The Death of a Character

Every living thing in this universe shares at least one thing in common. We will all die. Most of us likely heard 'death is part of life' or 'death is a fact of life' as we were growing up. Most of us have been touched by the deaths of loved ones. 

So when someone asks if it's absolutely necessary for characters to die in my novels, the answer is 'of course'. But.

BUT. 

Anyone I kill off in a story must die for cause. The death(s) need to mean something to the characters left behind, or they need to augment reality. Any time you're writing military SFR, if people aren't dying when you shoot at them, you're writing parody. You need to apply a cost to everything characters do. Or don't do. You need consequences. 

Sure, I can make the consequences impact the character directly, but consider the psychological impact of your poor decision destroying an innocent's life. That's some heavy guilt and it's hard to get rid of. Am I fond of fridging girlfriends, boyfriends, or anyone else? I'd like to say no, but I have a lot of dead people who are driving a hero in the current WIP. I think that's the textbook definition of 'fridging'. That sucks. I didn't want to be that author. Forth book in a series, tho. So it's not like I can change it now or make it somehow okay. I don't want it to be okay. I want it to be raw. And hard. And haunting. 

Anyway. We're off track. Death must mean something. If it doesn't, then killing off a character becomes a toss off. These are the character deaths in books, TV, and movies where a writer just kills the character. It's almost an accident. Oops. I dodged when I should have parried and now I'm dead. I understand that this is, in fact, reality. All too well I know this. But you know who handles what could have been a toss off death so adeptly that it carried a boat load of weight and emotion? Peter Jackson. Lord of the Rings. Battle of Helm's Deep. The elf Haldir leads a troop to bolster the defenders. Heroic! Hopeful, even.

Then Haldir takes an enemy arrow between the eyes while defending the battlements. It's almost accidental (and never happened in the books). It's a brilliant piece of theater - a full few seconds to watch realization cross his face, then that face go slack, and the slow motion fall. It's also amazing emotional manipulation - just as the audience is cheering the heroic elves riding to the rescue, they're toppled from their emotional perch by the arrow of Haldir's death. I totally see why Peter Jackson put it in the film when it isn't in the books.

The hero. Fallen. Lovely imagery. Sledgehammer of 'aw, man, I liked him'. 

A toss off would have been 'Hey! Hero riding in with reinforcements! Oops. He's dead. Oh well.' It would have been a quick pan. Or someone who deserved a better, weightier death accidentally falling through a magic mirror. Not that I'm mentioning names of authors or books here.

Summary:

• If I kill named characters on the page, I want them to have earned their deaths as much as other characters have to earn their HEAs. I don't often kill named characters.
  
• If I kill people off stage, it's to drive named characters into the character arc they've been avoiding.
• If I kill people off stage, it's also set that stage for stakes and/or ticking clocks and because there are no wars without atrocities. I just don't have to enumerate them or dwell on them. Often.
• If I kill NPCs in large number, I always mean to include the stories of heroism that never actually make it into the darned novels. There may someday be a short story anthology of those depressing heroic-unto-death stories collected and published.

And now, a bit of new life. The monarch caterpillar I brought in to save from the red wasps cocooned in a nursery on my front porch. It emerged and flew off into the world on Tuesday. 

 

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.

Writing a Death that Kills Me

Many of the heart-wrenching and gorgeous character arcs I can think of involve either sacrifice of life or willingness to sacrifice with no hope of being saved. I will list a few at the end of this post, below a significant spoiler space, so folks who haven't read those books or watched those shows won't come for my head. 

Or ... you know, maybe it would be more effective for this week's topic if they did.

Because we are talking about death, after all. Specifically, we're discussing whether the threat of death is enough to drive character and story arcs, and if character death, in and of itself, raises the stakes enough when our reality has a daily death count that has made us numb.

And my answer to that is...not really? Death does not immediately equal stakes. Let me explain.

Writing a death that hits readers where it hurts is hard. I've said that the difference between romance and other genres, and the thing that really elevates romance structurally, is that all writers, metaphorically, send a protagonist up a tree and throw rocks at him. Romance is the only one that requires a writer to bring that character back down from the tree, changed by his experience, and heal him. I would call this a complete character arc, not just a logarithmic curve, and I believe that the best character deaths, the only ones that really work and feel earned, are the ones that occur on the far end of a complete arc. 

If an author just sends the protagonist into a dire situation, makes him suffer, and then kills him, the stakes are meh. Saw it coming. Whatev. He doesn't earn it.

