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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Kill Your Darlings

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:41 / 18.09.06

So I read over the last few days that Ian Rankin has retreated to his volcano lair, or wherever it is he goes, to plot 'the last Rebus book'. There's no word yet about whether Rebus gets a P45 or a bullet in the gut.

Arthur Conan Doyle despised the great detective he had created and sent him over the Falls, only to be forced to bring him back from the dead to appease his audience, later allowing him to retire to a life beekeeping on the south coast.

Colin Dexter seemed to think death was too good for Endeavor Morse, having him conk out as soon as he'd phoned the last clue through to Lewis. And were Frodo and Bilbo assending bodily in to heaven when the last boat sailed from the Grey Havens across the Sundering Sea, was Tolkien obeying mythologic compulsion?

Of course, we can probably name as many authors who don't feel a need to round off a series by killing the main characters, who knows whether J.K. Rowling will stick the knife into The Boy Who Lived And OFTEN SHOUTED A LOT. But I'm just wondering about the impulse among those that do. Is it just because they can?

Whisky Priestess

12:36 / 18.09.06

I think it's maybe a case of exercising total control: "I gave you life, and now I give you DEATH!" etc.

Or being sick to death of the character.

Or running out of ideas

Or making sure that anything written by anyone else after you die (and your character dies) is less likely to become even vaguely "canon" - and also I guess so that no-one else can kill him/her off except you.

Whisky Priestess

12:36 / 18.09.06

Or to see if they can make their readers cry.

Or as a plot point or twist.

pointless & uncalled for

12:46 / 18.09.06

and also I guess so that no-one else can kill him/her off except you.

Surely such niavety could only be displayed by those that do not read enough slash.

12:57 / 18.09.06

Well I was a-talkin' about this very thing the other day. It seems to add a level of tension and uncertainty to the reader's experience of the story and sometimes that's what the author is after.

I'm having a hell of a time designing a story where my favorite gets offed fairly early in the tale. Part of it is I tend to write hypersigils and get sort of skittish about offing anyone with resonace but this can be read on my part as pure superstition if you'd like.

The idea is that if no one is safe in a plot focused on danger and you prove this out by offing a well developed main one. In my case it means I also have to develop some secondary peoples enough that they can step up and carry the plot through as the new main. I'm hoping to use it as a challenge for myself and to bring home the gritty nasty edge in the tale.

...and resisting the urge to bring them 'back' in any way is very hard as well.

Kiltartan Cross

13:48 / 18.09.06

I think there's a certain convention to storytelling that if you're telling a story which is ostensibly about someone, it's bad form to unexpectedly kill them and switch the focus to someone else. That by the act of starting a story you kind of define what you're doing, you define that you're telling a story about Achilles or Holmes or whoever, you enter into a contract with the audience that that's what you're doing, and suddenly killing them before the audience expect is, in a way, breaking that contract. If Achilles dies at the end of the book, well and good; contract done. If Holmes dies at the end of the story but the audience expected sequels, the contract's off.

All Acting Regiment

12:05 / 19.09.06

On the other hand, the contract demands an exciting story, i.e. DANGER of DEATH, destruction, demise, whatever. I tend to find that a story where a character is ruined socially is more interesting than one where they are just killed, in the same way that characters who manipulate, and scheme against, other people are more interesting than ones who just kill. I think it takes a very good writer to do good death, just like it takes a very good writer to do good sex.

Have you ever noticed how the Bond stories always develop one woman character, kill her, then bring in another halfway through, thus giving them exactly half as much attention as the the idiot Bond himself?

Kiltartan Cross

15:42 / 19.09.06

Mmm, I agree; without danger, nothing. I think that somehow we reach a mutual understanding, which few authors break, that risky events when they are described are truly dangerous, but that we know the characters survive them or there wouldn't be a story to tell. It's as if we're seeing the rare occasion when someone has flipped five coins heads in a row. When it's pushed too far, perhaps as Bond does in the films (although not so much in the books, I think), and our hero has flipped fifty heads, it becomes implausible; were Bond to flip two heads and a tail and cop one, it would be disappointing, but so long as the author gets the balance right, we stay tense.

