Can you kill a character?

[Selena_Kitt]

I think that was one of the great things about Joss Whedon's television writing.

I completely agree...

however, I don't think anyone can ever end up happy in Joss Whedonland...

 

[TheEarl]

I completely agree...

however, I don't think anyone can ever end up happy in Joss Whedonland...

Only Kennedy, and she only ended up happy to make the rest of us unhappy!

The Earl

 

[Guest]

I have killed off two characters in my stories thus far... one of them a true story and one of them was a story about something that personally happened to me while in RP... both times I cried for very different reasons but I cried nonetheless... I didn't want to write either piece but something inside of me simply sat down and said... "Lizzy, you have to" and I did....

 

[Aurora Black]

I've only done this once so far, and I have no regrets. I knew when I began writing the story in question that it wouldn't end in "Happily Ever After," and I didn't want it to. I killed him off simply because he had to die, and knowing that it was for the good of the story helped me through the process.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Only Kennedy, and she only ended up happy to make the rest of us unhappy!

*snork*

But killing HER would have made ME happy!

 

[Recidiva]

*snork*

But killing HER would have made ME happy!

Yeah! Chop HER in half with a sword, dammit!

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Could you kill a character? If so, why did you do so? How did it feel?

I've killed off characters in both short stories and my last novel. I'm not sure how many readers I've bored to death.

It doesn't bother me in short stories. Less emotional investment, I suppose.
Alive and Going Home is a war story. Three soldiers die in combat and the protag is badly wounded.

I'll Always Love You is a short, romantic ghost story in which two people, including the protag's love interest, dies.

Killing off the "good girl" in the novel I just finished was no fun. I'd "known" her for over a year and, on a pragmatic bases, she would have made a good protag for other stories. But I'm working on a sequel that won't work if she lived.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Selena_Kitt]

why couldn't some ubervamp get her!? But ANYA gets a knife in the belly!?

Ok, and see, here's the thing... I think SOME authors really don't kill characters on purpose... or they do it because a story kind of demands it...

Joss Whedon kills characters for spite... just to make viewers pissed off... I swear it...

 

[TheEarl]

why couldn't some ubervamp get her!? But ANYA gets a knife in the belly!?

Ok, and see, here's the thing... I think SOME authors really don't kill characters on purpose... or they do it because a story kind of demands it...

Joss Whedon kills characters for spite... just to make viewers pissed off... I swear it...

Stephen King kills characters just to hurt people. Bag of Bones nearly killed me. Anyone who's read it will know what I'm talking about.

Tangent: I actually wrote a Mary-Sue for that season which ended up involving a bit more characterisation for Kennedy. I got to like her a bit more after her character got a bit more explored and actual likeable characteristics got shown.

The Earl

 

[3113]

Tangent: I actually wrote a Mary-Sue for that season

Ah, the infamous Mary-Sue!

Talking about tangents. The only thing worse than killing off a character for the sake of killing them (and making the audience weep), is creating a character to torture for the sake of torturing/martyring (unless, of course, it's BDSM or the Bible, then all bets are off).

I'm not saying you can't do it--just don't make it so bloody obvious!

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Stephen King kills characters just to hurt people. Bag of Bones nearly killed me. Anyone who's read it will know what I'm talking about.

I've read it... in his defense, I think most of the deaths that happen in his fiction aren't spiteful... but just happen... or are necessary... like when the kid dies at the end of Cujo (hope I didn't just spoil that for someone! ) just feels like it couldn't end any other way...

but isn't there a quote by SK somewhere about killing characters? I can't remember it... something like, I'll drop a house on a grandma if I have to? :x

 

[TheEarl]

Ah, the infamous Mary-Sue!

In my defence, it was a good kind of Mary-Sue. I wanted to see if I could insert myself into the story without overly damaging the chronology and actually making the extra character as close to me as possible, rather than whom I think I should be.

[/tangent]

The Earl

 

[impressive]

I've read it... in his defense, I think most of the deaths that happen in his fiction aren't spiteful... but just happen... or are necessary... like when the kid dies at the end of Cujo (hope I didn't just spoil that for someone! ) just feels like it couldn't end any other way.

