Killing off good Characters

Posted by Bruce Robinson on Thursday, May 28, 2009 Under: Writing
     The art of writing can be described by numerous adjectives, usually dependent upon where the author is in a particular piece of work as well as their overall outlook on whether they are still writing because they truly want to, or the craft has jaded them to the point where they feel that they have to. All I can describe is how it feels to me, I am sure that everyone that writes will not agree, but... this is my blog, not theirs!
    An idea pops into my head, usually not fully formed, sometimes only a vague "what if..." scenario that may never come to fruition at all... especially if I forget to jot it down somewhere, as I can only describe myself as ADDHD, a new term that I heard my step-son using the other day, meaning "Attention Deficit Disorder... in High Definition", an apt term for what I suffer from. This idea may lay dormant for years, or only a short time, before demanding attention from me, at which point I become fixated on it and have to see it finished, or at least in rough draft.
    Some of my short stories were written in just a few minutes, others took a tad longer. My novels, of course, took about a year each except for The Fires of Paradox due to it being formed during some particularly 'stressful' times in my life that included moving to another state as well as an overly dramatic divorce, so about two and a half years there.
    But the entire time, the stories still brewed within my subconscious, until at last they were finally ready to be born... to me, the act of creating the first draft is akin to giving birth to something that you have carried within you for a length of time, but different...
     For you have a gift when you write, the gift of Creation, and Destruction, and Change. You create these people, these places... and you control their lives and whether or not they live happily ever after or die a miserable, screaming death being eaten by rats while their face is eaten off by sulfuric acid and fire ants... well, you get the idea. It isn't cold lifeless facts and numbers that we are dealing with here.
    I have to admit that I write myself into each and every character for the most part, other than the village simpleton that stands at the fountain drooling all day. (Or perhaps that is a part of me as well... hmmm...) I give them what I want them to have in order to make the story full and rich and satisfying. Sometimes, good people have to die when I really don't want them to... I want my good characters to have great lives surrounded by those they love and have perfectly behaved kids and live forever... but those stories aren't believable, because we know that no one ever has that life.
    So my characters must suffer all sorts of things, from being banged around by drunkards to seeing the one that they love murdered right in front of them... and why, you might ask?
     In the clinical sense, they may be killed to further the plot, or to put another character on a certain path, or inspire a specific frame of mind. Sometimes they will die just to impart a sense of irony, or hopelessness, or to connect the reader with the character.
  
    In The Dragonbone Sword, the main character finds true love, only to find himself helpless to prevent her being killed. As I typed those words, I have to admit that tears were running down my face...
(On a side note, my wife at that time suggested that I needed professional mental help because of this, for some reason!) But I felt saddened at the fact that he wasn't going to get the spend years with the woman that he loved with all his heart, angry beyond measure at the villan who ripped her away from him so soon after they had found each other, dispair because things hadn't been going all that well for him even before this.
     Now, remember here that it was MY story... I had the power to change anything at all that I didn't want to have in there. So why did I put him through that, you might ask?
    Because I needed a catylyst, something that would drive him to a point in his life where he was forced to make a choice that meant either he would fulfill the prophecy that he was born to... or fail miserably, and Mankind would fall to the Darkness that wanted to claim it for it's own. A choice of that magnitude needed a suitable crisis to fuel it, or so I thought, and still do.

     Sometimes, characters get killed because the story wants a symbolic sacrifice. In one of my stories, two characters ( I will try not to give it away, whether it be man or beast, the sacrifice remains the same.)  sacrifice themselves, willingly plunging into a suicidal battle just to give the others the chance to gather themselves up for the fight. Seconds count in battle, the element of surprise fading quickly. So in the interest of humanity, we see many die this way.

     And of course, sometimes they die because they were evil...

In : Writing 


Tags: writing characters die 

About Me

B.L. Robinson
Smalltown Mo

Killing off good Characters

Posted by Bruce Robinson on Thursday, May 28, 2009 Under: Writing
     The art of writing can be described by numerous adjectives, usually dependent upon where the author is in a particular piece of work as well as their overall outlook on whether they are still writing because they truly want to, or the craft has jaded them to the point where they feel that they have to. All I can describe is how it feels to me, I am sure that everyone that writes will not agree, but... this is my blog, not theirs!
    An idea pops into my head, usually not fully formed, sometimes only a vague "what if..." scenario that may never come to fruition at all... especially if I forget to jot it down somewhere, as I can only describe myself as ADDHD, a new term that I heard my step-son using the other day, meaning "Attention Deficit Disorder... in High Definition", an apt term for what I suffer from. This idea may lay dormant for years, or only a short time, before demanding attention from me, at which point I become fixated on it and have to see it finished, or at least in rough draft.
    Some of my short stories were written in just a few minutes, others took a tad longer. My novels, of course, took about a year each except for The Fires of Paradox due to it being formed during some particularly 'stressful' times in my life that included moving to another state as well as an overly dramatic divorce, so about two and a half years there.
    But the entire time, the stories still brewed within my subconscious, until at last they were finally ready to be born... to me, the act of creating the first draft is akin to giving birth to something that you have carried within you for a length of time, but different...
     For you have a gift when you write, the gift of Creation, and Destruction, and Change. You create these people, these places... and you control their lives and whether or not they live happily ever after or die a miserable, screaming death being eaten by rats while their face is eaten off by sulfuric acid and fire ants... well, you get the idea. It isn't cold lifeless facts and numbers that we are dealing with here.
    I have to admit that I write myself into each and every character for the most part, other than the village simpleton that stands at the fountain drooling all day. (Or perhaps that is a part of me as well... hmmm...) I give them what I want them to have in order to make the story full and rich and satisfying. Sometimes, good people have to die when I really don't want them to... I want my good characters to have great lives surrounded by those they love and have perfectly behaved kids and live forever... but those stories aren't believable, because we know that no one ever has that life.
    So my characters must suffer all sorts of things, from being banged around by drunkards to seeing the one that they love murdered right in front of them... and why, you might ask?
     In the clinical sense, they may be killed to further the plot, or to put another character on a certain path, or inspire a specific frame of mind. Sometimes they will die just to impart a sense of irony, or hopelessness, or to connect the reader with the character.
  
    In The Dragonbone Sword, the main character finds true love, only to find himself helpless to prevent her being killed. As I typed those words, I have to admit that tears were running down my face...
(On a side note, my wife at that time suggested that I needed professional mental help because of this, for some reason!) But I felt saddened at the fact that he wasn't going to get the spend years with the woman that he loved with all his heart, angry beyond measure at the villan who ripped her away from him so soon after they had found each other, dispair because things hadn't been going all that well for him even before this.
     Now, remember here that it was MY story... I had the power to change anything at all that I didn't want to have in there. So why did I put him through that, you might ask?
    Because I needed a catylyst, something that would drive him to a point in his life where he was forced to make a choice that meant either he would fulfill the prophecy that he was born to... or fail miserably, and Mankind would fall to the Darkness that wanted to claim it for it's own. A choice of that magnitude needed a suitable crisis to fuel it, or so I thought, and still do.

     Sometimes, characters get killed because the story wants a symbolic sacrifice. In one of my stories, two characters ( I will try not to give it away, whether it be man or beast, the sacrifice remains the same.)  sacrifice themselves, willingly plunging into a suicidal battle just to give the others the chance to gather themselves up for the fight. Seconds count in battle, the element of surprise fading quickly. So in the interest of humanity, we see many die this way.

     And of course, sometimes they die because they were evil...

In : Writing 


Tags: writing characters die 


 
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