Cassie, Escape to Love heroine, did exactly that. I was writing along and she decided Cain's life was in danger. She drew her pistol and shot the saddle bum dead. Shocked, she dropped the gun and immediately headed to the bushes to throw up.
And while she was throwing up I got to figure out how to finish out the scene. Dammit. grin
How do you work into a death scene? How do you handle the situation after the death?
Are you're deaths implied or are they displayed? How graphic is too graphic?
I look forward to hearing your answers.
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Comments: 301
It's amazing, isn't it, Wendy, that murder scenes, especially the after effects often surprise even the writer. It's a difficult line to balance on, that keeping the pace moving along, speeding up, and delivering just the right amount of action and description and dialogue to keep the readers heart pumping.
I usually work the emotions more than the gore in a death scene. You remember how Sylum reacted when he killed that child rapist, don't you, Wendy? The SOB deserved it, but if you have a conscience, you don't kill someone without remorse. At least, that's what I think. I've never killed any one, so I don't really have a frame of reference.
Where ever characters die, it's realistic, nothing implied, but I don't need to be overtly graphic. In the case of the bad guy that is killed, the reader sees the reason why and will say good riddance. The emotion from the good guy's death, well, that has ramifications that are still growing and effecting those remaining. It pulls the heart, builds the anger towards the 'enemy'. You know two characters that are going to be in danger. It adds an edge.
Congrats to Ken and the other contest people!
Sia, big hugs coming your way and Roland's. Let me know if I can help.
I'm still going to be scarce for a bit, work is pulling me back down. Haven't worked less than 10 hours a day in a while (and most nights I'm bringing work home). But hey, it's good to be busy right??
Hope everyone's doing well!
I really don't like to kill characters. Murder is fairly uncommon in real life, yet it fills the pages of so much fiction. I guess it's guaranteed to be interesting. Killing demons and shape-shifting wolves, or fatal illnesses. Now there's something "realistic" I can get behind.
Voted and there was no line. Yippee! Of course most voters are still at work.
Went grocery shopping, now I'm home. Yippee! Let's see if I can wake up the muse to get some Nano done. I left my stack of "to be graded" papers on my desk at work. Screw it. I'm burnt.
(does that sound kinky?) LOL
One thing I think is really important - to me - is to show the consequences of violence. I get frustrated by genre books and series books where a main character goes through some horrific experience and is pretty much all-righty then afterwards. I think bad stuff should resonate, the way it does in real life.
I too get annoyed when there is gratuitous violence, with no after math.
Jamie I remember. I'm going to have to have you send me Sylum's Saga, I'm missing those characters. It's no easy feat to write something I want to read again.. perhaps I'll pacify myself with the Wolf Huntress.. that could work after Spy Candy.
Jules you are too funny!
Rachael thanks for dropping by. Too busy? Yes, I agree with Jamie, there is such a thing as too busy. Take care of yourself.
It's a dark and rainy day. Blech, I can't seem to get my muse to cooperate. Oh wait this is nano, I can skip scenes.. dur.. lol
First, Sia, all the best, and you have my prayers as well.
I have no idea how to do murder or death realistically, and actually I dont think it is necessarily a great idea. The first war film that ever showed something close to the reality of death in war, was Saving Private Ryan, and many folks couldnt watch the Normandy scenes. It we write to entertain, I think it is enough to give a general picture, with maybe some grit, but too much reality can be counter productive. IMHO.
Okay, I'm mean! And picky.
Okay, that was spew-alert-worthy.
Just got the AHA! moment in my story. Smooth sailing to the end...
yes, pun intended, why do you ask?
Thank you Sy. I had my brother laughing hard enough today that the nurse had to come in and check out what was going on. She gave me one of those looks...hey, I've had years of practice at looking innocent--just ask my mom. Me? I did something wrong? This innocent face, lolol! Hey, can I help it if I know all the laughter buttons on this guy? Of course you have to wear these masks and all this extra paraphernalia, so can I help it if I go into a Grey's Anatomy skit? I had all the props...
