Post by: Lysmata Debelius on December 17, 2018, 05:04:24 AM
As a writer, I understand that this creates a feeling of heightened tension in the story as you demonstrate that nobody is safe.
As a reader, my investment in the story was still tenuous so early on, and when the best thing so far, an intriguing character, is brutally removed, I feel manipulated and disappointed. If I do decide to continue reading, (unlikely) I won't let myself care much for any character, as I know they might die too.
If that same character had died quite a bit later in the story when I had developed other bonds, I think it would have worked much better.
How do you balance creating peril, while still keeping readers engaged and not feeling manipulated? This is one of the reasons I am not interested in reading Game of Thrones...
Post by: Joseph Malik on December 17, 2018, 05:57:30 AM
This level of character development is also the reason that his books are the size of car batteries and take five years apiece. Keep in mind, he wrote GOT (Book I) in 1996, (started it in 1991!) and it barely sold enough to keep his contract alive. Stories abound of him being alone at signing tables on tour.
How do you balance creating peril, while still keeping readers engaged and not feeling manipulated?
I have a major character die in Book II of my series. I did a few things, here, to keep the reader engaged.
1.) The character who dies is more powerful than the character who lives. His death shows the very real possibility that the main character is going to die. Readers have reached out to me to tell me that, after his death scene, they honestly had no idea how the MC would get out of this. It looks completely hopeless.
2.) The MC accepts what he has to do as a suicide mission, and I wrote an internal monologue scene and scenes of mourning to set up that he's okay with dying if in the process he manages to set things right. (It's a technothriller; a major allegorical subtext of the series is retaining human agency in the face of a looming technological disaster. He figures that the only way he can stop the ball rolling and unscrew all the damage he's caused is if he, himself, dies.)
3.) I wrote the remainder of the book to provide for the continuation of the story without the MC. The thing he inadvertently started is now much bigger than him, making his death reasonable and even expected. As a consequence, another character I wrote into this book in a supporting role has ended up being pivotal to the entire arc of the world--his presence is what will take this from a S&S adventure series into actual, world-rocking epic fantasy--and I toyed with the idea of killing off my MC as well and continuing the series with that new character as the focus. I wrote every fight scene, battle sequence, and love scene following the other MC's death in such a way that it would be fulfilling if the remaining MC died at the end of the book and the cast of supporting characters took up the mantle. #JusticeForJarrod.
4.) That new character is probably going to be the most important person in the world in millennia, but from the perspective of the MC (and therefore for the rest of the series) he's basically the Faramir of this whole thing. I'm already sketching out a series about him. His importance shifts the MC of the past two books into a red-shirt slot. The most important thing the MC will ever do in the history of the world is introduce this new guy into the equation. Everything else from here is secondary. The world doesn't actually need him anymore. And we all know what happens to unnecessary characters in fantasy. So, peril. For all you know, I'm going to drop a piano on him a few pages later.
5.) I used parallel construction in the final fight scene with the MC against the Big Bad, employing phrasing, tension, pacing, and at some points even rhythmic devices in a similar way to the fight scene between the Big Bad and the MC who dies. Readers subconsciously pick up on this. It's music; you can't not hear it. It feels like he's going to die, because a few hours ago you read a fight that read just like this, and the good guy died. It's subtle but it adds a sense of creeping dread. (It also took a hell of an editor to not let me overdo it.)
6.) The readers now know that this isn't Disneyland; anyone can die, no matter how tough and likable. Book III is turning out really fun to write.
Post by: Jeff Tanyard on December 17, 2018, 06:39:45 AM
In my opinion, you can kill off the "presumed hero" once, but not twice. You do it the first time so that the reader realizes anyone can die. It also provides motivation for the "real" hero to come into his/her own. Dramatic tension is accomplished; the hero's journey has now truly begun.
You do it a second time, though, and the reader starts to wonder if it's worth getting emotionally invested in the characters. The reader starts to think that heroes getting offed isn't about good plotting so much as it's about the author laughing at the reader and saying, "Fooled ya! Readers are suckers." That's where I'm at with that series.
I'm at the point where I'm actually cheering for the Ice Zombie Apocalypse. I just want to watch that whole world Anyway, that was my experience as a reader and the opinion I reached as a result. YMMV.
ETA 2: This comment made me think of something, too:
I just stopped reading a book at the end of the second chapter because the most interesting character so far (and there had been only two characters so far) died abruptly and unexpectedly.
I read another fantasy series where the coolest character--who was not the MC, by the way--was killed off. And it significantly reduced my enjoyment of that series. It was like the series went from 4k and color to standard definition and black and white. The flavor was gone. That's when I reached this conclusion as an author: Never kill off the coolest character, regardless of whether it's the MC or not. And I never will.
Of course, my idea of "cool" might differ from the readers' ideas. But I'm doing what I can to keep readers from feeling what I felt when that cool character was killed off in that series.
Post by: Joseph Malik on December 17, 2018, 08:08:33 AM
The reader starts to think that heroes getting offed isn't about good plotting so much as it's about the author laughing at the reader and saying, "Fooled ya! Readers are suckers."
The corollary to this is when an author introduces a character and you know within three pages that they're not long for this world. There are tells resident within the tropes, and while tropes aren't necessarily a bad thing, they become a bad thing when they become so obvious that they cross the line into cliches.
