On the topic of Killing Characters

I'm an author. I realize that there are times when a plot may have more impact if a character dies. Do I like it? No. Have I done it? Yes, once or twice, as far as named characters with whom the reader had spent time during the course of the book. People my main characters loved and respected. (Versus unnamed throngs of bystanders people the reader never met and doesn't know...). In those cases, the story really was better served by the person not living to see the HEA occur. But I made sure these weren't meaningless deaths - they accomplished something important with the sacrifice they made.

Ever since - SPOILER - the first time I read Little Women as a child, and was devastated by the death of Beth, I have an aversion to reading books where beloved characters die. Much less to writing them.

No, I'm not Pollyanna. I know - none better - that beloved heroic people die in real life and sad things happen. Every day in fact. I can even handle the occasional death of a character who's been a part of a series for several books and then meets their fate. Do I like it? No. If I enjoy the book or the series enough, I do keep reading and kinda blot that incident out in my head frankly.

Yeah, by now you've guessed I'm not a Game of Thrones fan. No disrespect intended to those who
are, or to the skills of the author - just not my thing. I'm amazed I hung in there with "The Walking Dead" and "The 100" TV shows...so I guess I do make occasional exceptions in my entertainment choices.(And I admired fellow SFF7 Jeffe's choice regarding Prince Hugh, as she discussed last Sunday in her post. It was a shocking scene, it had impact, it set up lots of key stuff for the later books...and I kinda never liked him all that much anyway. I love her Twelve Kingdom series by the way.)

When I was contemplating this week's topic, I drafted quite a long and detailed explanation in my head for you, explaining why I quite consciously do NOT write books very often where people I/we love end up dying. But you know what? I decided not to go there. Everyone has sad events in their lives. I'm not unique.

What I decided as an author a LONG time ago, was to write stories I wanted to read, full of action and adventure and romance and a very happy ending for the vast majority of my characters. I may not be able to control real life and fend off tragedies for people, but I can damn sure control the events in my own books.

So if you're in the mood for a dark story where characters you've invested in and care about die, you won't be picking up one of my novels, and that's perfectly FINE. I have nothing but respect for authors who write in that style.

It's just not me and I'm happy writing what I write. (Waves from my happy optimistic corner.)

Ding Dong the Dude Is Dead

Weeeeeell. Could last week's meme post have segued any more smoothly into this week's? I don't think it could.

I think I've provide graphic proof that I have no issue with killing of whoever needs killing. Bad guys. Innocents. Not so innocents. Folks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time - few are safe from me. And it's probably a character flaw of mine, but since those deaths happen solely to serve the story, I may be guilty of using death as plot device.

Remember fairytales? Not the ones Disney fed you - the dark and creepy tales the Brothers Grimm actually wrote - where Cinderella's step mother maimed her own daughters to get the glass slipper to fit? The penalty in those old, dark stories is almost always death. There's something ancient and bloodthirsty in the human psyche - something that whispers for the deaths of those who transgress, who keep the hero or heroine from what is rightfully theirs. No wonder genre fiction likes to off the bad guys. On some primitive level, it just feels right.

That's the bad guys sorted, but what about when it's a good guy or gal who bites it? I'll be straight with you here. It's emotional manipulation. Yep. Truth. You are being twisted into giving a crap about a character, you're being led to invest emotionally, and then you're being hauled nose first right into your own fear of death. Have I killed off good guys? Of course. SPOILER ALERT: There are likely to be more who take a dirt nap. Why? Not because I intend for you to work through your existential dread over what happens when you die - though, according the ancient Greeks, that's exactly what you're doing - that's the premise for all those tragedies they wrote. Catharsis - purging emotion. I'm not Greek. I kill off good guys because in every battle, in every crisis, in every situation with high stakes, some people learn the lessons that allow them to survive and some don't. Every action a hero or heroine takes has consequences. Sometimes, those consequences include the deaths of allies. Characters who could have been the heroes of their own stories. These are the deaths I try to be most careful with. I roll my eyes at every movie that murders some dude's family/girlfriend/partner in the first ten minutes (y'know, to motivate him) so I am very careful to not use character death as some kind of goad. That's just my particular peeve. If a character is to die, it needs to be the culmination of that character's arc - NOT a blip on someone else's arc, if you see the difference.

The one thing I can say is that I ended a book on a character's death. The series was later canceled by the publisher (not because of the death!) I'd intended to answer the question of whether that character had actually lived or died in the third book - only I didn't get to do a third book. This was not a happy thing for anyone. So. Killing characters is often necessary. Both from a story standpoint and from a character standpoint. But if there's any ambiguity about the demise, don't leave yourself and your readers hanging unless you're already contracted for the next book.

Perils of the Writer: When Characters Have To Die, When Characters Have to Kill

I'm fortunate so far, in that I've yet to get any significant pushback on killing any characters in my books.  To which I saw: wait for Imposters of Aventil.  

