Torrias
New Member
slightly imperfect
Posts: 44
|
Post by Torrias on Feb 9, 2012 13:59:15 GMT -5
This began in myrthman's thread, God as a character. The subject of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy arose in connection with killing off major characters. I always hated it when authors did that, but reading this series gave me a new perspective because it was handled so differently from what I'd encountered or imagined before. Now I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts on positive ways of handling character deaths that really are necessary (or at least very helpful) to a story, whether as writer or reader. It's tempting just to say "SPOILER ALERT" and leave things open for anyone to give specific, detailed situations and sequences in a book/series for examples, but I'm not sure if that might degenerate into rants (positive or negative) about specific books and authors with regard to what can be a touchy subject. It's hard enough for me to avoid that discussion-degeneration, myself, in a positive way in this case. So please, try to walk the line between unhelpful vagueness and horrible spoiler-details. I'm starting out from the angle of Mistborn (I mean the whole trilogy when I say that) because it's so familiar and fresh in my mind and made such a perspective-changing impact on me. Feel free to chime in knowing nothing about that, though; this is about what the subject line says, not a review of that particular series. It seems to me that the character-killing issue is a bit different when there are multiple, rich main POVs cycling throughout a work, especially a work larger than a single volume, as opposed to a single beloved main character. It's not about an individual character so much as it's about a world and a theme (though that doesn't necessarily detract from awesome characterization, and I'm a major characterization fan). And as a Christian on a Christian board, I've been a little puzzled not to find the understanding that a character dying physically doesn't necessarily mean that they've ceased to exist, or that you'll never know anything further about them. Their great goal for which they've sacrificed so much is accomplished, but their story isn't over. They've just moved out of town, basically, and may well be a lot happier where they are, especially with knowledge of their accomplishment. Death (the first death, to a Christian) is not inherently a horribly unjust and tragic dead end (heh heh, sorry) leaving everyone broken and hurting. In this particular trilogy, I was left with a feeling of triumph and new beginnings and everything finally being good, being whole in ways never dreamed of. Everything was finally RIGHT, with all of the characters as well as the world. I know a lot of people have had really bad emotional experiences with favorite characters being killed off when they were reading. How about good experiences with that? How about writing good experiences with it? Not just the main character telling the villain "You've killed my best friend so now I have nothing left to lose," but something that leaves a beautiful, triumphant feeling, not simply technical victory with a bitter ache. Scars wiped away for a "happy ending" (perhaps even new beginning).
|
|
|
Post by yoda47 on Feb 9, 2012 16:00:33 GMT -5
Keeping in mind the Spoiler Alert theme... I didn't really mind when Keisler (sp?) died. I didn't like it, but he died a hero, you could see it coming, and it let the other characters grow a lot more, now that they weren't depending on him anymore. Now, the rest of the series... but that's going off topic... Mutfassa dieing in Lion King wasn't too bad, and they're wouldn't have been much of a movie without it... ditto for Bambi. Newer movies, Courageous, that one was handled well, still made me cry, but again it was plot-nessacary and handled well. As for books... um, well, I tend to avoid books where characters die because I hate it so... hmm... Oh, yeah, the Star Trek S.C.E books (best Star Trek books EVER, if you haven't read them. Go get one. They're short, I'll wait... ) Um, don't get attached to Duffy though... Again, he died a hero's death. This bother's me, as he was one of my favorites, and they killed him off right before a big event in his and another characters life. Also, they don't gloss over it. The next three or four books all focus on diffrent characters dealing with his death and the other aftermath that led up to it. Robinton dieing in All the Wey'res of Pern was handled well. Very respectful, and the character basicly died of old-age. It was sad, but the character wasn't abused and was treated well, and well, everyone has to die sometime... His wife got a lovely tragic death too, but the book that told of his younger years was written as about the 10th in the series or something, so you knew she was going to bite it before the end of the book anyway. It was still sad though Oh, I have GOT to mention Charlie from the Jeffery Carver's Chaos Chronicles series... that death doesn't bother me at all. Go read the series to find out why... (I'm not telling, it's not what most of you are thinking...) No, really, go read that series, excellent sci-fi.