I didn't intend the character who died to be a Sacrificial Lion (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SacrificialLion), but it just kind of turned out that way. I was halfway through the fight scene, and I realized that it would get really interesting if he lost. I was as invested in his character as I am in the MC, and had him built out just as completely (again, I didn't expect him to die) which I think is why so many readers have reached out to me about how jarring it is.
Post by: Jeff Tanyard on December 17, 2018, 09:53:06 AM
The corollary to this is when an author introduces a character and you know within three pages that they're not long for this world. There are tells resident within the tropes, and while tropes aren't necessarily a bad thing, they become a bad thing when they become so obvious that they cross the line into cliches.
I agree. You don't want your redshirts to actually seem like redshirts. ;)
Post by: okey dokey on December 17, 2018, 09:59:55 AM
We all went to see Psycho because Janet Leigh was our favorite star.
But we couldn't stop watching after that happened.
Post by: Joseph Malik on December 17, 2018, 12:38:58 PM
I agree. You don't want your redshirts to actually seem like redshirts. ;)
Definitely. The only way to beat this is by reading voraciously. It comes down to understanding the expectations and pitfalls of your genre; if you're blending genres, then you need to understand the tropes and cliches of every genre your genre touches. Reading is writing and vice versa. I forget who said it, but there's a great quote: "Reading is breathing in. Writing is breathing out." That's this.
There's a time and a place to give readers exactly what they expect, and a time and a place to pull the rug out from under them. I don't know any way that you could really know which one you're doing other than absorbing dozens if not hundreds of books by authors who are attempting exactly what you're attempting.
Post by: solo on December 17, 2018, 01:26:53 PM
Post by: Vaw on December 17, 2018, 02:49:44 PM
The one that shook me up, and everyone else, was when Janet Leigh was killed within the first 10 minutes.That raises a very good point. I have no experience of doing this myself, but it seems to me that the key to killing characters early lies in the manner it's done, and the way the author uses it. Janet Leigh's death is played for shock, and that shock keeps us glued to the story. I think if the death is used as a cheap grab for interest and tension it shows, and that's what causes the annoyance. We know that books manipulate us, but it is irritating when we notice it.
We all went to see Psycho because Janet Leigh was our favorite star.
But we couldn't stop watching after that happened.
Post by: Shane Jeffery on December 17, 2018, 08:52:25 PM
I just stopped reading a book at the end of the second chapter because the most interesting character so far (and there had been only two characters so far) died abruptly and unexpectedly.
As a writer, I understand that this creates a feeling of heightened tension in the story as you demonstrate that nobody is safe.
As a reader, my investment in the story was still tenuous so early on, and when the best thing so far, an intriguing character, is brutally removed, I feel manipulated and disappointed. If I do decide to continue reading, (unlikely) I won't let myself care much for any character, as I know they might die too.
If that same character had died quite a bit later in the story when I had developed other bonds, I think it would have worked much better.
How do you balance creating peril, while still keeping readers engaged and not feeling manipulated? This is one of the reasons I am not interested in reading Game of Thrones...
If you stopped reading after the second chapter (regardless of what happened prior) you weren't on board with the book to begin with. Of course, 2 chapters is very little investment. Criticism, disappointment with books and media is something we all have, but what you have to say about a book you have only read 2 chapters on is incomparable to someone who read the whole book.
Writing fiction in itself, is manipulation. As a writer, we're trying to make our readers feel and think things. We're trying to lead them down a decided path.
You may not like that path, but don't complain about being "manipulated". You knew the story you were reading wasn't real. You just didn't like the direction it took.
Any criticism you have on Game of Thrones, as something you haven't read, is completely irrelevant - apart from your extreme fear of being taken by surprise in a story. Quite frankly, the way I would balance your deliberation, would be by completely ignoring your class of reader all together.
Post by: Lysmata Debelius on December 17, 2018, 09:25:29 PM
Not sure why that produced such a judgemental reaction in you, Shane. Based on that, yes, I agree that you would be better off ignoring "my class of reader" whatever that means :mhk9U91:
Post by: Shane Jeffery on December 17, 2018, 09:32:27 PM
As a matter of fact I thought the book was really good up till then :) The writer has a knack for evocative description. If you read my comment again , you'll notice that I just mention my own reaction to the book, and made no judgement on the book itself or any other books, for that matter :) I was interested that I reacted like that and it made me wonder about the process involved.
Not sure why that produced such a judgemental reaction in you, Shane. Based on that, yes, I agree that you would be better off ignoring "my class of reader" whatever that means :mhk9U91:
What I'm saying is, I find your reaction to judge the book enough that you would go from "really good" to "I'm not reading that" based on a character dying in chapter 2. You asked the author forum how do they prepare for that sort of reader. Right? And the answer for me, I don't prepare for it. Because as a reader / consumer of the arts I would never judge a book on 2 chapters. And as far as main, beloved characters dying unexpectedly, bring it on. I think when that component works in a story, then yes. Do it. When writers kill off beloved characters they should've already asked themselves whether it's necessary for the story. And if the answer is yes, they do so knowing that there are always going to be readers who won't understand, who won't agree with the decision, who will call them out for manipulation, who will write one star reviews and ultimately try to conjure up a mentality that no author should ever do such a thing, cause hurt feelings.
I don't even know what book you're talking about, but for you to surmount a protest to the convention of killing off characters after reading TWO chapters of a book, I can say that is the height of disgust for me as an author.