McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
What makes people put down a book (goodreads)
Aminar:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on July 24, 2013, 03:06:29 AM ---Hmm. That's the kind of bravery from an author that would definitely make me want to read on; I generally appreciate authors who take chances even if they do not work over authors who play safe, at technical and structural levels.
I think part of it is that I have a really strong dislike for stories where protagonists get protected by different rules from everyone else just because they are protagonists. Titanic for example, where the two leads appear to be playing by Indiana Jones rules when it comes to wasding through icy water but everyone in steerage is dying from exposure much more realistically. I can't connect to protagonists who are safe because they are protagonists, and nor can I connect to protagonists who are supposedly in danger if no serious consequences of danger ever happens to them.
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I do think character death has to have meaning. Yes, as protagonists they shouldn't be invincible. They should be in danger, but if you're killing them, USE IT. Play for the impact of their death. Doing so offscreen is bad bad bad form. When it happened in Harry Potter it forever tainted the ending as badly written, and it wasn't even main characters. Compare that to the end of the book where everything gets different. I swore. I yelled so loud my neighbors were worried and my roomates freaked out. That is how to use character death.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aminar on July 27, 2013, 02:59:24 AM ---I do think character death has to have meaning. Yes, as protagonists they shouldn't be invincible. They should be in danger, but if you're killing them, USE IT. Play for the impact of their death. Doing so offscreen is bad bad bad form.
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Incidentally, I've just finished rereading a series that does exactly this with a main character well into the series and really makes it work. It is impressively understated, and quitely affecting, as a reader, to go straight from "the central characters have vibrant relationships with this person" to "the central characters are dealing with the rality of a world this person is no longer in" without going through the loss itself (which none of the viewpoint characters were or could have been on the same side of the planet as at the time).
Aminar:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on July 27, 2013, 03:41:47 AM ---Incidentally, I've just finished rereading a series that does exactly this with a main character well into the series and really makes it work. It is impressively understated, and quitely affecting, as a reader, to go straight from "the central characters have vibrant relationships with this person" to "the central characters are dealing with the rality of a world this person is no longer in" without going through the loss itself (which none of the viewpoint characters were or could have been on the same side of the planet as at the time).
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And that's fair. But at least they are using it then, and there's a viable reason to have the death off screen. Although I'd have been tempted to have a one off chapter from that character's perspective just to show. Or have the information given in some detail, making it sort of on screen. There are ways to do it. A traumatic phone call can be just as effective if handled right. Part of the Harry Potter problem was that the grief just never seemed to be there because SO MANY DEATHS.
Sully:
For those of you who read Elizabeth Moon, she wrote the lead up to a character death, the death itself, and the aftermath absolutely wonderful in her latest book, Limits of Power.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aminar on July 27, 2013, 03:33:47 PM ---And that's fair. But at least they are using it then, and there's a viable reason to have the death off screen. Although I'd have been tempted to have a one off chapter from that character's perspective just to show. Or have the information given in some detail, making it sort of on screen. There are ways to do it. A traumatic phone call can be just as effective if handled right.
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Not in a book set in 1815 it can't.
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