Two Types of Character Deaths

 This week we’re talking about killing off characters and asking is it necessary. It’s not a new debate among authors or even readers, as Jeffe mentioned, and so far this week my fellow SFF Seveners have given opinions from both sides. 

KAK made a good argument that we, as consumers of entertainment that’s filled with death and dying, are numb to it. Vivien made the point that to make a character death, MC or secondary, worth it you’ve got to make the character earn it by showing growth. 

And that’s my answer to the question: Both! How can I choose both? Because for me, there’s two types of character death. 

The first type of character death: mass casualties. The kind that pile up as you’re slicing your way through a game like Heavenly Sword or reading a Gridmark. I believe we, people in general, are inured to this type of death. It isn’t personal. We’re capable of separating ourselves from it—be it in the media or in real-time death toll numbers that flash across our screens—because it isn’t personal. 

Depending on the type of book this kind of death is part of the story. When I wrote The Mars Strain back in 2015 the Ebola outbreak was maintaining a death toll. It wasn’t even close to our current pandemic’s tracking, but it was reality. So I knew I needed that piece of reality in my fiction and I wrote in a high casualty rate. Devin Madson wrote a great post about trad and indie publishing and near the bottom is an excellent, little section about The Pitfalls of Gridmark (it’s a great read, check it out!). Devin talks about the difference between character development and suffering, and that there is a difference, even in a genre stuffed with death. I translate Devin’s point about Gridmark to: don’t kill a bunch of people just for the sake of killing. Have a reason, be intentional.

Which brings me to the second type of character death: the immediate death. Not as in fast, but close proximity—usually a beloved secondary character. This is the one that hits you in the heart, the one that makes you cry, and the one that changes the main character’s trajectory. I have a couple close proximity deaths in The Mars Strain and I spent a lot of time debating if those secondary characters really needed to die. In the end I came to the conclusion that yes, they did because only with their deaths could my main characters make the decisions that they do that result bring about the climax of the story. Intentional, very intentional.

Nope, I’m not going to give away any spoilers here and name names.

And there you have it, my take on killing off characters and how I believe the two kinds of character deaths—mass casualties and close proximity—are needed for some tales. But I will stand firm with Vivien on the furry friends. Don’t touch a single fluff on the four legged characters (I’m looking at you I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson who made me bawl). 

How about you? How do you handle writing character deaths or reading character deaths? And please, don’t ever tell me Kevin Hearne killed off Oberon.

No conflict, No story

 No conflict, no story.

Which translates to: no antagonist = no conflict = no story. And that’s what we’re talking about this week, the antagonist’s arc! 

My daughter DNFd (did not finish) a book last night. It had been a book she’d excitedly picked up having been sold on the back blurb. When I asked her why the DNF she said ‘because nothing’s happening’. 

As authors, we want to avoid that kiss of death at all costs. So, how do we do it? I don’t know about you, but I can share my process! 

Interestingly, to me anyway, I realized I go about crafting my antagonists two different ways depending on the genre. 

Fantasy

When I write fantasy I start out with my hero and I see them at the climax of the story, the moment they are most fearful and also the moment they rip through whatever’s been holding them back. Now, I don’t always see what exactly they’re up against, but I observe the character’s emotions and what’s going on around them. 

Since I have a pretty good sense of who the hero is and what's at stake for them I know that the villain has to either want the same thing, with their own twist of course, or want an antithesis to the hero's desires. With all that information I can put together the big evil that must be stopped and then figure out how my hero got to that climax point.

Science Fiction

When I write sci-fi I start out with the antagonist, the big evil that must be stopped. Once I know who, or what, my villain is I can craft the type of hero the world needs to stop it. Whoa, that kinda sounds like superhero stuff. But in a way, sci-fi—the kind that threatens the entire world—needs someone larger than life. And I love making taking a person who sees themselves as only successful in their small corner of the world and challenging them so they grow into a superhero. 

It doesn’t matter what genre, we want strong antagonists. And here’s one tip I’ve picked up over the years:

Keep it Simple. 

Your villain doesn’t need a master plan that requires blueprints and a powerpoint. You only need a conflict that smacks your hero in the face. 

