A Time to Kill (Writing Essay)
Jun. 14th, 2010 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodel OK. So, over on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
myaru 's journal, she and sacae had a little exchange about killing characters off-- the pros and cons thereof, squeamishness when it comes to one's favorite characters, and so on. I had some things I wanted to say there, but hijacking that particular thread wasn't the right place for it.
I guess I'll start with the quote fromsacae that got my wheels turning:
But then I realized... Damn, I put the characters through literal hell in the outline, and THEN KILL ONE OF THEM?! That seemed a bit too much. Too much drama, too much angst, and for a reader, very disappointing. I don't always think "Happily Ever After" is the answer to an ending, obviously, but I do think that most readers prefer that they read a long story and come away with... something. Something good.
Now, I'll admit right off that I'm not "most readers" and my tastes are, shall we say, weird, but I think my arguments here are fairly well-grounded in classical lit, or at least they bear a passing acquaintance with classical lit. So, consider this an apology of sorts for putting characters through hell and then killing them.
All arguments below assume that the author is interested in a "serious" piece to start with-- in other words, a piece where the idea of killing off characters in a non-humorous manner is even an issue. If your main interest is romance, comedy, or fluff, then feel free to ignore me.
Point the first: Tragedy should be, oddly enough, a positive experience. There are various "schools of tragedy" in Western lit, but as a general rule, the conclusion of a tragedy is actually a reassertion of the Way Things Ought To Be-- of order. Outright evil is not rewarded, and the social system, with nobility at its apex, continues. Macbeth goes from hero to horror and dies a bloody death, but the rightful prince of Scotland claims his father's throne. Brutus and Cassius come to grief, but Octavian is there in the background, waiting to usher in the Roman Empire. Electra and Orestes get their revenge on their terrible mother, but in turn they will have to atone for the act of matricide. "Tragedy" as a genre sets limits on how far the carnage can go. There should be something affirming, something uplifting, embedded in it all. Ever wonder why the Prince of Verona gets the last word in during Romeo and Juliet? Nobody cares about him, after all, but he's the embodiment of social order. Life proceeds, and hopefully everyone has learned a lesson.
Point the second: Sad character death is not necessarily tragic. Let's imagine Kent and Lyn on the plains of Sacae, celebrating their honeymoon. Lyn gets bit by a snake and dies in Kent's arms. That's sad, but it's not tragic. For an actual tragedy, imagine Kent pleading to St. Elimine to give Lyn a second chance, and Elimine grants it because of Kent's phenomenal loyalty (and besides, Athos already filled her in on the whole Nergal business when he showed up in heaven), but only if Kent agrees to not even look at Lyn for three whole days. And this upsets Lyn, who is already pretty discombobulated with the whole alive/dead/alive business, and she pleads with Kent to look at her just once, and she soon becomes afraid that Kent's not looking at her because she's somehow ghastly after being dead, and eventually Kent can't stand to listen to the anguish in her voice and turns to Lyn to reassure her and... poof! Lyn goes bye-bye.
So, in the first scenario, Lyn and Kent have their happiness interrupted by a random crappy stroke of fate. There is no real lesson there other than Crappy Life is Crappy. Aristotle would term it "misadventure," and we would just call it suckage. The second scenario is tragic not just because more stuff happens, but because the characters act instead of just being acted upon. Specifically, Kent makes a mistake. He disobeys Elimine's ground rules, and while the audience could understand why, it doesn't make it excusable. Rules are rules.
Point the third: Active characters are more interesting than passive ones. This is just a general rule, really. Whether it's a character having the world hand them good stuff, or a character just being dumped on by the world, a passive character gets annoying pretty quickly. "Life hands you good stuff while you're sleeping" might be the original moral of Sleeping Beauty, but when you realize that the "good stuff" involves being raped and impregnated, maybe you're better off staying awake and looking after your own fortune.
Now, active characters have the chance to make mistakes. This is really, really important to the whole concept of tragedy. We have it fed to us in high school that tragic heroes possess a critical character flaw, but the real key is not so much that there's something inherently wrong with the character as that they make a mistake. Sometimes a trivial one. But the mistake has consequences-- for them, and often for many around them.