|
|
|
Post by Divides the Waters on Feb 9, 2012 18:19:37 GMT -5
It's something I'm wrestling with myself. I tend to read a little bit of everything, and George R. R. Martin showed me not to get too attached to anyone. On the other hand, part of fantasy is, in my feeling, the theme of ultimate triumph of good over evil (which hearkens to yet another thread), and I have experienced personal loss in my life, so meaningless death is harder to deal with. On the other hand, one can become inured if you don't care, but if you don't care, what's the point? I don't expect to have the same reaction to Mistborn that I did to, say, Bridge to Terebithia, but I am curious now, because while I saw Sanderson as a good worldbuilder and more-than-competent writer when it came to consistent magics, I did not know that he had done anything noteworthy when it came to powerful spiritual arcs or character journeys. I'll have to read them (but not get too attached).
My readers, on the other hand, make me almost afraid to write a death. Certain characters are favorites of different people, and I'm afraid to lose readership. And something I had never considered has entered into the equation: my wife hates it when one partner of a loving couple dies, leaving the other to grieve. While I had no specific plans to do this, it does make me a bit nervous, because I never had any compunction about what kinds of death had to be avoided before, and everyone has different "grief thresholds."
|
|
|
Post by Kessie on Feb 9, 2012 19:24:34 GMT -5
Divides: Grief thresholds, yes, that's it. I personally get upset when a favorite character dies (like Sirius in Harry Potter--although I was more annoyed that he didn't have a BETTER death, because his was so ... inconclusive).
Has a death ever struck me as positive? Well, the end of Watership Down, when a main character dies of old age. But he dies in such a way that you almost don't realize it. The Mythical Hero rabbit just comes and asks the rabbit to join him in the next world, and he does.
I think it depends on how the death is written. If it's a book with a hope of the Beyond, then if the character who dies goes there, it hurts but, okay, there's hope. We move on with the other characters. (Like in the third Mitford book, when a certain minor-esque character dies and her death impacts the other characters for the rest of the series).
It's when there's no hope of a beyond, and the death is meaningless in the big scheme of things, that it's so awful. I'm trying to think of some, but I avoid those types whenever I can, so I can't call to mind any examples.
It's fun, though, when people don't depart all the way and hang out as ghosts. Like the latest Dresden book, Ghost Story, is all about Dresden being, well, dead and a ghost, running around on the backside of reality, trying to save his friends a la Ghost.
|
|
|
Post by Kessie on Feb 9, 2012 19:30:36 GMT -5
As for killing off my characters, I've experimented with that in fanfiction. I had a couple of robot bad guys who I killed off over and over, and I kept bringing them back ("they got rebuilt") because they were so awesomely evil. (Except each time they came back, they were a little more psychopathic.)
I've written a bit of what's called "darkfic" where you kill off characters and basically Apocalypse the world. But I didn't like it much.
For me, what's much more tension-inducing is to ALMOST kill the character. Keep the reader in suspense as to whether or not the character will make it. Send the character to their execution. AND THEN .... the dramatic turnaround and the character survives because of some loophole or accident or untapped secret power they pull out at the last second.
If you kill 'em off, boom, that's it. They're gone. And depending on how much you relied on that character for plot purposes, now you have this annoying hole to patch somehow with another character who may or may not be as good. (Think the ever-changing girlfriends in Smallville or the new companions in Doctor Who. When they first come in, without exception, they suck. Sometimes they actually improve, and sometimes they don't.)