(Because I'm not entirely truthful about no blowback-- there's something there that one of my betas found devastating.)

I tend not to be the "let's be horrible to my characters" kind of writer.  Not out of any specific gentleness-- deaths and serious injury are abound.  But I think you need to make those moments matter, and therefore you can't cheapen it too much with frequency.

Or, rather, you need to set a tone.  If the tone is set at "Horror", then you've got to kill characters left and right.  That's what Horror is supposed to be: a setting where You Will Not Survive is the default that characters have to work out of.  

I write Fantasy Adventure books where the tone is equivalent to, say, the superhero shows on the CW.  Each one has it's own specific rules about killing and death, of course, and as the writer I have to respect that tone.

By which I mean, it's not just about if characters die, it's how my characters approach lethal force.  To continue the CW parallels:

• Veranix in the Thorn books is closest to Arrow, in that using lethal force isn't necessarily an ideal, but it's also not off the table.  Sometimes the situation will-- in Veranix's mind-- render it necessary.  He's out there in life-or-death fights, so he can't hold back in the moment.
• Minox and Satrine in the Maradaine Constabulary are closest to The Flash.  They serve as officers of the law, and so their mandate is a clean arrest and proper justice.  They strive to do things the "right" way, bring someone in alive.  That doesn't mean that lethal force never happens, and they don't struggle with it... but they take it very seriously.  Also, most of the time the people who die in these stories start out dead to begin with.
• Asti, Verci and the rest of the Holver Alley Crew of the Streets of Maradaine are closest to Legends of Tomorrow, in that between their darker pasts and operating outside of the system, they don't hesitate at lethal force when the situation calls for it.  They're anti-heroes who do what they have to.
• Finally, Dayne of the (hopefully) upcoming Maradaine Elite series is very much Supergirl.  That's all I'll say about him for now.

  Hopefully, when a beloved character does get killed (perhaps in Imposters of Aventil, now available for pre-order?), you'll understand the brave and bold choices I've made there.

A reminder that I'll be at ConFusion this weekend, and if you are there and want to get you're hands on an ARC for The Holver Alley Crew, there's a way detailed here.

On Killing Characters

A List of Killed Characters off the Top of my Head:

  Numerous characters from Game of Thrones

  Numerous characters from the Walking Dead

  Spock/Kirk when facing Khan

  Mary on Sherlock

  Jack from Titanic

           **I could go on but I have a post to write. (; 

I consider myself a level-headed, thoughtful person. I believe the Golden Rule is valuable and that the commandments were a pretty good list overall. And yet:

1.) I want Arya or Tyrion or Daenerys or Grayworm or SOMEONE to beat the shit out of Cersei Lannister and cut her vile throat.

2.) I want someone to take out Negan.

Let's compare the difference in the level of vehemence in my two statements above. 

GOT: Cersei is a horrible, conniving person bent on keeping her family in power. She reads people well, anticipates their motives and acts to thwart any effort she sees as a threat. She's not afraid to unleash her vengeance-but there's a trigger beforehand. I feel she deserves to die more than most on the show who have been killed, but I have to admit last season they made me admire her inner strength. The deaths and the violence, in my opinion, feel in line with the time period and the social constructs. This 'realism,' I think, is part of what maintains my emotional investment.

**I'm no expert on the historical eras GRRM draws on for inspiration, so I have to note that WILLING SUSPENSION of DISBELIEF is a factor here.


TWD: Negan is a horrible and manipulative person, but I find him crossing the line into evil because he enjoys setting people up to fear him and to fail in order to have the excuse to hurt, maim or kill them. Watching the Walking Dead with him in it is something that must be akin to watching a snuff film. And while my writer brain understands that he is the embodiment of a level of evil that will force Rick & Co. to accept the risks of loss to up their game, I find I can no longer suspend my disbelief. I was emotionally invested until the season opener. Since then, there seems to be a personal distance. I still root for Rick & Co., but the fire has dissipated.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH WRITING?

KILLING CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE UNDENIABLE IMPACT. 

I can prove it with one word:

HODOR

In my series, I killed a character in FATAL CIRCLE (#3) who I liked so much I've thought of going back and writing her story, set a few decades earlier. I did not intend at the outset to kill her. I had a different plan. But when that moment came, I knew it was right. How did I know? See #3 below.

