"I want to kill! Kill, kill kill!"Mike R wrote:But, Mira, what about my characters that want to kill?
I kill off one of my viewpoint characters. But I do it at the very end. It is very important that that person dies.
"I want to kill! Kill, kill kill!"Mike R wrote:But, Mira, what about my characters that want to kill?
I have to partially agree with this. The only exceptions are; 1, if the VPC is not equal with your narrator, 2, you can pull out the death of the Viewpoint Character, 3, if you give a true reason, a cause and effect for this event. Without any of these, especially just to shock the reader... yep, it's a rookie mistake.Killing off a viewpoint character screams "Teen writer who thinks 'Ah! NO-ONE's ever thought of this before, and it will be terribly shocking to the audience!'"
Eh, I'm not sure I agree with you here. If it's unoriginal, then obviously it's worked for some people, but if a lot of people think it hasn't been done before, clearly it's not cliche. And it can have shock value, but not because it's the viewpoint character. It has as much shock value as the death of any character. If the author is using it solely for the shock factor of its "originality," then it won't work. But if it works with the plotline, and there are other possible narrators, (e.g., a book that "hops" POVs, or uses 3rd person omniscient), then it can be fine. What was probably the problem here was that the editors didn't like how it worked in the particular book. It's just like with everything else: if it works, it works.Killing off a viewpoint character screams "Teen writer who thinks 'Ah! NO-ONE's ever thought of this before, and it will be terribly shocking to the audience!'"
As you can see from this thread alone, it's not original, or even particularly uncommon.
For the love of your book, please change it. Make Howard the viewpoint character for all Trent's bits - they are working together, so surely it won't be all that hard (or at least, not impossible - you wrote it, you can rewrite it). All you'll be losing is the supposed shock value of having a viewpoint character die. Which doesn't have shock value at all, and will cause the majority of publisher/agent types to sigh in despair.
But as writers, don't we think everything we've left in a story after the first couple of revisions 'works'? Until a couple of betas and a couple of editors point out it doesn't work. In my experience, it takes a LOT of practice to learn to feel out what really does and doesn't work in our own writing, and even then, sometimes it's only a feeling that something isn't quite right without a strong sense of what the problem is.Falls Apart wrote:It's just like with everything else: if it works, it works.
Absolutely, but the issue here, I think, is the idea of those on high saying - "Don't," especially when it's in the context of a pitched idea. I just think such advice should be couched in terms like: "That strategy can be tricky..." or "I'd advise against...but what doesn't sell today, might..."Margo wrote:But as writers, don't we think everything we've left in a story after the first couple of revisions 'works'? Until a couple of betas and a couple of editors point out it doesn't work. In my experience, it takes a LOT of practice to learn to feel out what really does and doesn't work in our own writing, and even then, sometimes it's only a feeling that something isn't quite right without a strong sense of what the problem is.
Hence, my post asking if Craig had asked them why. 'Why' is a topic I don't think writers get into often enough. Instead, we get defensive because we have already done what 'they' say not to do. So we go looking for other writers to validate our choice (without even having read our work), when the better choice would be to find out why 'they' said no to the idea, get into the nuts and bolts of the issue, and figure out how it works from the inside. Then, the writer can say, "Oh, I get why they said don't do this. Because it messes this up and prevents this from happening. BUT, if I tweak this and shift that, it will work just fine."Watcher55 wrote:Absolutely, but the issue here, I think, is the idea of those on high saying - "Don't,"...
I get ya' - "seek first to understand..." and your right, the onus is on the writer to seek that kind of clarification, but lacking that, I like to think these discussions are about investigating the "why" AND being defensive. :)Margo wrote:Hence, my post asking if Craig had asked them why. 'Why' is a topic I don't think writers get into often enough. Instead, we get defensive because we have already done what 'they' say not to do. So we go looking for other writers to validate our choice (without even having read our work), when the better choice would be to find out why 'they' said no to the idea, get into the nuts and bolts of the issue, and figure out how it works from the inside. Then, the writer can say, "Oh, I get why they said don't do this. Because it messes this up and prevents this from happening. BUT, if I tweak this and shift that, it will work just fine."Watcher55 wrote:Absolutely, but the issue here, I think, is the idea of those on high saying - "Don't,"...
Very important question: Why?
Only understanding limitations frees one from them.
(Is koan, dude.)
That's what fictional insects are for. It's noble and heroic to stomp on a cockroach. Let them crunch roaches to their heart's content.Mike R wrote:But, Mira, what about my characters that want to kill?
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