General Chat

I know it has to happen, as it happens even in real life!
However when you are enraptured in a book you are reading and you have become quite fond of a character, who clambers though all the odds, then when things are great for her she gets killed.
Interesting book about the first Waac regiment during the war. Four Waacs remain friends, based in various parts of the world since their training in 1942, then when the announcement is made the war is over in 1945, one having just married her officer, races back to be with him, takes a short cut and is blown up by a land mine.
Feel quite depressed. ):

http://gay_belle.livejournal.com

'Southern Scriber.'

Oh, sad! It's always fun to kill off characters who are giving you trouble as a writer, but as a reader you have a lot invested in a character. Especially if it's the main character their death has to be more than the easy way out. It has to fit with the story and the theme of the book.

If you feel cheated as the reader then the writer didn't do it right; or it's just not your type of book.

The story sounds really interesting gaye-belle but from what you've described I would feel cheated by her death.

No Excuses. Just Write.
WIP - Freeing the Flame: 31/66 scenes of scene review #3.
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I have with my novel killed off a secondary character and nice guy. I went back and made him a fuller character and tried to get any readers to like him. Also the battle scene in which he dies, I have tried to make interesting so it is a bit of a shock/suddenly happen.

"Words are magic I wish to harness and wield well."

I guess what it is implying is that once the gunfire stopped, many lost their cautiousness, and were so busy thinking of the next stage of their lives in peacetime.
One of the four nearly lost it with Dengue fever, and her bloke is a P.O.W. of the Japanese, but their love for each other is pulling them through, so that will be a teary renunion, (for me.) :)
One's timimg has to be right for killing characters off that's for sure.

http://gay_belle.livejournal.com

'Southern Scriber.'

I killed off my lead character in one novel. Okay, he wasn't really dead as he became a vampire, but I left the ending fairly ambiguous (although I dropped subtle hints throughout the novel as to what would happen).

Funnily enough (or not!) it's a story that's really divided readers and reviewers. The ones who liked the ending were mainly European/Chinese/Aussie or Americans who'd spent a significant portion of their life outside of the US. The ones who didn't like the ending or who were confused by it were all Americans. I found that quite interesting!

The book you mentioned does sound like it has a rather abrupt ending!! Was it based on a true story, maybe? I'd feel robbed by that one, too, unless earlier in the novel she'd been shown as someone who's quite impetuous or so madly in love that she'd risk everything to get to her fella.

http://glitterburn.livejournal.com/

I think that when done right killing off characters just gives the story depth, makes it more real and not 'just' a story.

I've yet to kill off characters in my longer stories but with how my SoCNoc plot is developing I may end up killing off my heroine in the end of the book. It's all very tragic.

Got my pen, now where's my plot?

The story was probably based on some facts. The girl in particular all the way through was a bit of a martyr through an early relationship (boy back home badly burned, then committed suicide) she blamed herself for not being with him and so on.)
She felt she didn't deserve to be happy. Almost finished the book and enjoyed it, and think it's going to be a mix of joy and sadness at the end.
I really get rapt up in characters in a good read.!
As my signiature says it all.

http://gay_belle.livejournal.com

'Southern Scriber.'

Working on my novel, I decided that someone needs to die at the end, but didn't want to kill of any of my main characters, so I am creating a new person to die. Sounds mean doesn't it. I am trying not to get too attached to him... That sounds even worse! Its like having a pet cat and living next to a main highway with a paddock full of rabbits on the other side.

Whats the name of the book and who is the author? It sounds good (although someone has ruined the ending... hahaha) :o)

"You will never get published if you don't write." Said Kerry Mead (my darling husband!)

WIP - Book III - The Rise of the Chrystias 58326 / 50000 words (First draft)
Total word count - 158543!

Ah! Its a case of 'You are the missing link.. pooff you're gone. :)
I bought the book in a second hand shop so not familiar with the author. It's called "Love and Glory" by Jeane Westin.
It has now become a suspense novel, cause you won't know which one cops it.
Don't think I will kill anyone off in my SoCNoC novel, but there will be plenty of conflict and accidents.

http://gay_belle.livejournal.com

'Southern Scriber.'

The problem with writing thrillers is that killing off characters becomes normal. I have one story where I couldnt decide whether to allow two very lovable characters to die or not. The story went two different ways depending on what happened so I had their death occuring in a 'vision' and someone working to stop it. That way I got to tell both the endings. I usually apologise to the characters before I write their demise. It seems only fair.

---------------------------------
NaNo winner 2006, 2007
SocNoc winner 2007,
WWWwace 2007, 2008!!!
Easter challenge winner 2007
Body count: 1 Institute heads, 4 professors, 2 postdocs, 2 PhD students, 2 sequencing technicians and numerous bad guys...
Oh I wish I could put that on my CV.