In books, characters die (much as they do in life) in a few ways:

1.) Random/unforseeable accident/health issue or complication
      {Guy killed by raptor in Jurassic Park}
       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life   ok, maybe not killed by raptor, but you know what I mean

            the aftermath for the survivors will show their character and possibly growth  

2.) Murdered {Abraham, Glenn; Qui-Gon Jinn}

       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life

            it shows how far your villain is willing to go

            the aftermath for the survivors will show their character and possibly growth

            murder and/or revenge continue to be suscessful stories

3.) Self sacrifice  {Kirk/Spock facing Khan; Hodor; Mary from Sherlock; Obi-Wan}

       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life

            it shows how far your hero/ine is willing to go

            it shows how far the cult leader & group are willing to go

            in the aftermath if the hero/ine is/isn't changed by this tells us something

4.) Suicide

       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life

            in the aftermath if the hero/ine is/isn't changed by this tells us something

If you're killing a character in your story, 

the real question to me...the real root of it is:

            

How does the story change without them?

Unless you're writing an out of sequence time tale, or plan to write prequels, once you kill a character, they are gone. Their impact should not be. Whether their death hurt the hero/ine or whether it was a two-paragraph entry that defines the villain, if it is there it should have meaning beyond that death scene. If it was a beloved character, the impact for your readers will resonate. Make it count!

Die, Damn You, Random & Beloved Characters, Die!

People die in my books all the time. Unnamed characters are pretty much the Red Shirts. Named characters expire in order to develop the plot or protagonist. Once in a while, for great impact and in the third act, a character who has been pivotal to plot and protagonist will die.

Those third act deaths are either the Great Glorious Come Uppance or the Ghastly Gutting of the Soul. 

Yes, I usually know who is going to kick it in the third act from the beginning of the crap draft.  That character owns the burden of pushing the protagonist the hardest. Their death symbolizes the Goal Achieved. Sometimes it's a merciful death or the final sacrifice. Other times it's hubris.

The trick is balancing the deaths. 

Too many and the reader doesn't care; they're inured. Too few and the story rings hollow; after all, the value of life is driven by the inevitability of death.  Not every death has to be gruesome. Not every set up for the dying should be intricate. Not everyone has to die by the antagonist's or the protagonist's hand. Oh, and don't overlook a good maiming; it can deliver equal--or better--emotional resonance.

All that said, if you're reading one my books, someone will die, folks. Usually a lot of someones. 

However, I guarantee you, it'll never be the dog. 

Sometimes They Have To Die

True story. Once upon a time I turned in a manuscript for a novel (FIREWORKS) and when I got the redlines back the editor had scrawled across an entire page of the MS "NOOOOOO! YOU KILLED HIM!!!!" the Him in question was one of the main characters of the book. To say he went out in a blaze of glory would be an understatement of epic scale.

Here's the thing:I liked that character. I genuinely did. he was a nice guy who was doing his very best to keep a fragile peace in the novel. There's the other thing: I needed that peace to end. The best way to do that was to have my peaceful, kind character with the very smallest modicum of power do something very violent and stupid in retaliation to a bad situation. It is a brief moment, a tight and tense moment and given three second to think he wouldn't have done what he did.

But he did. And I knew it was the right thing to do by the reaction from my editor.

From that moment on the body count gets very, very high, I kill off characters like trees lose leaves in autumn. hell. I have knock off scenes where several hundred people die in one stroke. Those scenes are meant to have an impact, of course, but nothing like with the main characters.

Another of my proudest moments was when I introduced a little, old lady in Las Vegas who won a small fortune and rambled on about her plans about how to spend her money, who she was going to help with the cash, gave a backstory that covered her kids, her grandkids and the fragility of their financial existence. and then had one of the characters in the story shove her out of his way as he's running past. The nice, little old lady then got creamed by a bus. Why? Because I had to show EXACTLY how unimportant she was to the bad guy. He didn't even consider her an afterthought.

The editor's response: "JESUS CHRIST, JIM!!" across the page. But i mean it, Thew sole purpose was to make clear how fragile human life can be and how little that particular vampire considered them.

I'm probably into the megadeaths in my novels. I'm okay with that. Watch the news sometime and you'll see how dark the world can be. But my reason for those deaths is because in a lot of my stories the stakes are cosmic, or close enough.

One more example. In one of my novels SMILE NO MORE the man character is a dead, psychopathic clown who quite literally escaped from Hell seeking revenge. After he's had his way with the town of SERENITY FALLS, a trilogy of novels. I sent him off on his own merry adventures. The chapters were broken down thusly: First Scene: A remembrance as told by Cecil Phelps, a moment of his past after he ran away from home and joined the circus. These tales are set roughly fifty years back. That's when Cecil died, you see. Next Scene, a more recent past event as told by Rufo the Clown, the less-than-sane remainder of Cory's soul that comes back and gets revenge. The difference is, now that he'd gotten revenge he's trying to find any shred of his old family. Of course, it's been fifty years..... Finally, a multiple POV third person scene, where all of the rest of the characters have to deal with Rufo the Clown and his desire for knowledge.