Jill, that's true. And we do want our reader to feel shock, confusion, anger, happiness. I just have to be careful not to over play my hand or present something that seems perfectly clear to me but leaves my reader going wtf and not in a good way.
Murder or death just for the sake of it, doesn't work for me. I need to see a reason. I need to see the aftermath. Neither have to offer a lot of details, but structured well. I love Dean Koontz, but there was one book he wrote that he went on and on about torture. I'm thinking, good god, who pissed you off? It was too much ditto for the animal torture, sheesh. I swear that haunted me for some time and I skimmed.
I have a headache and a half, creeping up on a double headache.
Poo on that nurse, Sia. Laughter is the best medicine. Your brother needs joy in his life and you are providing it. Just bring a spleen guard for him next time. :-)
I'm here to say "The package arrived, Ken!" (It probably came yesterday, but I live so far from town that I don't make it to the post office every day.) I feel like such a professional now, with a wombat logo bag. Thank you, ACA!
Our polls are still open on the west coast, so I have to wait another hour-plus for returns on all the local races. I'm already celebrating the end of the insulting, obnoxious commercials.
Obama = 18,005,250 votes
McCain = 17,745,571 votes.
What I'm finding interesting is that it's showing electoral count at
Obama - 200
McCain - 90
Regardless of who you're voting for, you can't say (at least in my opinion) that the electoral college is showing the true feelings of the country.
**politico-speak off. Sort of like "un-shun" but not.
Looks like we won't be getting a much needed new academic ed building at the college. Our tax levy isn't doing well. This makes me very, very sad.
The vote on the levy override and for the water standard reg thing that already has a legal opinion about it violating existing regs have convinced me further that a majority of voters in this area vote against their best interests in blissful ignorance.
Tired and have many bits to do. Thinking about Wendy's question. TTFN.
Hey, Sherrie. I won't miss the ads either.
Dead and dying in my work? Honest, I had no intention for it to happen. I started writing a nice, sweet little romance. Maybe some accidents, but nobody but the villain was supposed to die. I was apparently delusional.
Ken, you think romance writers do destruction that is "soft focus and vague"? Yeah, maybe some of them. I'm guessing I am not in their ranks. Look at the end of Ashes, with its scene of self-immolation, or the aftermath of the poor fellow who tried to stop it. Here are a couple of snippets from my latest Nano. Yes, it's a romance. Is this soft and vague enough? (Warning: You may not want to read if you're eating).
The viscous blood pooled under Jack and spread slowly across the filthy deck.
“Damn,” he muttered. “This shirt was one of my favorites.”
The shredded blue calico, imbedded in the hole in his side, was beyond repair, even without the vermillion stain saturating it. The wound burned like hellfire, but, thank God, the blood did not look as if it were spurting.
Not like poor Davey. The young sailor sat propped against the bulkhead, a filthy rag clutched in his large, grimy fist, vainly attempting to staunch the crimson flow pulsing from the wound under his ribs.
Jack supposed he should be grateful Davey hadn’t been gut-shot. A gut-shot man could scream for hours before bleeding out, and the stench of exposed bowels would gag a buzzard. Davey’s injury was bad enough, in spite of that. From the sucking sound of his wound, and his labored breathing, he’d likely had a lung nicked. He’d live awhile. Long enough for Jack to crawl away and hide somewhere so he wouldn’t have to watch the sailor die.
########
The horrific sounds of battle roared over and around him: the clang of cutlasses, the occasional roar of a pistol, the grunts of effort as a boarding ax swung, the screams of anguish as the sharp blades found their mark. In spite of the tales told around the fires, and the grand imaginations of little boys, there was nothing glorious about battle. It was rough and ugly and it stunk. The stench of unwashed bodies, sweating profusely with life or death exertion under the hot Caribbean sun, the acrid scent of gunpowder, the coppery tang of blood that could almost be tasted. It enveloped him and made him retch. The rotten odor of his vomit, with its nostril-searing aroma of rum, only added to the nightmare.
