K for Killing – #atozchallenge
Ah, killing.
Have you all met my friend Lissa at Quid for Quill yet? If not, go poke around her blog. She’s awesome.
Well, Lissa and I know each other in real life (work together, actually, though we were very good friends first :D).
Michelle, Rebekah, Lissa
(I don’t seem to have a good picture of just me and Lissa, and I couldn’t cut Michelle – aka The Barenaked Critic – out! Goodness, we’re HOT!)
We kind of scare people sometimes.
See, we appear to be these very sweet, conservative girls on the outside. Then, suddenly, the fact that we’re writers will come up in a conversation, and inevitably, someone asks us what we write.
Things fall silent as Lissa and I exchange glances and survey our ‘victims’ to see if they can really handle knowing what we write.
Because we write some really dark stuff. As in people usually die. In really horrible ways. Or they go crazy. And then we have this flip side, where we write the complete opposite of all that – I write Christian devotionals, and Lissa writes children’s poetry.
But we’re not killing people just to kill people in our stories. Their death is always a vital part of the story, either because it’s the end of the story (or even the beginning), or because of the impact their death will have on the other characters.
The death doesn’t have to be gory, it doesn’t even have to be shown. It simply needs to have a purpose within the plot. In Undoing, Sachi’s death is the catalyst of the plot. In Weeping Willow, the death of the main character’s betrothed is what pushes her into the anger she needs to find the strength to destroy the bad guy.
Only one of those deaths is actually shown in the respective story, and that is Sachi’s. It is so vitally important that the readers understand the dynamics happening between the two characters (Sachi and Taphim), but Sachi is in the story for so little time that her death has to be shown. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever written.
I won’t lie, though – sometimes killing characters is fun, especially when it’s the bad guy.
What have your experiences been with killing your characters? What was your favorite? What was the one you hated to do?
Well, in one of my earlier manuscripts, a fantasy quest, I had five kids have to kill the bad guy by each piercing her body with special unicorn horns. It was the only way to get rid of her. Writing that wasn’t so bad. But I did have to write a scene in my current WiP that was hard. It was very hard b/c it was my MC doing a mercy killing. Pained her quite a bit.
I don’t write that genre so I’ve never killed anyone off.
Karen
I’m a paranormal/horror writer. The people who die in my stories are not bad guys. Sorry.
Jolie du Pre
Precious Monsters
You can totally cut me out of the picture! I solemnly swear that I WILL NOT add you to any story and brutally kill off the character…*ahem*…no seriously… 😉
And really, you and Lissa are very sweet, conservative girls. Which makes it all the better that you guys write what you write. 😀
Being as that I write primarily fantasy as well, I’ve killed off my fair share of characters. The hardest one I’ve had to write was a main character, and it wasn’t just his death (which was hard enough), but the scenes that came afterward.
But there is something that’s just so satisfying about killing a villain, especially when they’ve done so much to deserve it. There’s one particular villain who’s becoming more of a threat in this draft, and I’m really looking forward to torching him at the end of the book.
I’ve gotten misty-eyed when some of my characters died, either of old age or through other ways when they were still in the prime of life. After writing them for so many years (I generally write family/town sagas and series spanning many years instead of standalones), it’s sad to say goodbye.
But there is something great about killing a bad person. Particularly when s/he’s made to suffer or the murder plot is carried out just so, instead of just taking out a gun or knife and offing him or her.
I write dark fantasy. People who know me and then read my stuff cannot put the two together. What can I say…I am a bit twisted inside. But like you say, it all has a point. Whatever dark think happens, it is the think that give someone the strength to do what needs doing by the end of the story.
Great post, lady. Checking in from A to Z.
SabrinaAFish
I killed a character in my first novel. I didn’t want to do it and tried to find a way around it, but no matter what, this character had to die. My best friend sat with my while I wrote because she knew I’d cry. And I did. 😦
I write crime and thrillers, so yes, my books usually have a high character death toll.May sound twisted, but I enjoy killing characters off, but because I’m writing a series, I have to think very carefully before killing a key character. As everyone knows, once they’re dead, there’s no coming back.
J.C. Martin
A to Z Blogger
There’s something so satisfying in the faces of the people who ask what we write when we tell them the dark and twistyness in our minds… or maybe that’s just because I’m dark and twisty so I enjoy it. hehe