanent reduction in fine motor control and strength. But that’s actually the most survivable scenario: one or two blows that only hit the arms or legs.

 Death would probably be down to a combination of blood loss and multiple organ failure or uh whatever the correct medical term is for ‘too much widespread damage to everything for the body to fix it.’

 So there are a lot of different potential injuries depending on how the attack plays out.

 As a general rule I’d say if you want the character to live without disability then uh… may be pick something else for the other character to hit them with? A belt would be dangerous but would have a much better survival/physical recovery chance.

 If on the other hand you want to write a disturbing attack with awful long term consequences or a murder scene, this is a really good choice.

 With a surviving character you might want to take a look at the masterpost on common symptoms over here.

 I hope that helps. :)

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Not off topic at all though the answers can be hard to find sometimes.

 Before I go into Australian torture, this is your regularly scheduled reminder that torture does not work as an interrogation technique. I’ve got a Masterpost here on writing torture in an interrogation context (and how to show it failing.) It has links to more posts on why torture doesn’t work for those wanting more information. :)

 Rejali, who is a pretty good source for National Styles during the 80s globally, does not mention Australia at all. The references I have to Australia in most sources are in the context of colonial torture and other abusive practices by the British. Going through my usual textbook sources I can’t find a single reference to Australia after independence.

 Most of the online sources I go to talk about modern torture in Australia in one of four contexts:

Chinese-Australians speaking about their experiences in China

Aboriginal Australians describing modern torture and abuse in the context of racism in Australia

Cover ups by religious groups in Australia for historic and more recent crimes

The Australian immigration system (off shore detention)

 The latest references to Australian torture after independence that I’ve found were from 1994. The majority are from the early 2000s or the 2010-2020 period. Everything I found referred to police officers not the army or special forces.

 Unsurprisingly the most common torture method I found was beating. I also found references to temperature tortures, solitary confinement and Taser use. However the older references don’t mention Tasers and I could not find a clear date for when Taser use in Australia started.

 Basically what I’ve found is a massive gap in global torture studies with Australia being consistently overlooked.

 Without clear information I think the best course of action for your story is to make up a National Style that fits the general global pattern and seems consistent with the little bits of evidence we have. I think the most reasonable thing to do is to try and approach this logically. That way even if what we create doesn’t line up to the reality of Australian military torture in the 80s, it will at least seem plausible.

 By the 80s clean tortures were the most common global torture techniques. So we’ll stick to clean tortures.

 Some clean torture techniques have remained fairly niche. There isn’t any clear evidence for why some torture techniques spread and others don’t. But we can probably rule out torture techniques particular to one country’s National Style.

 Some clean torture techniques are so common globally that it’s fair to assume they’re used in every country. These are: beating, starvation and sleep deprivation.

 Stress positions and electrical torture are both globally common in this period. Both were widespread in Western countries (though Britain has rarely used electrical torture it is an exception to the general pattern.) I’d suggest going with stress positions over electrical torture, on the basis that I have no idea whether Australian special forces at the time would have had Tasers, stun guns, magnetos etc as part of their general equipment. However if your own research suggests special forces would have had easy access to these devices, then electrical torture would be quite likely.

 Australia does not have a history of using pepper, so far as I know and I wouldn’t describe the mainstream cuisine as relying on mild irritants like chili peppers. So I think pepper can be ruled out.

 The climate throughout most of Australia makes temperature torture relatively easy and that makes it more likely. You can read about heat exhaustion and heat stroke on ScriptMedic’s blog over here. Some countries have paired temperature torture with dehydration by rationing water in hot climates.

 Without clear evidence that they occurred I don’t think it’s a good idea to pick waterboarding or dry choking tortures. Their popularity has fluctuated a lot over the years, they tend to be either very common or non-existent in a country and they come with some pretty serious long term injuries for victims when they go wrong.

 Forced exercise isn’t as common as choking tortures generally. But it’s incredibly simple and incredibly difficult to prove, which I think makes it a good fit for your story.

 So that gives a you this as a general list to pick from:

Beatings

Starvation

Sleep deprivation

Stress positions

Temperature torture

Dehydration

Forced exercise

 Depending on what you want from the story and how long these characters are held you might want to focus on some options and rule out others.

 Starvation and sleep deprivation typically take place over several days. Dehydration, stress positions and temperature tortures become painful over several hours. Beatings and forced exercise are more immediate. Stun guns and Tasers (if you want to include them) are also more immediate.

 Now that I’ve talked about what’s plausible I’d like to make one thing clear: your comfort while writing this story matters.