But if the author puts that character through hell, has them dig deep and overcome a challenge, and then claw their way right back out only to willingly sacrifice themselves for the greater good? People will weep! It's a lot more work, true, but it's also a lot more effective.

So that's my advice on this topic: if you really want to kill a character and have it matter, make sure that character earns it. Just torturing a character with the threat of sudden death isn't enough for modern readers. Note, this advice also goes for secondary character death. If Mom has to die in order to progress Protag's journey, you need to set that up. Much as I dislike the trope, Disney does it right.

Oh! One more thing: never kill the dog. I don't care how much you think it adds to your story or character stakes, there are a lot of readers who will immediately DNF if the dog dies. I might be one. Too many of us are permanently scarred by required-reading books with canine death, and we are not here for it. I can't even stand sad ASPCA commercials.

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Sacrifices that killed me in fiction:

- Hodor holding the door in the Game of Thrones tv show (I'm told George R. R. Martin was consulted on this plot point, so it's extremely likely he had planned to write it in the book series, too.)

- Kanan Jarrus in Star Wars Rebels. Didn't see that coming, but it was so right for that character, so very much what he had been growing toward all series. I bawled.

- Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, making emo and angst really work for him.

Do Characters HAVE To Die?

This week we're asking ourselves if we have to kill characters for there to be sufficient risk to maintain reader interest. What other threats work better or just as effectively?

Here's my unpopular opinion: 

Death does not present sufficient stakes. 

Not anymore. Culturally, at least in the US, we're increasingly inured to it. It's everywhere in our entertainment. It's every night on the news. It's every morning in our feeds. It's exploited by industries and charities to reach deeper into our pockets. It's a revenue stream in the business of healthcare. Six degrees of separation connects most of us to it at any given time. It's shoved in our faces so often that unless it befalls someone in our immediate presence or our core/chosen family, our reactions are muted or performative. Nowhere is our DNGAF about death more apparent than in our national and individual response to the current pandemic. Over 33 million Americans infected with a virus proven to lead to a gruesome death, and our mental disconnect from mortality allowed prevention to become a culture war. American exceptionalism at its worst. We believe dying will happen to "everybody except me," even though, logically, we know our time on this world is finite. Logically, we know we don't get to choose how we go out. Still, we hide behind our illusion of safety and delusion of "it won't happen to me."

Thus, I think as authors we ought to strive for different stakes if we're going to really connect to the reader. If we want to reach beyond the sameness of "welp, that character was fun while they lasted," then we have to elevate our world-building so that death isn't the most feared consequence of our characters' actions or inactions. Loss of liberty, loss of home, loss of status, loss of mental capacity, loss of physical ability, there are so many things a character can fear more than dying. A loss of love not through death but due to being driven away by one's own actions is far more heartbreaking. As long as there is a clear line of ownership of the consequences, a direct cause/effect of the choices the character made, then I think--I hope--the stakes are more vital to the character and more captivating to the reader.

Is Death Truly Inevitable?

This week at the SFF Seven we're discussing The Necessity of Death.

In fiction, of course! 

We're asking "Do You *Have* To Kill Characters for there to be enough risk? What other threats work better or just as effectively?"

This is one of those topics readers and writers alike seem to debate often. The readers, of course, never want any character they love to die. This includes all animals and children, named or not. (As a reader, I agree!) 

Writers, however, often feel the pinch of this expectation. Death is, after all, a part of life. And without the peril of death, the stakes of any conflict can feel flat. Though we do enjoy making our readers cry, we also want them to be happy with the story. A cathartic ugly cry is a wonderful reading experience. Coming away from a book bitter and grieving? I don't like it, myself.

I recall an author asking this question on some writer forum a while back. He had a long-running series with a central protagonist. All along, he'd planned to kill this guy at the end. But, the series had gone longer than he anticipated, gaining many passionate readers. Seeing this character's fate coming, they'd begun writing to the author to beg him not to kill the character at the end. The author was seriously torn. He felt that this certain death was so integral to the story - as indeed it must have been, for readers to anticipate and write to him about it - that he worried doing anything else would be a cheat.

Would it have been? 

One well-known author killed her protagonist at the of a series, to great dismay from her readers. This was something she'd planned from the beginning, as she wrote the books in reaction to what she felt was a cheat ending to the Harry Potter series. She thought Harry should've died at the end, so created her own series to execute that exact arc. That author has defended the ending by saying that the series is about this character learning to be selfless and that only by making the "ultimate sacrifice" - by dying - could she truly learn that lesson.

