writerly ways

[cornerofmadness]

10 reason to write every day this link encompasses more than just creative writing. Blogging would count. Way back when as a senior in h.s. part of creative writing class was doing a journal. I didn't see the need for it. I didn't do it. Only F I ever got (though partly because I forgot about it. I had planned on putting some bullshit in there)

And today's topic:

How to kill your characters 101.



Well it would be a 101 if, in fact, I were any good at killing my characters. I’m not talking the bad guys at the end but killing of a character you love. Keikeishi (or however that is spelled) killed off the only character I liked on it. I was thinking, also, on Maes Hughes and others and got to thinking, just how DO you kill off characters that people are rooting for and care about?

I’m lousy at it. I usually end up wussing out. There is no denying the effect on the reader. Done right, you’ll make them cry and get even more invested in your story, hoping to see justice be done. Of course it’s a double edged sword. You could anger the readers and make them quit reading.

So for me, it’s been complete avoidance. How about you guys? How do YOU kill your beloved characters off?

I liked that fanfic wip meme so much I decided to revisit it with my original fiction. Same thing goes, if you want a snippet of it, let me know and I’ll post you up a couple lines. I’m only listing the wip’s that I believe can be done if I just set my mind to it.



Until the Ice Breaks - It’s a YA adventure/mystery set in a universe co-created with evil_little_dog. It’s the harvest festival and Makai and his two friends realize that someone is out to kill Lord Carantoc, Makai’s mentor. This is easily the most political thing I’ve ever written with the ideas of women’s and homosexual’s rights at the heart of the conspiracy. I think I’m like two chapters from done. It’s pathetic that I’m not working on this. This is my first nano.

Splinters of Silver and Cold Iron YA werewolf/Fae story. This is a mystery centering around a new student here from Ireland, Killian, who gets glimpses of the future. He is now in school in Madison WI and manages to become friends with two werewolves, one of whom, Tazia, has a homicide detective father. When the bodies begin to stack up, Killian is the prime suspect and Taz’s father is the investigator. This is my second nano and I AM finishing this for my writers’ group.

Beneath the Torn Sky steampunk murder mystery. Homicide detective, Placid Longstaff’s estranged father is found murdered bringing Placid back into his brother and former lover, Melantha’s lives. I still love this (yet another nano) but it’s barely half done so finishing it will probably wait until the first two are done.

Riding with Strangers - OMG another nano, this was pared down to novella length but now I’m fighting to reexpand it (i.e. someone doesn’t need to die every scene so get with the program here COM). Hikaru is an adolescent dragon getting a graduate degree with a pre-adolescent dragon, Lily (both of whom are technically well over 50 year olds), his fiancée. He ends up the prime suspect in the murder of one of his many lovers and Liam, the homicide detective might just be falling in love with him.

Power to Endure written for a Samhain contest and failed. Novella length, it also needs expanded. Iolyn, head of a legitimate arms dealing family has been stripped of power and framed for murder by his sister. He ends up working undercover on Soteira’s medical supply ship and he falls for the captain who is so very different from him.

Machiavelli Moon technically done but after the Amazon breakthrough contest a few years back I keep saying I’m going to fix this and haven’t. Really it needs to have the entire second half redone, streamlined and otherwise made to not suck. Maddie is a vampire in Deadwood SD, owning a hotel casino. Sulien is her long time friend and head political figure (also vampire) paying a visit, a visit that ends with his personal assistant murdered and Maddie’s werewolf friend, Wicahpi clinging to life.

Red Skies written with evil little dog, trouble on the high seas, angry gods, political conspiracies and cranky teenagers in a fantasy setting. Who could want for more? Oh did I mention there’s a curse?




yearly original fic word count -

14035 / 125000 words. 11% done!

Comments

[enemytosleep]

I've just killed Inuyasha. Not sure how well i did (well, he is good and dead), but yeah.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

hahaha I can kill people in fandom. I mean I've even killed off poor sweet Alphonse once

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I want Beneath the Torn Sky. :D

Well...I'm sure I've killed off someone or other...I just can't think of whom off the top of my head. (I mean, of my own characters. I know who I've killed off of other people's characters.) However, yeah, I'd do it. I remember in ElfQuest what happened when One Eye got killed and the reactions to that. I also remember in Strangers in Paradise, how gutted I felt when David died. Maes dying in FMA - I thought it worked really well for the storyline. I hated it, mind you, I adore Maes Hughes, but oh, how it worked for the storyline!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yeah i know what you mean it definitely worked for FMA (I totally forgot about One Eye). I'm not sure you've killed anyone in anything i've read

Torn Sky - Do you think Placid is in any danger?” Melantha asked.

“We can’t rule that out, especially since we don’t know who this is. It’s only a matter of time before this person gets irritated that Placid isn’t more grateful,” Reanna said.

“I can’t even fake gratitude since I don’t have a clue who I should be thanking,” Placid said.

“And you have a tendency to piss people off even in the best of times,” Melantha replied and his mouth dropped.

“Mel!”

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Hee hee hee!