“Jack. Jack, is that you?”
The voice came out of the darkness somewhere off to his left.
He didn’t recognize the voice. He dropped to the deck and crawled in the direction of the voice. Whoever was calling him needed to shut up before he gave away Jack’s position. The men topside had come aboard with one thing only on their minds. Find Jack and Anne and hang them until their faces turned blue and their tongues flapped in the wind. If he needed to kill a man to avoid that sorry outcome, he’d do it without thinking twice.
“Jack?” The voice, a thready whisper, came again.
Jack stumbled in the near darkness, with only the meager light from the open hatches to aid him. Disoriented by the rum, the pain from his wound, and the pitching of the ship, he found the man only when he tripped over him.
“Shut up, damn ye, afore ye give us away to the dogs topside.” Jack chuckled, then winced as the pain in his side made itself felt again. “Though, from the sounds of it, my lovely hellcats are keeping them well occupied for the nonce.”
The man curled up in the hold looked like he might have wanted to smile, but his handsome face would likely never again be able to manage that expression. Not with his cheek laid open that way. And hell, more than one man sailed with an eye patch. Jack just wished he didn’t have to witness the current mess that patch would eventually cover.
And there's Republican country in OH? Couldn't prove it to me tonight!
Historic election. Hysterical amount of ads. I'm glad both are over. Now we live with the results. Thank God my phone won't be ringing off the hook anymore.
Oh - does a presidential election negate the Do Not Call List? B/c I KNOW I'm on that list, yet we got so many calls this afternoon (after I'd voted, mind you) that I ended up taking the phone off the hook and only put it back on when hubs (who is travelling) emailed me to put the phone on the hook so he could talk to us.
Night all.
Not a single word on my Nano today. Ah well. I'm coming up on 8 straight days of being totally alone again, so perhaps I will be able to focus a bit and find some inspiration. I think I've written enough backstory for myself that I can start moving forward now.
My Nano sucks eggs. Maybe I should write a scene about sucking eggs. It would be more entertaining, I'm sure.
Mike, if you want calls, don't pay your bills. Guaranteed to stir up some messages. Some dude has given my phone number to his billers. His name is Joshua. If you think you might know him, tell him I want to kick his arse.
Suddenly, I'm craving an omelet.
Sadly I was raised to be responsible and always pay my bills. So, don't think I'll be getting calls about that unless they start complaining because I pay before the due dates.
Mmmm. Cheese omelet.
I want to hang in there to see if the Dems win the majority in the House. I don't think I'm going to make it though.
When you think about it, this whole Nano thing is insane. You realize that we've committed to writing the equivalent of 10 twenty page papers in a month. Can you imagine how we would have reacted if someone had assigned that kind of a workload in high school or college. Yet at the same time I'm loving it.
And Jamie, thank you. I may have trouble selling this as a romance, but it really is. Romance is character driven, and about growth and a happily ever after. That's all in there. I think. Those scenes, as gritty as they are, are key character descriptions. Jack as a weak coward. Anne as the one standing and defending a man not worthy of her. And the wounded man ultimately sacrifices himself for love of Anne. Turns out he's also the hero's brother. So these are not action scenes, they are character descriptions. So when some of these folks die, the reader will, hopefully, care.
And that's what we want when we kill off a character. If the reader has nothing emotionally invested, the death won't matter. And as others have said above, there needs to be a reaction, an impact, an aftermath. The aftermath of these scenes is the entire catalyst for my WIP. The heroine's realization that she deserves better. The hero's blaming her for his brother's death. You've got to get the reader invested in a character, so that it matters when you kill them off.
OK, speeches have been made, and I'm way overdue for bed. God Bless America on this historic day, and keep her safe. Good night my dears and darlings.