 No matter how ‘likely’ or ‘realistic’ an abuse if it makes you uncomfortable to the point you don’t want to write about it that is a valid decision.

 I could justify that with the fact that these attacks are varied and not every victim suffers the same abuse but to be honest as writers there are times when we should break from reality. And preserving our own mental and emotional health is definitely one of those times.

 We are not obligated to show or represent everything. You, as the writer, will always be with the story long then any reader. Be kind to yourself.

 Which leaves the rather more nebulous question of ‘how far do torturers go.’

 And there is no clear cut answer to that question. The evidence we have does not suggest a consistent pattern.

 Here are a couple of examples from real cases of when torturers stopped for a while:

The victim died

The victim passed out

The victim was so mutilated or injured they required emergency medical care to live

A new victim was brought in

The torturer got tired

The torturer got hungry

The torturer got bored

The torturer needed to go to the bathroom

The torturer got called away by someone they couldn’t ignore

The torturer’s friends got bored

The torturer’s friends got tired

The torturer’s friends got hungry

 That’s a non-exhaustive list.

 Torturers have stopped in some cases because they believed something a victim said. But they have also kept going in exactly the same circumstances.

 There are recorded cases of torturers continuing to torture victims who couldn’t speak the same language, victims who couldn’t speak, victims who were clearly unconscious and victims who were clearly dead.

 Torture is not a controlled process and torturers are not in control of the violent situations they create. They will often claim that they are. But the evidence suggests they behave in a random, inconsistent fashion with little insight or acknowledgement of the consequences of their actions.

 This means that we can not predict how far torturers will go. The answer is too varied, even when concentrating on an individual torturer.

 So approach it as a writing decision: how far do you want them to go?

 These children are going to suffer some of the long term symptoms of torture regardless.

 Do you want any of the characters to die? Do you want any of them to have lasting physical injuries? What kind of physical injuries or disabilities fit with the story you want to tell? How long do you want the characters to be held? Why are they released? Do you want every character to be treated in the same way or do you want the torturers to focus more on one character?

 How does this incident effect the relationships between the victim characters? How does that influence the rest of the plot? Do any of the characters feel guilty or somehow to blame for what they survived? Do they see any sort of justice? If so how long does it take?

 Think about the answers to those questions and think about what serves the story.

 A choice that furthers the plot, adds interesting challenges or conflict for the characters and/or furthers narrative themes is going to be a good choice.

 I hope that helps :)

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I have no idea Anon, I’m not a medic and I don’t have the expertise to say for sure. I recommend taking a look through ScriptMedic’s archives to see if you can find your answer. The NHS website is another good source on the treatment of simple injuries.

 Sorry I couldn’t help more.

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So I was hoping to avoid this but things have come to a head and I need to shut the ask box and take a break for a while. I am honestly not sure how long. The last couple of months have been really hard on me and have included car accidents, multiple rounds of car repairs, trouble with my prescriptions, stress at work and multiple bouts of illness. 

The upshot is I’m really not doing well at the moment. I keep telling myself things will get better but stuff just seems to keep piling up. 

So there won’t be new posts for a while after the queue runs out this week. When I feel up to coming back I’ll clear the ask backlog. But I can’t say when that will be right now. 

Very broad question without clear, satisfying answers Anon.

 Basically: there is no guaranteed way to change a person’s mind. There are strategies we know can’t work. But everything that has a chance of success also has a chance of failure. And it isn’t a clear cut thing that I can give you a clean list of factors for.

 Humans are difficult creatures to study because they come with a lot of inbuilt confounding factors and individual variation. This makes it very difficult to identify clear reasons why something didn’t work. Because we have to assume that multiple factors are at work and the interaction of those factors may be as important as each factor individually.

 Even if you write your villains performing ICURE ‘perfectly’ there is still a chance of failure. And therefore it is realistic for you to decide it fails for this character.

 We can’t really study which ‘bits’ of ICURE are most effective. Partly because of that little thing called ethics but partly because setting up a study would be incredibly difficult. It’s hard enough to measure belief. Finding a large enough sample size, controlling for every possible confounding factor or variable and studying people for the years it would take to get any answers… It’s a big ask. It’s probably never going to happen.

 So with the caveat that we can’t tell if any of the parts of ICURE are more important let’s talk about how they can break down.

 ICURE, for everyone who hasn’t heard me talk about it before, is a set of techniques which can (sometimes) be used to manipulate a person into changing their views. They take months or years to have any real effect and as mentioned they’re not always successful.

 The acronym stands for Isolate, Control information, create Uncertainty, Repetition and Emotive responses. And if you’re writing a story where villains are trying to apply this but not doing it well it can break down at literally any one of these points.

 I would say based on what I’ve read that different groups focus more heavily on different aspects depending on their setting and strategy. Groups that are straight up kidnapping or imprisoning people often seem to focus more heavily on isolation and controlling information but often fall down on the other three. Whereas the impression I get of cults and some extremist political groups is that they focus more on creating uncertainty and emotive responses, which they can then use to further isolate members from family and friends.

 Controlling information is a common place for ICURE to break down nowadays. The rise of the internet and the decreasing size of devices has made it easier for victims to access unauthorised sources even when imprisoned.

 But repetition is also a very common place for ICURE to break down because in large groups not every individual is going to follow the same script perfectly. Group members can also undermine ICURE by lashing out, physically or verbally, driving their target away.

 Creating uncertainty doesn’t always work. Sometimes victims straight up do not believe what they’re told. Some attempts to create uncertainty around core beliefs lead to a knee-jerk rejection of what’s being said. Sometimes targets know more about a given subject then the person trying to create uncertainty and as a result the attempt is absurdly obvious.

 Emotive responses are similarly… charged. Attempting to instil a sense of disgust or rejection of something an individual supports won’t always work. Over a long period of time it can. But I can think of a lot of cases where it has instead taught individuals to lie to the group, hide their beliefs or activities and served to drive them away from the group.

 Isolation is either difficult or easy depending on the context of the story. A character who is in a literal prison can easily be isolated from anyone but vetted individuals. A character who has been targetted by a cult, but is still going about normal day to day business, is a lot harder to isolate completely.

 Cults and extremist groups tend to rely on uncertainty, repetition and emotive responses because they know that if they can shift a target’s beliefs the target will isolate themselves.

 Let me give you an example to illustrate this. Imagine a country where there’s a big, culturally important celebration that involves eating candied orange peel and wearing red. Now imagine a cult within the country that rejects candy as sinful and wearing red as a sign of bad character.

 A character targetted by this cult might feel increasingly uncomfortable with this festival. May be at first they go with their friends and family, wear red but don’t eat the candied orange peel. May be the year after they decide not to go, missing a chance to spend time with their friends and family. May be a few years later their rejection of the festival is so deep they try to persuade their friends and family not to go.

 This leads to a big argument. They and their friends/family say things in the heat of the moment. Now all sides are upset and communication becomes harder.

 These kinds of patterns of behaviour lead to the target isolating themselves from friends and family, as their views become more extreme and drive away people who aren’t members of the cult.

 But crucially they can still choose to socialise with people outside of the cult. This will probably be met with social censure from the cult, making it difficult and painful. It is still possible. And outside friendships or activities can help a person to break free or resist ICURE techniques.

 All of this basically means you have a lot of options for your story because there are plenty of things you can weave in that would undermine ICURE.

 Your character is in prison, so breaking isolation is more difficult. But if the prison is overcrowded or there’s a sudden influx of people being transferred between facilities the character might end up with a… poor choice of cell mate from the guard’s perspective. Some one with beliefs radically opposed to the guards or someone who could support and shore up the character’s old beliefs.

 There may also be opportunities for covert communication and bonding within the prison. Perhaps prisoners can gather during breaks and have worked out a cant or code to talk about beliefs the guards are trying to stamp out.

 Control of information can break down because isolation has broken down, with prisoners trading information. It can also happen through the prisoner trading for a phone or a similar item allowing them to access forbidden information. Or it can happen through things like guards inadvertently giving out information.

 Uncertainty is difficult to create around core beliefs. The impression I get from anecdotal accounts is that pushing too hard at core beliefs too early often causes targets to withdraw from the people attempting ICURE. It can also lead to targets doubling down on their beliefs.

 People attempting ICURE can also mess up on creating uncertainty, as described above.

 Repetition can break down because guards don’t all do or say the same things consistently. They could contradict each other. Or they might just not repeat the same thing very often.

 Emotive responses can break down in much the same way creating uncertainty does. Not everyone responds emotionally to the same things or in the same way. Once again different guards can undermine the desired response. The character might dig in to their original position, they might withdraw from the people attempting ICURE. They might just learn to lie to them.

 I think as a writer the best approach to this is to use a mix of internal and external factors effecting multiple parts of ICURE. Just because I think that would create a better story.

 The readers can see the internal struggle and resistance in the character. They can also see the guards messing up and how that impacts the character. May be the importance of support from other people, fellow prisoners or cleaning staff or doctors or anyone else that fits with the setting.

 Basically including multiple elements will give you a more fleshed out story with more emotional depth and impact. That’s a good narrative reason to include it.

 I hope that helps. :)

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