Point the fourth: Allow your characters to make mistakes. Don't coddle them. This is easier said than done, I know, and I grappled with it for years. My heroes and heroines always had to be right, so if bad things befell them (oh, the angst!) it was never ever their fault. It was... the stars, or Bad People, or too many magpies on the telephone lines that day. That makes for crappy reading and I think we've all reached that point where we can see an author coddling their favorite character and instinctively look away in annoyance. At least, we see it in what other people write. Our own favorites... well, they're special! We love them. :)
Point the fifth: If your characters make mistakes, allow those mistakes to have consequences. And this circles back to the reaction I had tosacae 's quote above. I would much rather read a piece, even a long piece, where characters screw up and suffer the consequences than one in which they screw up and get bailed out for the sake of a happy ending. Imagine that Ephraim and L'Arachel go through their canonical years-long courtship and finally triumph over the objections of the Rausten theocrats, but state business keeps them apart entirely too often. Ephraim, hot to spend more time with his lovely lady, decides over the objections of cooler heads (Seth and Kyle say hi) to ride his horse over dangerous terrain on a stormy, moonless night to see L'Arachel a day sooner than he would have otherwise. Now, is the "proper" conclusion to a series of reckless and self-indulgent mistakes going to be a) fun time with L'Arachel or b) death? I'm infinitely more inclined to go with option b, at least if the point of the story is that Ephraim and L'Arachel are making self-indulgent mistakes. If the point of the story is that Ephraim and L'Arachel are sexy together, then damn the theocrats and go with (a). I'm more interested in a story about people with responsibilities jacking things up than I am a story about Character A and Character B making a cute couple. Your mileage may vary.
In conclusion, it's okay to put characters through hell and then kill them. At least, it's more OK to do so when the hell, and the tragedy, unfold as an inevitable (even logical) result of the characters' own actions. A character might be struggling against a predetermined fate, or against some exterior force (expectations of society, whatever), but if a character is simply the passive recipient of their doom, then yes, it's depressing. If Fiora marries Eliwood and then mopes herself to death because she finds out an Ilian mercenary is Not Good Enough for Pherae, it's all right for a pity party but not necessarily tragic. If Fiora undercuts herself by misreading expectations and picking the wrong battles in the Lycian courts, then things get interesting. It's not "true" tragedy if she's just a victim. It might not even be interesting. But if Fiora pushes herself along the road to an early grave-- ensuring that her only son grows up without a mother and arguably giving Eliwood a shove towards a premature demise himself-- then we see the seeds of tragedy. And yet, because we know the overall context, even so it's not that tragic. Maybe whatever Roy hears, or even witnesses, of his mother's struggles make him that much stronger, that much more able to handle the crap that comes his way all too soon. But we know he endures, and Lycia emerges even stronger, and the social order of kings and queens and marquesses triumphs in spite of all the corpses scattered around, and the audience leaves the drama knowing that the world is not just about Crappy Life is Crappy, but about something more, something that every would-be hero and heroine out there has a stake in. They leave knowing that the choices they make actually matter, for good or ill.
And that, perhaps, is the most comforting fiction that any tale-teller can spin.
myaru 's journal, she and sacae had a little exchange about killing characters off-- the pros and cons thereof, squeamishness when it comes to one's favorite characters, and so on. I had some things I wanted to say there, but hijacking that particular thread wasn't the right place for it.I guess I'll start with the quote from
sacae that got my wheels turning:But then I realized... Damn, I put the characters through literal hell in the outline, and THEN KILL ONE OF THEM?! That seemed a bit too much. Too much drama, too much angst, and for a reader, very disappointing. I don't always think "Happily Ever After" is the answer to an ending, obviously, but I do think that most readers prefer that they read a long story and come away with... something. Something good.
Now, I'll admit right off that I'm not "most readers" and my tastes are, shall we say, weird, but I think my arguments here are fairly well-grounded in classical lit, or at least they bear a passing acquaintance with classical lit. So, consider this an apology of sorts for putting characters through hell and then killing them.
All arguments below assume that the author is interested in a "serious" piece to start with-- in other words, a piece where the idea of killing off characters in a non-humorous manner is even an issue. If your main interest is romance, comedy, or fluff, then feel free to ignore me.
Point the first: Tragedy should be, oddly enough, a positive experience. There are various "schools of tragedy" in Western lit, but as a general rule, the conclusion of a tragedy is actually a reassertion of the Way Things Ought To Be-- of order. Outright evil is not rewarded, and the social system, with nobility at its apex, continues. Macbeth goes from hero to horror and dies a bloody death, but the rightful prince of Scotland claims his father's throne. Brutus and Cassius come to grief, but Octavian is there in the background, waiting to usher in the Roman Empire. Electra and Orestes get their revenge on their terrible mother, but in turn they will have to atone for the act of matricide. "Tragedy" as a genre sets limits on how far the carnage can go. There should be something affirming, something uplifting, embedded in it all. Ever wonder why the Prince of Verona gets the last word in during Romeo and Juliet? Nobody cares about him, after all, but he's the embodiment of social order. Life proceeds, and hopefully everyone has learned a lesson.
