Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Writing #10: Death



I was recently have a conversation with my Dad about TV shows and books, so you can thank him for this slightly morbid post. As you can tell from the title, we'll be talking about death in fiction today. Like sex, death is a common theme in fiction, more than likely if you're reading, death is going to come into the picture at some point.

Before we get to far into this post, I have something to admit. I hate to kill characters, it's a bit like killing my family members. Thus I commit a cardinal writing sin, I sometimes create certain characters just to kill them off. I know, I know, I'm horrible, the mob will be coming for me. Several of my books are set in a time of war or fighting. People die when there's a war, it's inevitable. Who wants to read a book in which no one dies. Would Game of Thrones be as good without all the gruesome death (for the record I'm not a big GOT fan so don't come for me.)? Probably not. When I discussed tropes, one of my biggest pet peeves is the lack of realistic situations in fiction. Death motivates, it changes the game, makes things more serious, changes the way a characters feels, and ultimately manipulates the reader. I am here to manipulate the reader, my only goal is to make you feel things, if I'm not making you cry, laugh, and throw the book/phone across the room am I really doing my job?

There is a catch to all of this though. If a character dies, who the readers have no emotional feelings for who cares? Why even kill them? Death has to mean something to work, if it doesn't serve a purpose you probably shouldn't do it. Another problem in fiction is comic book mortality, you know what I'm talking about. A character dies, usually tragically, and then is immediately brought back to life by some amazing coincidence. A good example of this (and a major spoiler for those who haven't read it) is Sarah J Maas' A Court of Wings and Ruin. I'm not going to give anymore away for those of you who may be reading this series, but she commits the sin of comic book mortality pretty badly. Bringing a character back to life is fine, but their death should have affected them in some way. It could be a good change or a bad one, but there has to be some kind of change.

Killing a villain shouldn't be easy, if you've been building up an antagonist as being uber powerful, the heroes need to have trouble killing them. Genuine sacrifice should be made. Even if that sacrifice is a healthy emotional state. Killing someone, unless you're literally a psychopath, affects the way you think and feel. This should be made obvious in novels. Trauma affects your brain, war, death, and tragedy should cause nightmares, anxiety, depression, etc. This is severely lacking in fiction, probably because most people deal with some level of trauma, reading is so often used as an escape from real life, happily ever after is nice to experience on occasion.

I'm going to end this post here. What are your thoughts on death in fiction? Let me know in the comments or shoot me a message.

Taila Out.

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