|
|
Torrias
New Member
slightly imperfect
Posts: 44
|
Post by Torrias on Feb 10, 2012 0:52:55 GMT -5
Divides: Grief thresholds, yes, that's it. .... I think it depends on how the death is written. If it's a book with a hope of the Beyond, then if the character who dies goes there, it hurts but, okay, there's hope. .... It's when there's no hope of a beyond, and the death is meaningless in the big scheme of things, that it's so awful. That's probably part of what made it so positive for me in Mistborn. The people had no idea of what to believe about any god(s) or the hereafter, they were just doing the best they knew how, but at the end, you find out that those who died are quite well and happy and enjoying their rest-after-accomplishment and hanging out together (including a man being reunited with his beloved wife who died long before him). It didn't really feel like a real loss, to me, just a relocation of a few characters. I've experienced a sudden and tragic personal loss that hit so much deeper than I can say, but the worst part was the suddenness and apparent random pointlessness of it, not to mention absolute severance of any direct knowledge of him (only scriptural assurances of his destiny). In Mistborn, it's the opposite. Also, if one writes a standalone novel or a short series with a predetermined length (like a trilogy), or if one's next book is at least a generation after the timeline of the first, it's much easier to pass a death off on readers, I think. There can be a fitting sense of conclusion to it. No dealing with other characters moping about it for book after book (I say that as one who did a lot of grieving, myself, and watched others very dear to me get hit even harder by it, so I'm not in any way belittling real-life grief; it just gets exasperating and depressing reading on an ongoing basis about someone's total inward crippling as a result of the natural occurrence of loss, and I really do think it makes it harder for a reader to deal with the death of a character). Using my favorite example again, in Mistborn people were most certainly affected by their loss in the first book, but they accepted it as part of life and particularly of a life voluntarily---even eagerly---given over to taking down a giant and changing the world in ways no one even dared believe were possible. They moved on and continued securing the dream. At the end of the series, they lost a couple more main characters, but it was with that same feeling and purpose. Think William Wallace's "FREEEEEDOOOOMMMM!!!" only better. And then came the new beginning---the miracle of brand new life springing from the birth pangs---and knowledge of where the casualties had gone and how they were doing. And the overwhelming sense that for the first time, things were right, lovely, no longer weighed down by grief and despair. To me, anyway. As for me, I've only recently begun writing again after several years' hiatus; I still need to re-tackle the issue of a few characters dying over the course of the multi-volume timeline (one of whom is a villain but something of a sympathetic character, in a weird way, because of what he went through). Years ago, I couldn't even kill off the enjoyable friend of a secondary character in a way that was a pivotal moment for the survivor---I had to make it turn out much later that he hadn't really died after all. Even my villain, I about had to twist my own arm to kill him, and not just because of diabolical fun to found in him. I cried as I made myself write his end. I'm quite interested to get back to such matters in my writing, with this new perspective from Mistborn and whatever I read here. I know I won't cease getting teary over killing off a character (I had a hard time reading aloud to my husband certain sequences in the Mistborn trilogy because I kept choking up), but it's so neat to finally feel a bigger picture in it all for deep comfort. I can only pray for the grace to have the same feeling/perspective in real life when other losses come my way over time. Because they will come.
|
|
|
Post by Kessie on Feb 11, 2012 22:30:59 GMT -5
Ooh! I get it. Well hey, if a book showed me the people being reunited with their families on the other side of death, and going off to live in Paradise, I'd be a lot better with it. Kind of like what they tried to do with the end of Lost and apparently failed miserably.
You cried when you killed your villain? Aww. Why do we wind up loving our villains so much? My favorite villain is in the process of becoming a good guy while his best friend, who wasn't a villain, is being eaten up with bitterness that is turning him into a worse person than the villain started out as.
Some people eat grief up, though. My sister is addicted to all those Russian tragedies right now (like Doctor Zhivago), because she can't get enough grief. Go figure.
|
|
|
Post by Divides the Waters on Feb 11, 2012 22:37:18 GMT -5
If reunions make it all okay, I guess I'm probably safe. No one cried when I killed off my bad guy, though (least of all me); it was more like a sigh of relief.