Yep, Pat. Without the character development, murder and mayhem has a much lesser impact. You can have HEA without it being a genre romance.
I know I won't win Nano this year. I don't even like what I'm writing, which makes the motivation to have no free time for anything else nonexistant. I have a lot of "work" work to do this weekend, so it's not like I have weekends to get caught up. I'll keep working at my snail's pace. Maybe inspiration will eventually strike.
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I can think of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
I enjoy a range in my reading. Sometimes gore works. Sometimes my imagination is much worse than the simple words on the page and I'm off imagining what a character's death is like.
Does a death, especially murder, always have to have an impact? I'm not so sure. Depends whose point of view you're following. The death of a beloved wife might haunt a man for years. But if the story is about chasing down a serial killer who cares nothing of taking lives, you might not get to include the husband's despair in the story. I'm shocked at the lack of concern by killers. They don't care one whit about their victims' lives and families and friends. They just don't want to get caught. They don't care that a dad was on his way to his son's ballgame, that the boy waited and waited and then fought back tears when dad didn't show up. The killer doesn't care that the mom and dad had words earlier in the day, that mom had made his favorite meal to make up for flying off the handle.
In fiction, we can explore some of these issues, if doing so fits the story, because it can ramp up emotions in the reader. But, again, it depends on the point of view you want the reader to follow. If you're following the killer, the emotional impact will have to come from another source.
I've killed off characters in 2 books and in my screenplay (quite a few there!). In the books especially, I tried to vary the styles of death. Battle. Accident. Deliberate murder. Variety is necessary in a story where battle figures prominently. And yes, I've purposely gone after the emotional factor. I killed off two innocents in my first book in order to drive the story, and characters, in a certain direction. The battle deaths are more generic. These deaths definitely created an impact. And I purposely added a death scene after a victory celebration. Not to bring the excitement down. But to show that it came at great cost.
Sherrie! I'm attached to 'saddle bums' as a descriptive. It's prolly a good thing it's used well before this scene or it would completely undo the mood.
Sia you keep him laughing. Laughter is highly under rated IMHO.
Pat that is very well done. I think it struck just the right balance. Perhaps someday you will realize how talented you really are.
I live in the red part of WA. It's going to be a sober day today in the Inland NW. TG the ads are done! I can't imagine what it was like for those of you in 'battleground' states. sheesh
It's done and we shall see what the future holds.
Nano didn't get much attention yesterday. If anything I lost words. Writing with blissful abandon is something I'm having trouble with. We'll get there, I hope.
Off to the chiropractor with me. Things are starting to feel the way they are supposed to.
I knew the hippies downstairs would be insufferably happy this morning and I was right. I don't even like happy, bubbly people on a good day.
Mike, I'm reminded of an old Chinese curse:
May a lighthouse remind you of your inadequacy...
Sia, best wishes for Roland. Explaining that situation to a 13 year old cannot be easy, but we do need to talk to our kids about tough reality from time to time.
Pat, looks like your writing is in prime form. Go, go, go!
I have not been killing people off in my novels, except in a few mass catastrophe scenes in my WIP. In one such case, the mood for the next 10 pages or so is very somber, as the characters face up to the fragility of life and the arbritrariness with which life can end.
Mike, thanks for our historical footnote for the day.
I need a nap.
And after hearing what many of the young people in this community have to say about our president elect, I'm definately ready to move closer to the coasts. I so do not belong in vividly red state.
I've decided that my muse went on a vacation without asking for time off. When she get's back, she's fired! Or maybe I'll grovel at her feet and plead for her assistance.
Thrilled that ads are over and eagerly awaiting the demise of politicospeak. I haven't watched TV in over two weeks. After two years of election process, I've had enough thank you.
Helluva a storyteller.
Michael Crichton, how sad. 66 is much too young.