When I started writing The Mars Strain it was during the 2015 Ebola outbreak. I was running a laboratory and participating on a multi-healthcare system Emergency Preparedness Board. Every day I was thinking ahead to what we’d need and what we’d do if there was a deadly outbreak that reached across the world to us. From that real life experience I imagined a new organism, and because I write to entertain, not mimic real life, my organism came from Mars. Boom. There was my antagonist with its one goal: proliferate.

How do you create the perfect antagonist? 

Maybe your hero and villain are the same, only one choice veered the antagonist off to another path. Maybe your antagonist has very little page time but you Al Pacino the Devil’s Advocate and nearly convince your hero to make the wrong climatic choice. I’d love to know! 

THE MARS STRAIN Cover Reveal and the topic of the week: Writing with Your Personality Type

 

A brief pause on the blog topic to officially share with you the audiobook cover for THE MARS STRAIN which will 

release next Tuesday, April 27th!!! 

Back to the topic at hand. It appears most writers fall into the INTJ category in the Myers-Briggs personality typing system, including our own Jeffe. Introverts prefer spending time in their own heads, which can lead to writing. 

In the 1920’s Jung separated people into introverts and extraverts and he also split the cognitive process into two types, perception (sensation and intuition) and judgment (thinking and feeling), making eight different categories. The key here is no one will be fully in one category all the time, but you will default to your primary type. 

I’m very curious—what type are you? And are you a writer?

 

No matter the phase of life or how many times I take the personality quiz I end up as ISFJ-Assertive. The assertive part comes as no surprise, especially to those who know me, because I am confident in my abilities and decisions. I loved managing a laboratory and cancer clinic.  And that career path makes so much sense because my personality type is Defender in the Sentinel category.

Sentinels view productivity as a superpower and plan for everything. We seek order, stability, and security and are comfortable with who we are. Sentinels prefer to work on one project until completion, no hopping from thing to thing for us. And we find inspiration from the past rather than the future. 

If you’re curious about the four types of personalities, or want to take a Myers-Briggs quiz for yourself, 

16Personalities is a fun website to check out. 

Why are we talking about this on our blog this week? Well, understanding yourself and how your brain works is a fantastic tool. I won’t tack on for writing because knowing how you work best will benefit you in everything. But alright, I’ll narrow this down to crafting books and how perception and judging impact the act. 

For me, my perception is Introverted Sensing (Si) and when I’m drafting a new book I’m looking back to what I’ve experienced before and drawing on those reactions and feelings for my characters. I work on gathering information—the time suck known as researching. 

If you’re like most writers, Introverted iNtuiting (Ni), you’re more likely to find your thrill in the conceptualization—dreaming up your characters and world building—and have a hard time moving on from that stage. 

If you know where your strengths are, then you know where your weaknesses are. Don’t get trapped in your own mind! Example, if you’re stuck in the researching/conceptualization phase how do you move onto the Extraverted Thinking phase where your story becomes organized (yes, necessary even if you’re not a plotter) and forms a beginning, middle, and end. 

For all of us introverts trying to write, what can we do? Don’t get trapped in your own mind. Yes, easy to type out, difficult to actually do and so here are some suggestions that I’m working on:

How to work those Extroverted Thinking muscles

1: Allow yourself time in your strength. My favorite part of the writing process is outlining and researching and I have my best writing days when I start my time reviewing my detailed outline or deep chapter outlines before diving into the actually act of pulling words from the air. 

DANGER: I can’t let myself spend all day there, or my word count will be a big fat zero. 

Go ahead and let yourself swim in your comfortable waters to warm up for the day, then dive into whatever deeper pool you’re aiming for. 

2: Swallow that fear. I expect you’ve had days like me where you can’t believe you’re trying to write and everything is garbage. The reality, and I can’t thank my CPs (critique partners—particularly Charissa Weaks who has been a god send) enough, is that my writing works, but I’m afraid to put it out there. Even when I’m not close to sending something out or having a book release my mind knows that the end game of all that typing is people reading my words. 

You can let the fear rule the day, or you can face it and tell yourself it’s worth the risk. Of course nothing’s ever obsolete, and there are times fear is really your gut telling you something’s wrong with the story.

3: Set Goals. Hopefully this is an easy one, but here’s a twist to it—make one accessible goal for each day. Finish the book is an excellent goal, but daunting when that’s what’s staring you in the face each morning and you’re on chapter 2. 