But... is that the case?

This is the crux of what we're asking here. Is death of a character necessary to demonstrate something? You'll notice I put "ultimate sacrifice" in quotation marks, but is giving up one's own life really the greatest sacrifice? I'd argue that dying can be easier than living through difficulty. Making restitution to people you've wronged can take tremendous effort and suffering - something that arguably takes much more strength of character than escaping into death. 

With THE PROMISED QUEEN coming out next week, quite a few readers are revisiting the first two books in The Forgotten Empires - THE ORCHID THRONE and THE FIERY CROWN - and making guesses about how the trilogy will end. There are a few questions they want answered and one has to do with the quote above. I think I'm spoiling nothing when I say that I believe that repaying debts and suffering to truly change is far more meaningful for a character than merely dying. 

        

Tired Writer Seeking Normal Life

 

This week's topic is one I feel oh so familiar with. When Life Gets In The Way: dealing with a schedule for writing when the world wants to go off the rails. 

Over the decade (plus a year or two) since I decided to start writing again, I've nursed both my parents (for years) through Alzheimer's and Dementia, not to mention a whole host of other issues they faced, some of which, for my dad, happened during a pandemic. I've gone through their deaths now and the after-affects of their passing, all while raising a big family with active daughters (who have mostly finished college this year...ONE left!). I've also dealt with raising kids alone while my husband worked out of state or out of the country, along with enduring the struggles people face that we just don't show the world.

Through everything, I've stolen writing time when I could. Early in the mornings before work, in car rider lines, at gymnastics, dance, and cheerleading practices, while cooking dinner, sitting on hotel room balconies when we traveled, during flights, while waiting at the gate in airports, sitting in hospital rooms... I could go on. For so long, there was no such thing as a writing schedule. Writing had to happen in between the cracks of my life.

As KA said, routine is a luxury, one many writers do not have. It took forever for me to realize that routine was what I was striving for in those years. I was also striving for normal, longing for it, because I thought normal existed for some reason, and that if I planned well enough, I'd find it. I just wanted a day with no surprises. Small life hiccups I could deal with--being a mom teaches you how to do this with serious skill. It was the events that spun me in an entirely different direction that, of course, rattled me most.

I can't tell you how many times I've sat down and put my head in my hands, wanting to give up on writing because it felt like every time I hit any kind of writing stride or habit, something big happened to shake my world and flip the sense of 'normal' I might have wrangled for a time on its head. I'd have to drop everything to be a nurse, a psychologist, a medical sleuth, all to keep a parent alive and safe. Or maybe I was having to change out my writer hat to be Super Mom. I'll never pretend that I don't have a bit of trauma from living like that, the constant ups and downs and sideswipes. I'd get some momentum on a novel, then rise up only to have my legs kicked out from under me, some horrible happening sucking all the life out of me, and I'd have to be okay because other people depended on me. 

There were times when I had to stop writing. There just wasn't enough energy for me to think creatively. Some breaks would span weeks, others months. At the time, I felt so guilty, and the writing world can even encourage that guilt, because, Hey! You're supposed to write daily! No matter what! Which just isn't feasible for everyone.

I try really hard to keep that kind of energy out of the universe, that writers should be able to push through difficult times and write anyway. I used to believe that, used to let it make me feel awful, but now I know better. Not everyone can write daily. It's totally okay to have to think about other things, to drop one ball because you simply cannot juggle them all. Sometimes, when life gets in the way, it gets in the way BIG, so big you can't see around it. Don't let someone else's idea of what you're supposed to do or not do become the definition by which you end up judging yourself. Give yourself grace in tough times. Take deep breaths and hot baths and long walks, or stay in bed all day and watch tv if that's what works to get you through. Drink warm tea and cold water or eat whatever the hell you want. Go outside and scream, curl up with someone you love, and cry. Whatever works. Writing will be there when you are able to return to it.

Now, my realist tendencies are going to come out. The problem with all of this is that once writing becomes a job, it's like any job. There are deadlines, expectations, and responsibilities. I have a trilogy coming out soon that was supposed to come out last fall. But, thankfully, I have a wonderful publisher who extended grace and gave me the time I needed to deal with my dad's passing and everything I've had to do to close his estate. Once we writers go under contract, it feels far less easy to just take a day off. Now, when a cataclysm shakes our foundation, it's harder to stay in hiding for the time we might truly need. Pages must be written and edited, newsletters sent, covers approved, and many other duties. My best advice for writers in that situation is to do whatever must be done to give yourself some time. It's okay to reach out to an agent or editor and let them know that your world has been turned upside down. Maybe they can help give you the breathing room you need.