------------------------------------

I find this whole thing interesting because an author who spoke at a little gathering here in Invers the other week (Gaye was there, I think?) mentioned that you should be very, very cautious in knocking people off. And I figure...well, you ought to be as careful as you are in anything else, plot-wise! If it's relevant to the story and is part of the natural progression, fine, kill them. Nice or not, death gets (most) everyone in the end, so why avoid it?

...of course, I can also understand feeling gypped if your favourite character bites it in some horrible way. But as has been said, if you feel genuinely cheated, maybe the author only did it for shock tactics. I killed a very nice character halfway through a story and felt awful about it. But it was part of the natural progression of the story and the second half would not have functioned the same without it. I thought it was justified, though I didn't breathe easy until a couple friends read it, yelled at me for killing the guy, but then said: "I know it had to happen, but OW!" So...yeah. I think it depends on context and whatnot. But that landmine story would depress the hell out of me if I were reading it! Geez. Talk about irony...

My story is already laid out, as I'm setting Macbeth on a man-o'-war, so I have no choice. I'm just writing all the death scenes first to get them over with.
Everyone dies though. It's like when I was watching Titanic, I can't get to like any of the characters because I know they're probably doomed.

It is interesting hearing everyone's discussion on this. That's where the forums are great. Different perspectives. At the end of the novel the girls met up as arranged the first Christmas eve after the war ended. Of course there were only 3 out of the 4, and it was a sad reflection, with one missing. They were given her medal for bravery, she had saved a soldier from being badly burned, so she was a herione at the end, and the only one to achieve a medal. Life is like that, and death does not make allowances for this, it just takes.
However as someone suggested it gave the story depth, not just a love story in the middle of war.
Clarice, Ella West did say that about killing characters, particularly main characters.
I'm reading one now where a famous ballet dancer has been crippled through a jealous deed of his brother. It's heart breaking but often they come through and carry on their lives in a different direction. Humanity is like that.
Ha yes McBeth, I have him in my story, he is well associated with death, and so expected to be in the middle of it. :)

http://gay_belle.livejournal.com

'Southern Scriber.'

Weird. I was just about to post that I can't bear to kill off characters. Then I remembered that part of what I wrote today was the description of how a death in the family affected my MC. So I did kill someone off. But it was before the story's action begins, and not an actual death scene, just someone remembering the pain of it.

I still don't want to kill any of my active characters. I think that can come across sometimes as a deus ex machina.

My MC kills her own sister unknowingly in the very first scene of my book. The death is absolutely central to the plot. It's weird though, because at first it's not really very sad because you don't know either the MC or the woman she killed, but as the story progresses you find out more about each of them and how much they meant to eachother, and it gets sadder and sadder!

Trying to find the time (as usual)!

"I think that can come across sometimes as a deus ex machina."

How so?

If you saw the episode of the TV show Lost in which the woman doctor jokes about wishing her evil ex could get run over by a bus--and then he is, well, that's kind of what I meant.

The thing is, I hate to set up a plot situation that can only be resolved by killing a character, unless the character deserves it. Plenty of people think differently, of course. That's my own squeamishness.

But additionally, I have read stories in which somebody dies because it's just easier to kill the character than to think up a better way to remove the problem the character is. It happened in bad old Gothic novels, for instance, when the evil wife gets killed because 1) it's a period novel and there was no divorce then, or 2) it's New York State in the 1960s (prior to the divorce laws easing) and there was almost no divorce then, and 3) more of the same.

Death ends all the possibilities or the characters, too, so it's a disappointment that way as well.

I had no idea I would be killing as many characters as I did, but it definitely did the job of raising the stakes as everyone who died contributed to the story and weren't just there to die. Even an earlier death scene worked since it wasn't just someone who showed up, passed some info along and then died. I always hated seeing that in films...

Funny reading back on what you write, earlier I said I had written a character in, just so he would die, well, I like him so much, he isn't going to die in the conventional sense, a bit like Gandalf, will come back in another form - he's not a Warlock or Wizard, he was a Wiseman's Aide, but will come back as a Wiseman...

"You will never get published if you don't write." Said Kerry Mead (my darling husband!)

WIP - Book III - The Rise of the Chrystias 58326 / 50000 words (First draft)
Total word count - 158543!

Hey, I know the threads a litte old now but I found this one interesting because I just killed one of my characters in my latest novel.

Thinking about it now it possible was a bit of a deus ex machina, but only from my part. The way it was written and the setting all lead to this happening. A/ Setting is the Marlborough Sounds. B/ The character had already admitted he was having trouble at his Salmon farm with Bronze Whaler Sharks and I figure C/if he's stupid enough to end up in the water then why not let him die?

The story flows, it makes sense, it brings more conflict to my already conflicting romance between the two main characters, so it has actually enhanced my story and given it great impact. And wham, the reader wasn't expecting it.

Besides, rules are made to be broken aren't they? :)

Paulette

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia"