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I am currently writing a scene for my novel. In this scene I will be revealing the primary villain for the entire first book. The villain, named Annihilus, has the power over the domain of life; he has warped this power into the control and manipulation of flesh.He can literally kill you with the flick of a finger or turn your organs into snakes. I wanted to show the sheer depth of his power by having him kill one of his followers, which had previously failed him in killing a main character. I wrote that he 'curled a single finger, and the man's arms began to twist and break. Then the finger curled more, and his back broke with a sickening series of cracks. Still, despite the screams and horrifying sounds echoing from the mans mouth, the God persisted, until he had created a fist, tightened by rage. The man became nothing more than a sphere of blood, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.'

What do you guys think? Is that last bit too much? Do you think that it will take the reader from the story? Does it break the immersion?

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    Unless it's a part of the story, and you do it all the time (like Deadpool) then anything like this will break the immersion. Also, god only needs to be capitalised if it's a name, in this instance it isn't so it only leads to confusion.
    – CLockeWork
    Commented Mar 17, 2015 at 9:01
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    Incidentally, it appears Annihilus just formed a tiny star; if I did the arithmetic correctly, a 50kg person (small man) compressed into a cube 0.05cm (big font) in width (125x10^-6 cubic centimeters) is over 2 million times denser than the Sun's core (which Wikipedia states is up to 150 g per cubic centimeter). I am not a physicist, but that compression would probably also bring the temperature up to the level of stellar cores (or higher). "nothing more than a sphere of pulverized flesh" is probably more 'accurate' though less visceral.
    – user5232
    Commented Mar 17, 2015 at 12:09
  • @CLockeWork Alright, I'll just go a different route then. Thank you for your time.
    – Krythic
    Commented Mar 17, 2015 at 16:13
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    @what I deleted it. Hopefully you will read my work in the near future. I have put a lot of time into the lore; hopefully people will see that.
    – Krythic
    Commented Mar 17, 2015 at 19:58
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    It does break the Fourth Wall a little too much. A more suitable analogy would be a period in general.
    – Demisemihemidemisemiquaver
    Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 16:20

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I think the "smaller than the period at the end of this sentence" breaks the formal tone of the sentence. The beginning of it is so grasping and makes me want to dive deeper but I feel like using that may be a bit too young for the overall feel. Maybe try and compare it to something else other than the period like a pebble, a button, a coin, something that would be present in the book and in real life so it doesn't break the fourth wall, it is consistent to the story and it keeps and overall formal tone. This book sounds like it's going to be so riveting and intriguing. Hopefully one day I will get to read it.

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I agree with Cameron. Except, I would end the paragraph at "...nothing more than a sphere of blood." There really is no need to give a size for that sphere, the destruction is drastic enough without the compression.

In fact there where two deal breakers for me: the acknowledgment of the story being mere fiction ("period at the end of this sentence"), and the unexpected and illogical compression of the man's body. Because if the bending of a finger bends (and breaks) the man's body, I equalize the finger and the body. If the god then makes a fist, I expect a similar relation and the body to be deformed in a circular manner, which it is. But since the hand is not decreasing its size, I don't understand why and how the body should. That could only happen, if the body was in the hand, and the hand compressed it, but then the bending of the finger would not have any effect, only a gesture of holding and bending something would.

Your magic must be consistent. Either hand = body, and the body is moving and deforming as the hand is (then it cannot be compressed), or somthing held in hand = body, but then the gesture must be of bending something, not just a finger.

Hope that makes sense.

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