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Do they exist?

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Nawlins34:
Hi everyone,

I'm an aspiring writer with some good story arcs at the moment that I'm working. However I'm running into a brick wall with a particular issue:

I've learned through research and just being a reader that it helps to read other authors to give you an idea of what you want. I'm really looking for a novel where the main character dies at the end and everyone is okay with that.  Could someone suggest some good books or series even where the main character dies and readers are fine with that?

That's my biggest fear. I'm sure if the storyline supports the direction the character has to go, readers will understand, but I don't want to have a reader throwing the book at the end of reading it. ( Unless it sparks their curiousity to pick up the next book in the series.)

I've yet to find an example and If it exists, I would like to see how that author executed that task; killing the main character at the end of a novel for the sake of the story without killing the series itself. Please let me know if anyone has come across such a book or series. The genre doesn't matter to me, so long as it exists.

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
How are you defining "main character" in this context ?  The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant seem to me to be the most notable within-genre example; that said, while they sell well and have lots of fans, lots of people also vocally hate those books. (And whether that counts as "dies in the end" is also sort of ambiguous; the character in question is stabbed in the heart at the opening of the first book of three, carried into a fantasy world at the moment of stabbing and magically healed, but has strong reason to believe, from his experiences in the First Chronicles, that whatever physical state he was in on transfer to the fantasy world will be exactly recreated when he comes back, so there's narrative tension around the expectation that he will end up dead in circumstances replicating the opening and how he deals with that; it's not a surprise that he dies in the end.)

Guy Gavriel Kay does some very effective and moving principal characters dying at or near the end of several of his books, though none of them really have a single main character per se, and I've not known anyone think those were inappropriate or not good on those grounds.

You might also want to look up some of Iain Banks, particularly Use of Weapons; Banks is on record as saying "A happy ending is one where not everybody dies", and that approach does not seem to have harmed his career.

It's not something I have a problem with, myself, but it has become clear to me that i do being attached to a story in characters in it in ways different from most people I know.

Nawlins34:
Ahh, good point. Allow me to clarify;

in this context, I'm speaking about the character from which the POV of this world, story will be told by.  So, it's not exactly the norm, is that your take on it?

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Nawlins34 on December 26, 1973, 08:58:59 PM ---in this context, I'm speaking about the character from which the POV of this world, story will be told by.

--- End quote ---

Right.  The Thomas Covenant books I allude to above have two viewpoint characters, so not precisely the same thing.


--- Quote --- So, it's not exactly the norm, is that your take on it?

--- End quote ---

It's not common, but I think it can be done.  Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World trilogy does it, with stepping outside that POV at the very end; Clive Barker does it with two of three main characters in Imajica, I'll probably come back to this post later when i'm at home and can look at my shelves for examples.

Like anything else, there will be people who hate it no matter how you do it, and there's only so much that's worth doing for that audience's sake; and anyone else, you can make it work for if you are good enough.

Nawlins34:

--- Quote from: neurovore on November 10, 2009, 05:54:04 PM ---Like anything else, there will be people who hate it no matter how you do it, and there's only so much that's worth doing for that audience's sake; and anyone else, you can make it work for if you are good enough.

--- End quote ---

Fair enough!  I'll take a look at what you mentioned above in the meantime. It's a start at least and it wouldn't hurt to look at how it was done.

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