Point the second: Sad character death is not necessarily tragic. Let's imagine Kent and Lyn on the plains of Sacae, celebrating their honeymoon. Lyn gets bit by a snake and dies in Kent's arms. That's sad, but it's not tragic. For an actual tragedy, imagine Kent pleading to St. Elimine to give Lyn a second chance, and Elimine grants it because of Kent's phenomenal loyalty (and besides, Athos already filled her in on the whole Nergal business when he showed up in heaven), but only if Kent agrees to not even look at Lyn for three whole days. And this upsets Lyn, who is already pretty discombobulated with the whole alive/dead/alive business, and she pleads with Kent to look at her just once, and she soon becomes afraid that Kent's not looking at her because she's somehow ghastly after being dead, and eventually Kent can't stand to listen to the anguish in her voice and turns to Lyn to reassure her and... poof! Lyn goes bye-bye.
So, in the first scenario, Lyn and Kent have their happiness interrupted by a random crappy stroke of fate. There is no real lesson there other than Crappy Life is Crappy. Aristotle would term it "misadventure," and we would just call it suckage. The second scenario is tragic not just because more stuff happens, but because the characters act instead of just being acted upon. Specifically, Kent makes a mistake. He disobeys Elimine's ground rules, and while the audience could understand why, it doesn't make it excusable. Rules are rules.
Point the third: Active characters are more interesting than passive ones. This is just a general rule, really. Whether it's a character having the world hand them good stuff, or a character just being dumped on by the world, a passive character gets annoying pretty quickly. "Life hands you good stuff while you're sleeping" might be the original moral of Sleeping Beauty, but when you realize that the "good stuff" involves being raped and impregnated, maybe you're better off staying awake and looking after your own fortune.
Now, active characters have the chance to make mistakes. This is really, really important to the whole concept of tragedy. We have it fed to us in high school that tragic heroes possess a critical character flaw, but the real key is not so much that there's something inherently wrong with the character as that they make a mistake. Sometimes a trivial one. But the mistake has consequences-- for them, and often for many around them.
Point the fourth: Allow your characters to make mistakes. Don't coddle them. This is easier said than done, I know, and I grappled with it for years. My heroes and heroines always had to be right, so if bad things befell them (oh, the angst!) it was never ever their fault. It was... the stars, or Bad People, or too many magpies on the telephone lines that day. That makes for crappy reading and I think we've all reached that point where we can see an author coddling their favorite character and instinctively look away in annoyance. At least, we see it in what other people write. Our own favorites... well, they're special! We love them. :)
Point the fifth: If your characters make mistakes, allow those mistakes to have consequences. And this circles back to the reaction I had to
sacae 's quote above. I would much rather read a piece, even a long piece, where characters screw up and suffer the consequences than one in which they screw up and get bailed out for the sake of a happy ending. Imagine that Ephraim and L'Arachel go through their canonical years-long courtship and finally triumph over the objections of the Rausten theocrats, but state business keeps them apart entirely too often. Ephraim, hot to spend more time with his lovely lady, decides over the objections of cooler heads (Seth and Kyle say hi) to ride his horse over dangerous terrain on a stormy, moonless night to see L'Arachel a day sooner than he would have otherwise. Now, is the "proper" conclusion to a series of reckless and self-indulgent mistakes going to be a) fun time with L'Arachel or b) death? I'm infinitely more inclined to go with option b, at least if the point of the story is that Ephraim and L'Arachel are making self-indulgent mistakes. If the point of the story is that Ephraim and L'Arachel are sexy together, then damn the theocrats and go with (a). I'm more interested in a story about people with responsibilities jacking things up than I am a story about Character A and Character B making a cute couple. Your mileage may vary. In conclusion, it's okay to put characters through hell and then kill them. At least, it's more OK to do so when the hell, and the tragedy, unfold as an inevitable (even logical) result of the characters' own actions. A character might be struggling against a predetermined fate, or against some exterior force (expectations of society, whatever), but if a character is simply the passive recipient of their doom, then yes, it's depressing. If Fiora marries Eliwood and then mopes herself to death because she finds out an Ilian mercenary is Not Good Enough for Pherae, it's all right for a pity party but not necessarily tragic. If Fiora undercuts herself by misreading expectations and picking the wrong battles in the Lycian courts, then things get interesting. It's not "true" tragedy if she's just a victim. It might not even be interesting. But if Fiora pushes herself along the road to an early grave-- ensuring that her only son grows up without a mother and arguably giving Eliwood a shove towards a premature demise himself-- then we see the seeds of tragedy. And yet, because we know the overall context, even so it's not that tragic. Maybe whatever Roy hears, or even witnesses, of his mother's struggles make him that much stronger, that much more able to handle the crap that comes his way all too soon. But we know he endures, and Lycia emerges even stronger, and the social order of kings and queens and marquesses triumphs in spite of all the corpses scattered around, and the audience leaves the drama knowing that the world is not just about Crappy Life is Crappy, but about something more, something that every would-be hero and heroine out there has a stake in. They leave knowing that the choices they make actually matter, for good or ill.