Break it down. Yes this is structure, but even abstract thinkers need some structure in order to put together a story, otherwise people won’t understand it. 

4: Trust your gut to guide you. I’ve got that F in my personality type and I know I rely on feeling, but I’m also a laboratorian and trained myself to view with an analytical eye. So I have experienced conflicts trusting my gut when I’m stuck wearing my lab coat. Some instances scream for me to take off the jacket and let the wind guide me. 

When writing THE MARS STRAIN I knew the timeline of both my story and the infection process, it was science. But I was stuck in the middle of the book, I knew it wasn’t working, but I forced myself to keep writing to the timeline. Once I let go and followed my gut I backed up and rewrote a few chapters with more of a character focus. Le voilà!

5: After your gut has you on the right track, time for Extroverted Thinking (Te). Break down the problem. Don’t try to tackle everything at once or you’ll overload your brain. The Te phase is the big red button, the ignitor. Once you hit it everything’s a go and you leave behind the feeling, sensing, and intuiting. I wasn’t able to look at my entire manuscript and see all the twists and tweaks that needed to be done. I started with my main character and worked from there. 

If you’re a storyteller you like living in your own head and no matter what cognitive functions you excel at, I hope some of this helps you defeat procrastination.

How a Plotter Learned How to Plan the Length of a Novel

 Vivien took our topic of the week and compared it to gardening. I totally dig her explanation. You should check it out. 

But today is Thursday which means I’m supposed to provide some insight. Which is difficult for me to believe that I can offer up anything useful, a side effect of struggling mentally, though I’m going to give it a go. 

Once upon a time I was invited to write a novella for an anthology. At that time I’d only written one novel and was working on my second and I thought sure, I can write something creepy and short! Reader: I can’t write anything short. My first stab at a novella ended up exploding into the opening for what could’ve been a 95,000 word novel! 

Whoa! Let’s deconstruct that sentence because it packs a lot.

First, my novella attempt exploded meaning I failed to keep the story and pace compact enough and it ended up reading like the first few chapters of a novel. Second, this novella draft was for a thriller anthology. 95,000 words is too long for a short and it’s too long for a thriller novel! 

-No Writing Is Wasted-

You know the saying “no writing is wasted”? Well, I guess it’s actually true because from this failed attempt I did learn a few things. Yep, you’ve got that right: I can’t write anything short. I love building; building the world, building the characters and their growth slowly, building the plot. So I know if I’m ever to really write a novella I’m going to have to practice a new kind of writing craft. 

I also learned how to plan out the length of my WIP (work in progress). The first novel I wrote I penciled into a 5 subject notebook. Bad idea on so many levels, but for today’s topic—soooo bad in regards to knowing how long the book would be. And since I was in the process of drafting my second novel I decided to change my process and write each scene to match its genre: sci-fi thriller. 

Plotter (n): someone who plans things out in advance

 

I’m a plotter, so I already had a synopsis and an outline and knew what would happen in each chapter. But I had long first and second chapters and a short third chapter. How in the world was I supposed to predict the length of my completed manuscript at this rate and how long should it be?!

Problem! How long is the typical scene for a thriller?!

My solution was to read. I picked up countless science fiction, thriller, and sci-fi thriller books. I made a spreadsheet. *tip my hat to Jeffe* And after all that I determined I wanted my book to end up at 75,000 words (about a 300 page book because that was the average length for thrillers). On top of knowing how long I wanted the complete project to be I also knew I needed to keep the action tight for this genre and my goal was to have each chapter be in the 6-8 page range.

#writingtip 

to calculate book length from word count ÷ by 250 

On average there are 250 words per page. 

Armed with this knowledge I set out to work each scene to fit my page goal which led to me to reaching THE END at 76,000 words! Granted, that was the first draft and it went through a lot of revisions resulting in additional scenes. Curious about how it all turned out? Well, the WIP I’m talking about is THE MARS STRAIN which will release in audiobook on April 27th! 

Next week I’ll share a preview of the cover. Until then, let me know how you plan for the length of your WIP! If you’re a pantser how do you make it work? If you’re a plotter as well, do you outline each scene so you can control the chapter lengths?