|
|
Torrias
New Member
slightly imperfect
Posts: 44
|
Post by Torrias on Feb 12, 2012 0:58:58 GMT -5
Kessie: That villain/good-guy swap concept is awesome on so many levels. As for grief addiction, maybe it's a bit like masochism or algolagnia, triggering all those fun brain chemicals that give a kind of high...? Similar to what soap operas (and dramatic-sappy romances) do in emotional string-pulling. I've recognized it in Dracula and Frankenstein (books), but at least in the former, there's that overwhelming triumph of good over evil that Divides mentioned (I have yet to get back to finishing Frankenstein after it degenerated into total emo for seemingly 30 pages, so I'm not sure if that's the same), and Van Helsing is just an utter delight, a bright-shining joy in the darkness, all the way. I've also seen the soap opera effect in modern attempts at Victorian Gothic without half the class of the originals. And yeah, my villain's death got to me, lol; I'm trying to work him into an actual tragic figure, complete with anagnoresis before his death ( aww yeah, tug those strings and trigger those brain chemicals!), but I still have to see how that will go. @divides: Yes, Mistborn definitely has those "powerful spiritual arcs or character journeys." I don't remember if I mentioned it in a post elsewhere, but I've never before seen the death of shallow faith, followed by gritty soul-searching and all the hard questions we're afraid to ask, followed by struggling through into a strong faith, handled with such piercing clarity, sympathy, and honesty in a fantasy setting. I will warn, though, that the Scarecrow's comment "I think it's going to get darker before it gets lighter" is extremely applicable to the trilogy... Lol, I originally intended my villain's death to be one of those sigh-of-relief situations. I just couldn't stick with it. @yoda: Robinton's wife's death was SO deeply emotional, I quit reading the book and never returned to it. But that was many years ago. I honestly don't know how I'd respond if I re-read it today, in a different stage of life. It's interesting, the changes we go through in responding to things in books....LOTR horridly depressed me and gave me really messed-up dreams when I read it over 20 years ago, but it certainly doesn't affect me that way now. For all I know, if I'd read Mistborn some years ago, it wouldn't have struck me nearly as positively as it did this past year.
|
|
|
Post by Kessie on Feb 12, 2012 12:52:41 GMT -5
Re: grief addiction. I went through that in my late teens, myself. My life was so secure and happy at the time that I had no grief, so I went looking for "sad things" because I had an appetite for it. Now that I'm older and I do have grief in my life, I don't want to read about it. It's some kind of emotional balance thing.
I wish we could all just swap our stories around and read them and give each other feedback. That's one thing I miss about the old days of fanfic, when nobody cared about copyright because we couldn't publish any of it anyway.
|
|
|
Post by yoda47 on Feb 12, 2012 13:25:29 GMT -5
I think I could deal with Robinton's wife's death only because I already knew she wasn't going to be around, since the book was a prequel of sorts. It was really sad.
On grief addiction: I don't get that at all. Life sucks enough as it is, I want my make-belive to be happy.
|
|
|
Post by j2starshine on Feb 12, 2012 22:21:11 GMT -5
I totally agree with you, Yoda, about: life sucks enough as it is, I want my make-believe to be happy. But you know what's funny, is that the third Pirate of the Caribbean made me rethink that and made me wonder how I could be a good writer if I'm always running from grief, etc. You know, like how Aristotle believed that we needed to have a catharsis, which is why we have the Greek tragedies. I don't know. This is perhaps a little deeper than what movies and books I read, so take that with a grain of salt. but I started this reply to add to your topic on character deaths. I was told not to kill off my pet wolf because that could offend readers, break their hearts, make them not want to read the book. The purpose was to heighten the tension between one of the guys going bad and his betrothed. It is good to think about how our readers will respond to our character's death by putting ourselves in their shoes. I think for me, it's because I'm wanting the stories to go a certain way and it doesn't that makes it more difficult for me to except a death. I really can't remember ever "throwing a book across" the room because of a character's death...though, I have cried. Kessie, I have swapped my manuscript with a fellow Anomalian here and i think others have too. You could ask someone, post something and maybe someone will take you up on the offer. I am all about getting feedback and giving feedback, how else will we grow as writers. If you're interested, let me know and we can discuss it further.
|
|
|
Post by Kessie on Feb 12, 2012 22:33:02 GMT -5
@ J2: If you kill the dog, you win a Newbery award! Or the kid's mom. Or if you want to guarantee the medal, the dog AND the mom.
I'd love to trade manuscripts once I get this one finished. We all talk about our work so much, and wish someone would read it, I think it'd be fun to trade around and just read each other's work. I'm writing urban fantasy, though, so you kind of have to like the genre.
|
|
|
Post by yoda47 on Feb 13, 2012 9:47:01 GMT -5
Take her up on that offer. Her SpaceTime series is really good... and I've just read the one that's on her website...
|
|
|
Post by j2starshine on Feb 13, 2012 14:47:02 GMT -5
Yes, yes, yes! What exactly is urban fantasy? I like to read a variety of stuff. By the way, I've never met anyone else who has heard of The Echoing Green. yea!!! Well, I've killed the dog, the father and the brother...and kidnapped the mother for the MC and killed the sister and son of the other MC.... wow, I've got a lot of death in my books. hmmm...
|
|