And that, perhaps, is the most comforting fiction that any tale-teller can spin.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 04:02 am (UTC)(Of course, similarly, just because a character DOESN'T die doesn't mean the story will qualify as having a "happy ending"... XD)
I STILL have problems with point 4, even when I'm perfectly conscious of it. Especially when writing fanfic, because a lot of the time the characters I like are ones I don't think were done justice in the source material, so I'm at once attempting to subvert the canon depiction while trying to remember not to just totally rewrite everything to go smoothly for them. I think I kind of mentioned this in that last huge discussion thread, but it's one of the main reasons I often don't really like writing my favorite characters, which was totally counterintuitive to me until I figured out *why* I was having so much trouble.
That said, the main issue I have with writing character deaths actually comes from a different direction altogether -- my problem is when trying to decide whether killing off a character is actually the easier way out. For me, it's really easy to fall into the trap of killing off a character for cleaner resolution of various issues and/or for cheap angst. (I may struggle with letting beloved characters make serious mistakes, but killing them off is considerably easier, lol.) I at least tend to prefer reading about people being forced to live on and deal with their mistakes (or not), but that does make things considerably messier and difficult to pull off. (Though in the case of FE6/7 sometimes the limitations of canon comes into play here...)
I guess this kind of has to do with the mislabeling of tragedy and your point about choices *mattering* -- but basically I prefer to read/write about character deaths that have actual consequences or repercussions, and not so much deaths that are just there for the sad factor.
If Fiora undercuts herself by misreading expectations and picking the wrong battles in the Lycian courts, then things get interesting.
I suddenly really want to read this. I've wanted to see Eliwood/Fiora along these lines for the longest time. Now I'm kind of getting plot bunnies for it myself. XD
no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 04:15 am (UTC)This was really interesting, and I think I really needed to read it. I don't struggle too much to kill off characters, but I can admit that I have trouble between writing "tragedy" and Crappy Life is Crappy™. I do think that my original ending for All About Us was a little more Crappy Life is Crappy™, but perhaps it was more a tragedy than anything. I'm inclined to believe it was mostly just Bad Luck/Bad Timing, though of course it would all stem from choices the characters make and so on and so forth. However, that particular idea (to make it a tragedy) was mostly just me wanting to write a tragedy. And not that I actually intended to simply follow the characters and their choices to a logical (though not necessarily pleasant) conclusion.
I suppose that if you think about it, in the FE-verses, tragedy would almost be inevitable. I'm still struggling with how I really feel about it in-game versus in fiction. For example, you can let a character "die", making them unplayable. Should they then die in fanfiction? I noticed that it's really rare for someone to kill off characters-- or even wound them badly enough that they go away-- in novelizations and/or longer chaptered stories, and this holds true for (I think) each section of the FE fandom. (Exceptions are a lot of FE6/7 'fic, where characters would perhaps likely die between the two games, anyway, which makes sense.)
I'm more interested in a story about people with responsibilities jacking things up than I am a story about Character A and Character B making a cute couple.
I think this might be because 1.) it's just something realistic, and I know you like things to be at least mostly realistic when it's possible, and 2.) you just don't see them everyday. If, instead of "Characters A and B make a cute couple" stories, 'fics about how A and B jacked up stuff and screwed themselves over abounded... they'd probably get old pretty fast, in the We've-Seen-This-Before sense. And not just once, but a million times.
Obviously most romance fiction involves the idea being how great A and B are together, even if they have to get through C, D, E, and F to get there. The reason that it gets old is simply because there's so darned much of it. It's pouring out of the holes and cracks in the fandoms-- ALL fandoms!-- and it's easy to find and so forth.