Ultimately, we have to take care of ourselves or there will be no writing to worry about. Life still isn't "normal" for me, and I realize it never will be. No matter how well I might plan, life still happens. These days, I'm learning to trim away unnecessary tasks that eat up my time, to do better about staying ahead of publishing deadlines (which is hard!), to keep using lists and my KanBan board so that I have some sense of control over things, and to do a better job of nurturing myself. I love routine. I love structure. It's how I get things done. But, I also know that it can be interrupted at any moment. More importantly, I know that I've endured so much, and I'll survive regardless.

And I will always--always--come back to writing.

I hope you do, too.

Holding strong in the storm

 I hope the fact that I no longer live on a boat doesn't preclude nautical metaphors. Because here we are again. 

We all know the wind is going to blow in our lives. Most of us have learned to handle that wind and, in fact, use it to propel us. 

But those aren't the winds we're talking about this week. This week is about the storms, squalls, and cyclones. The chill and stinging rain and howling winds yanking and tugging and churning up the water of our routines and lives.

With Covid, we all know what that looks like now. Stress. Uncertainty. A little fear. In some cases, panic and desolation. 

When a storm sweeps in, the ideal place to be is moored to a solid mass. A dock. In a writer's case, that solid mass is a habit set deep in the bedrock of your days. A habit like Jeffe's. Tying up to that is safe. Reliable. Immovable. Sometimes you get a few hard bounces against the dock, but so long as your lines hold, your craft is safe.

The problem is that sometimes you're underway when storms spin up. No docks in sight. You're caught out in dangerous conditions. On a boat (and in matters of health and well-being), your single job is to keep your nose into the wind. Why? To keep from being capsized. If you can find shelter, you run for it. And then you set an anchor and give yourself a really, really long leash. That's what keeps your anchor hooked into the bottom of the seabed and your craft in a position to ride out the worst. 

Translated out of nautical metaphor: Tie up to the safety of established habit when you can, but when the horse feathers hit the fan and you can't fall back on habit, throw out an anchor. Let that anchor take the form of a craft class or anything that requires you to get your head in your writing for a few hours each week. 

Then give yourself grace. A lot of it. 

Remember. Your first job is protecting your health and well-being when storms roar in to knock you off course. When you're healthy, you have a million wishes. When you aren't healthy, you have only one wish. 

Don't let the storms steal your wishes.

When the world's on fire, be kind to you

I've held off posting my blog today because, honestly, my co-SFFSeveners have already nailed this topic: how to keep to a writing schedule when life goes off the rails. May I take a moment to point you to K.A. Krantz's post about being flexible enough to make new routines when your beloved routines become untenable? And also Jeffe Kennedy's post about using your writing habit as a sort of bedrock upon which to build a stable structure of routines?

I point you elsewhere because I have to confess that when my world is on fire, I haven't found a good solution for plugging my brain into writing. And the world has been on fire a lot of late. These last two years have been brutal for a lot of us. Losing my writing way was the easiest loss to bear. Well, maybe not the easiest: not having to put make-up on or dress snappily has been so lovely I wouldn't even call it a loss. Similar reaction to the lack of human contact: this introvert does intermittent quarantine like a champ.

When I have managed to make words, my magic has been 

- Deadlines. Seriously, these things are like instant stories for me. I miss real ones so much, but self-created ones are still somewhat helpful.

- Turning off all news and social media. 

- I'm serious about that one. No news. No social. 

Part of me is still aware that the world is having major problems. I wouldn't be human if I could just shut off concern for my fellow humans (India! Gaza! so much suffering, too much), but when there's nothing I can do to directly change the horrors, I need to stop getting constant updates on them, donate where I can, and focus on this tiny bubble of reality around me.

You know what really helps with that? Writing spec fic. When my own world sucks beyond all hope, I can make up a new one, a better one, and the hope of that act can get emotional-sponge me to the next day.

Consider this post blanket permission to not know about every little bad thing in our world. Be kind to you. Protect your made-up happy space. If self-protection means leaning on your writing routine for stability, like Jeffe recommends, do that. Lots of that. If it means coming up with a new, more workable routine a la KAK? Do it.

If it means standing in your back yard, talking to your plants about a story idea that really makes you happy and that you may or may not ever get around to writing? Don't shame yourself for that either. It's still nurturing your creative brain, despite the world.