In that novel there are several deeply disturbing scenes of violence Most of them happen because someone has annoyed Rufo. In one scene a man rudely hangs up on Rufo. Rufo then violently murders 12 people to make sure that when he sees the man in person, the man understands that Rufo ain't clowning around. Rufo makes the point and gets the information he needs, becasue, as Rufe later tells the cop that is trying to catch him "You're a detective. I'm not. i had to get the information somehow."

The point? Simple: Scene one and scene two are about getting to know Rufo as a person. Getting to understand and sympathize with him. Really, he's a man out of time who is seeking his family in an effort to reconnect with the world. he just happens to be a murderous psychopath and sociopath, too. I needed to make that clear. There are certain people he cares about. The rest of the world is his plaything.

My crowning achievement for the book were the reviews that made it clear I had succeeded. I wanted him to be sympathetic, so that when he committed his atrocities, it was horrifying on an intimate level. It bothered a lot of readers that they actually LIKED him until he committed his crimes. That was what I was after.

Sometimes they have to die. the characters we like the characters we love, the characters we feel for and empathize with. If they don't the story can't go forward properly. Emotional investment. If your readers don't care about the characters, they may as well be watching a you play chess against yourself. If you don't care about the characters, your readers won't either. And sometimes, just sometimes, the reader needs to suffer the deaths with us.

Killing Prince Charming

Okay, so... the cover for THE FORESTS OF DRU isn't  *quite* ready, but here's a teaser. You guys, it's so pretty!! The good news is that the book is up for preorder now!! Just at Amazon so far, but the rest will be coming. Release date is January 24 for sure!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: Burning Bridges: Killing Off Characters in Your Fiction As a Plot Point.

I'd lay money down this topic is one of Jim's. The man loves to kill off characters, I tell you.

For me... I don't like to so much. But sometimes it's necessary. A lot of times I fight it, but death in fiction, as in life, is inevitable.

I'm going to talk about my book THE MARK OF THE TALA, the first of The Twelve Kingdoms books. If you haven't read it and don't want a huge spoiler, better stop now.

Okay? All the spoiler-nervous folks fled?

(Not like they couldn't guess from the title, though.)

So, THE MARK OF THE TALA ends with Hugh, the handsome and noble prince who marries Princess Amelia just before the start of the story, dying unexpectedly and brutally. As one guy who read the book said to me, "I can't believe you killed Prince Charming!"

I've quoted him a lot on that, because it does perfectly sum up what happens - and how I also felt about it. As I wrote that book, I fought the dread all along that Hugh would die. There's a recurring premonition where Princess Andi - the heroine of the story - sees Rayfe, the hero, dead in the snow. At the end, fate twists - because Andi changes it - and Hugh dies instead.

It really sucked and I cried over it.

But... Prince Charming had to die. While these books do end with Happily Ever Afters, as in life, those are only for some people. Others are passing through stages of grief and loss. This series, and the continuing saga in The Uncharted Realms are all in a way about loss of innocence. Or, at least, the loss of comforting illusions. Each heroine discovers the world isn't what she thought it was. The truth she discovers is often better in ways - certainly better for her - but each much shed the old beliefs of childhood to move forward.

For all of us, that means putting Prince Charming in the grave.

Because the idea of Prince Charming is one of the most profound illusions we're told. As an archetype he borders on ridiculous - forever riding about on his white charger, hair gleaming gold in the sun and noble visage in handsome profile. He is without flaw and utterly... dull. In THE MARK OF THE TALA, Hugh's essential flaw emerges in that his nobility blinds him. He can't see past it. And, in his zeal to be Prince Charming, he is ultimately the agent of his own demise.

Love this bit from Into the Woods. "He has charm for a prince, I guess - I don't meet a wide range."

When It Comes to Creating Memes

I got crickets.....and my free stockphoto site gave me grasshoppers, locusts and lots and LOTS of emblems/logos/etc having to do with the game of cricket. No actual crickets. Which probably sums up my feeling about doing memes nicely.

It's like me and telling jokes. I can laugh at a joke. Can I ever successfully retell it? No. Not even if I had Abbott and Costello standing right next to me, coaching me through every bit of their famous "Who's on First?" routine.

I used to love the "LOL Can I Haz Cheeseburger" cat memes but I guess they ran their course.

I enjoy the Boromir "One does not simply..." memes...

I knew the whole doge meme thing was going to die. Too complicated....

Not a visual, 'one picture with punchline story teller' here, folks. Would love to be but we all have our limits. It's like Sam getting handed a rope, versus the cool daggers, golden strands of hair and the eternal starlight and whatever else the other Hobbits received from Galadriel that morning. I'm Sam today, with my lowly rope, no glittery, fabulous item to share.

With the help of my cat Jake I DID manage to create a sort of clever ad for PETS IN SPACE, a Library Journal Pick for Best Books of 2016! Which is on sale for $.99 for one week only, January 17th through the 23rd (if you don't - gasp - have your copy yet)....

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