Today, I have guest author Autumn Birt and she discusses killing off characters. It's not as easy as you might think....
Someone Has to Die
There is a war. Brave heroes face countless obstacles, horrible foes, and great odds. Yet, somehow, everyone walks out with a handful of scratches. What the heck?!
I admit it, I hate it when my favorite character dies. I’ve put down novels when too many characters that I’ve come to care about are killed off. But there is something too sappy sweet, too fantastical, when no one dies. Bad things happen during battles. People get hurt. Someone will perish.
And I don’t just mean secondary or tertiary characters. I mean the ones that kept you reading the novel. Only minor injuries after insane quests used to be a pet peeve when I was a reader. When I began writing my epic fantasy series, the Rise of the Fifth Order, I realized I had to live up to the expectations I had when I merely read fantasy. I was going to have to kill someone off.
I think my first reaction was “!?!???!”
After I stopped hyperventilating, I started wondering who?
I’m writing book 3 of an epic fantasy series. I love all of my characters, even the ‘bad’ ones! The thought of losing one of them after having shared (created) their hopes and plans for the future… well, it gives me a new perspective on why some authors never have a character die. But that isn’t the type of story I wanted to write… or the one I was writing. As the chapter numbers kept rising on the final book in the series, I knew I had to make a choice.
How does an author choose which character dies?
The situation could dictate it. Maybe only one or two characters are in extreme danger? For me, that didn’t apply. There is a war, everyone is facing danger. Any one of them could make a simple mistake, fall into a trap, or be in the wrong place. I was actually going to have to make a choice. At some point… I kept stalling.
Then I realized, if I couldn’t choose and any of the characters were just as likely to die, there was another possible solution: a random Yes/No generator!
Talk about a way to come up with a plot twist?! It removes the emotion from the decision, allowing the author to step back and simply see what fate offers. I wrote down names, hit a random generator button I found online a few times and wrote down the results. End of story.
Not entirely. Oddly, the results matched what I’d already been thinking. I think it may have been rigged. And the problem was, it felt like a cop-out. I wasn’t pushing the story to the depth, emotionally, that it could go. But I needed to keep writing if I was ever going to finish, so I went with it.
In the end, the moment, and character, offered itself. And it wasn’t the one from the random yes/no generator. It was someone I hadn’t written down, probably because I would never have considered letting them die, much less planning their death since book 1! It fit the story in ways I had never seen and explained actions at the end that I knew would happen but hadn’t known why. I was good with it. It felt right. Even if it hurt. A lot.
And that really is the bottom line: Not letting anyone die can subvert the impact of a novel as much as choosing the wrong person.
I’ve already begun the outline of my next WIP, which will be a darker fantasy than the one I’m
What about you? As a reader, what do you think when a character dies, or doesn’t? As an author, do you have problems killing someone off or is planned from day one (and does that make friends hesitate accepting dinner invitations?!)?
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Do you want to help make Spirit of Life, book 3 in my epic fantasy series, happen? I’m running a Pubslush campaign and would love your support. What, you’ve never heard of Pubslush?! Follow the link and check it, and my campaign, out. I’d love to hear what you think!
Links (if the above are broken)
Pubslush: http://SpiritofLife.pubslush.com
Disabilities: https://fantasycollective.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/the-challenging-and-the-challenged/
Autumn's page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Autumn-M.-Birt/e/B007B2AFCS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Autumn's blog: http://www.nomapnomad.com/ww/contact-me/
Follow Autumn on Twitter @Weifarer
Absolutely right. We love our characters, but if we want to satisfy the reader, even when we're writing fantasy, we have to allow the reader to believe the story. And that means that characters die, and not just because they may deserve to. And death, especially in battle, is always messy and horrible. We may not wish to be gruesome, but we have to be true to the story and faithful to our audience.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be such a disparity between author's who hesitate to kill any character and those who kill nearly everyone. And few deal with the elements in between, like disabilities or mental anguish. But, I know you've tackled unique perspectives, Scott! I have hope others will join in.
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