Bond is, if memory serves me right, a good example to use; I certainly got the impression after reading From Russia With Love that Fleming intended him to die, but reneged, Doyle-fashion; his recovery seemed contrived.

(edit)

I hadn't particularly noticed women characters being killed off, but there are certainly disquieting -ist and -ic moments in the books, so I'd hardly be surprised.

04:29 / 20.09.06

It's almost certainly thread-rotty to say so (TV in a books thread) but Joss Whedon does this a lot. I think it's because he likes to keep the fans on the edge of their seats - if you know the auteur is not averse to killing off a favourite character from previous works then no-one is safe, and the stakes are so much higher. It's annoying, but it works.

14:20 / 21.09.06

Well it's creating writer chosing to deal death to a fictional character so it's in the spirit of the thread. It also allows me to cite John Wagner who's never been afraid to chose the ultimate exit for characters he's created over the years.

21:48 / 21.09.06

It definitely ups the level of concern the readers feel for the characters, but I think there are some instances in which the author doesn't really have a choice. Killing off a character may be the only way to advance the story, or it might be a major plot point that will reveal the big secret/save the world/etc.
I'm writing something at the moment, and I know for a fact that my main character will kick the bucket by the end, and that's the only way this story works for me. Sometimes you just have to kill someone.

14:23 / 22.09.06

Peter O'Donnell commented that he had no other possible ending but to kill off Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin. The first adventure for the pair saw them willing to be dragged back into the adventurous life because they were bored out of their heads with the quiet life. They lived a life of danger and he couldn't see them retiring again, and couldn't see them getting away with their lives intact indefinatley. So he had no choise. One day they'd come a cropper in one of their adventures...

17:27 / 22.09.06

It's almost certainly thread-rotty to say so (TV in a books thread) but Joss Whedon does this a lot. I think it's because he likes to keep the fans on the edge of their seats - if you know the auteur is not averse to killing off a favourite character from previous works then no-one is safe, and the stakes are so much higher. It's annoying, but it works.

Sort of - I really, really wish they would have kept Buffy dead at the end of the - 6th season? 7th? In fact I sort of wish the show would have ended there, it just seemed like a perfect note to go out on. I never really bought the "terrible price" they paid for bringing her back. Eh.

A prof of mine once went on enthusiastically about the idea of killing off a main character in the end. He asked if it didn't feel more satisfying somehow. In a sense, I think he's right. The ultimate closure does have a certain "and now all the ends are tied up" appeal.

Kiltartan Cross

20:51 / 22.09.06

I guess there's an issue of the general boundaries of the story being told, too. In a long enough story, everybody dies.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:43 / 23.09.06

The creator of Inspector Frost is killing him off in the next story. His stated reason is that he's 'lost faith' in the police after his nephew had his collar felt for shoplifting. Now if we could only organise for the writers of Rosemary and Thyme to have a similar experience.

Elsewhere I'm listening to a long podcast interview with Dave Sim, in which he states having no regrets at all about killing Cerebus off and was happy to see the little grey bastard go. I wonder if it's part of the effort that goes into creating that the death is seen as the writers revenge.

11:39 / 23.09.06

Have you got a link to that podcast, flowers?

As an aside - is there a qualative difference between authoring spectacular ends or peaceful ends for a character? I guess a jump forward in the narrative to a peaceful death in old age opens the door to even more 'untold tales' - but what about a sudden illness? (I'm unfamiliar with Morse -is this how he died?) An unexpected road traffic accident? This last was how Victor Meldew was finally killed off in One foot in the Grave. Now, admittedly, Meldew was never likely to go down in a hail of bullets (Victor Meldew: the Peckinpah years), but isn't it possible to end characters without having to go to dramatic limits?