I was SO pissed off that the movie didn't end that way, too.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I've killed at least 2 characters. One was the leader of a neo-Nazi cult in Saskatchewan. He badly needed to die. He was an SOB who had brainwashed the hero's sister into being his "wife".

The other was an elderly oil baron whose time had simply come. That was hard, but I handled it fairly well, I think.

 

[carsonshepherd]

I wrote a story in which the main character's best friend died in the first few chapters. The next part was all the long backstory about their life, their friendship and how he finally couldn't be saved. By the time I wrote all that, I loved him so much I didn't want him to die anymore and it was terribly painful to write the end of the story, which was the main character letting go of his dead friend and pulling his own life back together; I grieved so much I actually felt like someone really had died.

So yeah, when they have to die they have to die. Several people have died in my current novel already... they just had to. It is their purpose in the story, so you don't really have the option to let them live...

 

[BlackShanglan]

It took me years to forgive the Homer poets for killing Achilles. I'm still not sure I'm over him.

Shanglan

 

[Colleen Thomas]

It took me years to forgive the Homer poets for killing Achilles. I'm still not sure I'm over him.

Shanglan

I would have thought your tears would be reserved for Hector?

Of all the characters in the Illiad, he is the only one for whom I had great sympathy.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I would have thought your tears would be reserved for Hector?

Of all the characters in the Illiad, he is the only one for whom I had great sympathy.

He is a very noble character, and I did mourn his death. But Achilles I loved because of his fallibility. Sitting by the ocean crying against his mother because the other heroes have taken his spoils and left him all the fighting to do - there's something in that scene that always reminds me how young he is, and what a burden it is to be "THE HERO" - the one everyone turns to, the infallible force in combat, but also the one they don't want to see as human. It's so similar to Cuchulain's despair at the ford (he's seventeen and holding one ford, alone, against an entire army, and his countrymen don't seem to be coming to help him) that it reminds me that many legends of the Celts claim that they came from Greece.

Shanglan

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

It took me years to forgive the Homer poets for killing Achilles. I'm still not sure I'm over him.

Shanglan

That's the difference between Shanglan and moi. He grieves over the death of Achilles, I'm still traumatized by Old Yeller dying.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[carsonshepherd]

That's the difference between Shanglan and moi. He grieves over the death of Achilles, I'm still traumatized by Old Yeller dying.

Rumple Foreskin

Oh God I've never been the same since I saw that movie at age 6.

 

[3113]

That's the difference between Shanglan and moi. He grieves over the death of Achilles, I'm still traumatized by Old Yeller dying.

Hey, I'm with you. Those guys with the swords knew what they were getting into. I mean what do you expect going into a war zone for 10 years straight? Someone's gotta die.

But the dog! The dog shouldn't have'ta die!

 

[Aurora Black]

...it reminds me that many legends of the Celts claim that they came from Greece.

Whoo-hoo!

 

[Colleen Thomas]

He is a very noble character, and I did mourn his death. But Achilles I loved because of his fallibility. Sitting by the ocean crying against his mother because the other heroes have taken his spoils and left him all the fighting to do - there's something in that scene that always reminds me how young he is, and what a burden it is to be "THE HERO" - the one everyone turns to, the infallible force in combat, but also the one they don't want to see as human. It's so similar to Cuchulain's despair at the ford (he's seventeen and holding one ford, alone, against an entire army, and his countrymen don't seem to be coming to help him) that it reminds me that many legends of the Celts claim that they came from Greece.

Shanglan

I figured with a title like Hector, tamer of horses, he would be a shang favorite

Hector seemed to me to be the only one there who was noble. The rest were rat bastards in their own ways. I like odessyus, because he seem sto have alittle of cyote in him. Neiher Ajax, nor Achillies, nor Agemenmon, nor paris nor Helen seemed to be the kind of people I would care much about. I did feel kind of sorry for Priam, but it's hard to feel too sorry for him. He was a rich man, kin gof apowerful city and had lived a long life. That's pretty much scoring the trifecta in Greek mythos

 

[Aurora Black]

Definitely not Paris & Helen. No way. Horny bastards, they started the whole war.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Definitely not Paris & Helen. No way. Horny bastards, they started the whole war.

It's m,ore than just being horny. It's huburis on his part and, stupidity on her part. Neither is a particularly endaring trait to me.