I'm sure I have killed off someone. I swear. I'm too fond of angst - hey, yeah, we killed off what's her name in Trehvan and Tully's story. SEE.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

oh right we did. Tully lost a girlfriend and friend but they weren't main characters but yeah we DID kill off one of the kids.

i think you planned to kill Tod

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I had planned to kill Tod. He wormed his way into my heart, though.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

see this is what I'm talking about. THen you can't kill the little bastards

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Then we have charas like Domi, who'd die if they could....

[seta-suzume.livejournal.com]

In my original writing, I've managed to kill a few characters, but I've also wimped out just as many times... (In fanfiction, I'm merciless. I think it's because it doesn't have that feeling of finality to it? I may have killed a character in one story, but I can always write other stuff where they live(?))

I feel like I can only kill a likable character if I had them "marked" from the get-go. If I'm working on the story without absolute certainty that I am going to kill that character, I end up pulling my punches.

[bob_fish.livejournal.com]

I agree! It's a lot easier to kill them if you mark them out and know that they have to be killed for the story to work. This is kind of more difficult if you're plotting as you go.

I think Hughes' death is a good example of this - it drives the story on a lot of different levels: it draws Roy and the Elrics into investigating the mystery, triggers various sorts of character development for all of them, is part of Ed's coming of age narrative, draws out key themes like revenge and the difficulties of protecting those you love. And so on. It's partly so effective because Hughes is so awesome and lovely and we really, really don't want it to happen. We and the characters spend the remaining 92 chapters mourning him. One of my favourite Chandler novels (won't name it in case of spoilers?) pulls pretty much the same trick at the same point in the narrative, and it's very very effective.

I've got a counter-example: the killing off of Tara in Buffy. Leaving aside the fandom controversy, when I watched that at the time, it felt for me that she was being killed to move the plot forward, but the emotional and thematic weight just wasn't there for me, so it felt cheap. A lot of the problem is that after her death the remaining eps of the season are all action - so the viewers - many of whom were really very fond of her - don't get to mourn her, and the other characters are so focused on stopping the main threat that they barely seem to notice she's gone.

So my solution is, plan the shit out of it and make sure that if you're going to kill a character you really like and want readers to really like, that the death reverberates through the story enough - not just at a plot level but thematically, emotionally, and definitely through the characters.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Excellent points.

*Uses appropriate icon.*

[bob_fish.livejournal.com]

*sobs*

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

*offers tissues, booze, and Ling to cheer you up?*

[bob_fish.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, Ling.



... my mourning is a shallow mourning, apparently.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

hahaha

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

you make several excellent points here. I'm not a good planner of stories. I'm in the Stephen King let it spin camp so that might be part of my problem.

You also make a very good point about Tara. This is about when I started watching Buffy more sporadically. I did feel like it was cheap and foolish and later to have it ignored (well Andrew didn't have a complete hand in it he was Warren's butt boy) incensed me.

[bob_fish.livejournal.com]

I wonder if some of the planning could be done during? But it's so much more difficult to kill a character once you're attached.

Yes, the plotting really started to suck. For me the zenith of Buffy was Season 3. But I've just remembered another Buffy character who was apparently marked for death by Joss from the start - Jenny Calendar. Her death worked for me.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

well some planning probably could be done during or maybe i just need to learn to plan in general

yes Jenny's death worked, so did Joyce's for that matter.

Yeah that's the zenith for Buffy for me as well and for me it ended with the Gift at the end of season 5

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

oh in fanfic, I can kill just about anyone and have. I think this might be because they are not mine and as you said I can write something else where they don't die.

But when it's the original source material...

points to my comment to bob_fish I am not much of a planner but what you say makes a lot of sense

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

Oh, so I'm not the only one who thought Gen Shishio was the only decent character on Kekkaishi. His was a cheap death-for-plot-purposes, too, so I'm doubly bummed.

I don't seem to have a large enough cast of characters in any of my stories to kill off anybody major. I assume by "characters" you mean the recurring variety (in a series) or a friend or close associate of the hero (in a one-shot novel), not the various corpses who populate murder mysteries and villains who get their just deserts. I know exactly when and how each of my heroes will die--and die they will, but only to put an end to the series they inhabit. Frank Dollar will lose his best friend and a niece before he goes down fighting terminal tuberculosis. The people who die in the Toshiro and Maru stories aren't always the people who should die, or who you'd expect to die, but I can't call them major characters so they probably don't count. Most of the cast of Ever Summer is either actively seeking death (the immortal alchemist Pendrake, for one) or trying to wriggle out of its grasp (the consumptive Fionnla and the unfortunate Beldin of the Winds). I guess that one is the one most likely to produce a death of a character readers have come to know and hopefully care about. I have no trouble killing them off, though. I've planned the deaths for effect, and in a manner of speaking those characters were never alive for me, having been "born dead."

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

"Born Dead".

That seriously sounds like a great title for something.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

hahaha it does

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

A bad Goth band, for example, or the title of a novel.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

you were definitely not alone. Yoshimori is a whiner. the girl is so boring i can't even remember her name. Gen was good and interesting and you're right, killed for very little reason.

Well yes there is that problem. if you have only a few characters it's pretty hard to kill them off. Now minor characters in my mysteries, they're no problem. If I were to kill off say someone in Red Skies or one of Makai's friends it would be much harder.

I've planned the deaths for effect, and in a manner of speaking those characters were never alive for me, having been "born dead."

this seems to be the popular answer for this problem. waah now i have to plan