Is the pandemic infecting your writing?

 

Notre Dame Cathedral reconstruction August 2019

Do you pull real life into your writing? More specifically, is our current pandemic showing up in your books? Like the Notre Dame Cathedral above, our world is rebuilding, but do we want to see it in our books?

My fellow SFF Seveners have answered rather well this week, but it’s still a tough question to face as a writer. Which makes me wonder if it’s different from a reader standpoint?  

I’ve said it before and my stance hasn’t changed, I read for fun and to escape. Stress running high? Read. Exhausted from work or house projects? Read. Heartache that you’d rather not think about any more? Read. 

Reading clearly works for me and if I look back at the books I’ve read so far this year it’s pretty heavy in the fantasy category. I want to escape into fantastical worlds where the magic or creatures are what you fear. In fantasy I’m not looking for a book filled with characters in masks, unless we’re talking DUNE. 

I also read some contemporary romances. They were lovely stories where the characters got close, figuratively and literally. When I picked those up I wanted to escape into a heartwarming love story and hopefully have some good laughs along the way. I wasn’t looking for a real-time meet cute half hidden behind masks. 

Escaping into the past is fun and I read a couple historical fiction novels too. But no, they didn’t take place during any epidemics or pandemics. Same with the middle grade books I finished reading aloud to my kids. Those were tales as old as time…no, not fairy tales, just the struggles everyone goes through of fitting in and finding yourself. 

That leaves sci-fi. My other love. I can totally get into a good space opera, but my faves are near-future. And mankind vs. a deadly disease isn’t anything new in this department. So yes, I have and I will continue to pick up science fiction based on frightening viruses and alien controlled lifeforms. In fact, bring on more! If you’ve read one recently drop the title in a comment. 

Now that I look back at my reader thoughts I can put my writer hat back on. And whew because THE MARS STRAIN, that was pitched as a cross between THE MARTIAN and OUTBREAK, featuring an infection disease scientist and astronaut who, in a race against time, work to stop the devastating impact of a deadly Martian virus, will be releasing this spring! 

I guess that means I’ll continue to write my fantasy books with the same themes, found family and discovering what you’re truly capable of. And that also means my next sci-fi WIPs, works in progress, won’t change either. They’re near future and it’s easy to imagine our triumphant dominance over coronaviruses and continue to pit my characters against greed, boiling their choices down to a discovery of self and revelation of what, or who, they really value.

Any creatives out there who’ve taken a step back to consider the consumer side? What did you come up with? 

I'll take fantasy murder, please. With a side of pasta sauce.

(the closest I've been to a murder scene off-page: 

my attempt at jarring homemade pasta sauce without a funnel)

No matter what genre you read or write, there’s murder lurking there. Murder’s been around since Cain and Able, and ever since then people have been talking about it. 

But what do I consider the most intriguing fictitious murder method? Hmm…I guess it depends on the genre!

In my sci-fi thriller, The Mars Strain, there’s a world-wide pandemic that takes people out by the thousands. *cringe* I do love viruses, still can't take the lab outta the girl, but a little too close to home for you at the moment?

Fantasy! I also write fantasy and in them there’s: 

• brutal trolls with club-like arms (don’t get squished)
• undead creatures called Draugr (watch out for their teeth)
• swords (naturally my heroine’s carry fabled, named ones, but you’ve gotta be careful with the ones swinging at your head)
• assassins (shadows peel from their skins and you’re not even aware you’ve let them in)
• aaaand magic

Magic. That’s my answer and I’m sticking to it! 

In both of my fantasy books magic in inherent, if a character has fae blood in their ancestry then they have some amount of power. In The Dark Queen’s Daughter my MC’s power allows her to tap into the magic of the world and use it for brief moments. So she’s able to control the trees and crushes revenants back into dust and stabs a draugr, though they regenerate up to three times so different methods are required. 

Magical murder can range from gristly to the soul passing on a sigh. I appreciate that it’s fantastical in nature and therefore has a certain distance to it. Because when it comes down to it, I’d rather write about magic’s glitter and healing properties. Still, when I want to do good evil is right there with me, so murder will keep worming it’s way into my stories. In one form or another. 

Do you have a favorite book-murder, magical or not?