I'd rather read a 'fic about "real" characters-- who feel and love and hope and MAKE MISTAKES than about characters who only love and seem to do no wrong-- or at least, the wrong they do manage to do never goes ...well, wrong. There should always be consequences for things a person does wrong. You and I and probably everyone alive knows-- or should know-- this. It can be hard sometimes, I suppose, because characters that you love you don't want to mess up their lives. Because it's so easy to do and of course, you don't want to make their lives hell...because honestly? Who does? I mean, would you honestly wish that on someone? HOWEVER, even in real life we can't protect friends/family/etc from making stupid decisions that may or may not ruin their lives. Maybe they'll walk out on a job or overspend or something. You just never know.
Like I've said before, things like miscommunication? Are win. Because they're real. And so are mistakes. Because people make them every day. They say something stupid or do something stupid and maybe it's not something that will kill them-- maybe it's something that ruins their chances for a promotion or for winning someone's heart or for just a while they're forced to rethink their life/their morals/their...whatever. (Example? Knocking someone up. Maybe nobody has to die for it, but it is a mistake that changes everything.)
Anyway, I'm adding this to my memories so I can look back on it. It's really interesting and well thought out. Thank you for posting it! ♥
no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 04:20 am (UTC)Yeah, this is kind of true for me, too. Sometimes it is easier to kill them than it is to let them live, because death = resolution in a lot of cases, whereas living means a lot of hard work and toil/labor that is not just a pain in the ass to write, it's a pain in the ass for the characters, too. However, I do enjoy reading about people living through terrible circumstances
like that's not obvious. I've just found that I'm not quite as good at writing it as I wish I was.Also, Fiora: I could absolutely see her like that. If Eliwood /did/ marry Fiora, things would be interesting. Isn't there something in Lyn and Eliwood's ending that mentions them not quite being accepting of her? I can't remember. But if I'm remembering right, then Fiora would have a much worse time of it. Lyn's at least of part royal blood-- Fiora is not.
Also I just really like Fiora sometimes. <3
no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 04:45 am (UTC)And yeah, the Eliwood/Lyn ending mentions the controversy of Lyn being (part-)Sacaen, while with Eli/Fiora it's because she's a mercenary iirc. It would definitely be tougher for Fiora, too, since there's this impression you get from the games that the Ilian pegasus knights are just not very well respected. While Eli/Lyn already have a history of alliance (i.e. during the inheritance plot), so the pairing would at least make sense to people on a political level. (And puts slightly different nuances on the choice to dump Caelin on Hector.)
Though -- slightly off-topic -- that's also one of the things that annoys me about Hector's cookie cutter endings. Florina would not handle things like Farina would not handle things like Lyn, so the cut & paste job with their endings is kind of frustrating! At least Eliwood's endings get SOME character-specific details. And I personally would find it really interesting to see any of the three sisters thrown into Lycian politics. XD
/edited for typo, gosh my brain is not functioning tonight
no subject
Date: 2010-06-15 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 10:29 pm (UTC)Good points all. Sometimes the plot digs a hole so deep that the only way to advance it is by just knocking someone off. I admit that cheapjack deathfic angst is and always has been my personal guilty pleasure, too.
Though in the case of FE6/7 sometimes the limitations of canon comes into play here.
True. You can always go AU, though.
but basically I prefer to read/write about character deaths that have actual consequences or repercussions, and not so much deaths that are just there for the sad factor.
Yeah. Though with war fiction, carnage in the background should probably be par for the course.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 10:40 pm (UTC)I suppose that if you think about it, in the FE-verses, tragedy would almost be inevitable.
Looked at from a perspective beyond than Yay Cute Teenagers With Swords, most of the games actually ARE tragedies. The events are set in motion by tragic/failed heroes, and your party is the clean-up crew, like Macbeth retold from the perspective of that annoying little creep Prince Malcolm.
[Watched a production of Macbeth that really brought out the ick factor behind Malcolm's squeaky-cleanness and have been squicked by him ever since.]
If, instead of "Characters A and B make a cute couple" stories, 'fics about how A and B jacked up stuff and screwed themselves over abounded... they'd probably get old pretty fast, in the We've-Seen-This-Before sense.
Heh. You are so right.
Example? Knocking someone up. Maybe nobody has to die for it, but it is a mistake that changes everything.)
Very true. But I do complain at length that FE writers just don't like to deal with the likely aftereffects of all the sneaking around camp after dark. Hell, I think in most fandoms the male characters tend to get pregnant more than the female ones.