James I felt your pain. Idaho Senate race was really annoying.. I almost wanted to go over there and vote against the mud slinger for having taken up so much of my time. blech
On to more pleasant topics. I haven't written a book without death thus far. Wonder what that says about me? All of them serve a purpose in moving the story and characters forward. Strife and Trauma are true tests of character and I think how my characters react is a good way to show who they are. As Pat mentioned earlier.
It's time to start getting ready for the holidays.. turkey to find, pumpkin pies to bake. Can't you smell it now? contented grin
I fixed a Turkey this past weekend. A small turkey, like under 10lbs. I'm UN-American enough to say that turkey is NOT my favorite bird to cook or eat and I'll take a stuffed roasted chicken any day over a turkey. I do like turkey sandwiches, once in awhile. But, Dan loves turkey. sigh...I remind him, you are what you eat....lolol. I need to go through my recipes, I have one that makes a pretty good turkey. Actually has taste.
I'm trying to find a really good recipe for DARK fruit cake. My (German)step-grandma used to make a dark one that was so moist and rich...I can't find the recipe but seems to me she used rum or brandy. Everything I see is almost white or pale yellow.
Anyone that has a good recipe or has grandma's that made the old styled ones, do pass on the recipe to me.
Atlantis and Wendy are on fire! Dang women! Told you all that I'd be eating dust. Yum!
Sia, rum and brandy are used in fruit cake depending on the recipe. Very few people use dark molasses anymore and that's where the dark color you remember came from. Personally, I'm not a fan. Hope you find a most excellent recipe.
Mike, as a native North Dakotan might I say you've been mislead. No we didn't have to register. You do have to prove your address though oh say with a utility bill with your name on it and a driver's license. No ID, pluuueeessseee. grin.
It's simple, but things aren't complicated there, which is very refreshing from time to time.
My condolences John on your stunning defeat. Perhaps my write in wasn't counted?
Rachael always good to see you. Where's Dana and Pat B.? Sherrie you keep coming around, we missed you terribly. Shout out to Dale.
I don't want to make dinner. Does this make me a bad wife? Hm, will have to consider what that could mean. smirk
We didn't need the official medical death certificate to change the name on my late mother-in-law's car. The one from the hospital was all they required. Things are just different there, and for the most part it works well that way. The last vestiges of Mayberry lay in North Dakota.
Wendy in places where everyone can no everyone else, it seems logical operating procedure.
Blah... back to work.
I was thinking about the question at work today (hey, I can crawl through data while doing ten other things). I realized that the very first "official" thing I wrote, for Ken's First Paragraph contest, was a scene of murder, mayhem, and the emotional impact. That scene is replayed from the hero's point of view midway through the MS (the sounds of the screams haunt him), and then is replayed again at the end, when the watcher from the prologue is herself immolated. Apparently, I have a prediliction for murder and mayhem.
OK, I have not written one word for Nano tonight - more practice runs to the airport. Hard to believe it's coming up so soon. Starting tomorrow, I'm on my own again, then just 11 days, and I embark on my grand Vegas adventure!
I'm in the "no fruitcake" camp, but if you have any spare bourbon balls or rum balls, I'll be glad to take them off your hands. And now I have a craving for molasses cookies!
OK, off to see if I can at least come up with a couple hundred words. Can't let Vivian and Beaker get ahead of me!
Harry, Orwell is a powerful writer. I read Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London earlier this year. Both were compelling.
Mike, I see you've from the vote early and often school. Works well in Chicago, or so they say.
It is surprising to see that Michael Crichton has died; he's been a fixture on the commercial writing scene for a long time and one just imagined it would be that way for years to come.
I had a great time in Spokane, but came home to find out that my husband was in a car accident on the way to pick me up at the airport. Fortunately, he's okay. Unfortunately, the car is not. At least things can be replaced.
My cp and I had lunch with the readers' group today. What fun! Such a nice group of women. There were about 40 of them there. They fed me, then I gave a little talk and they asked questions. On the way home up I-5, a ladder flew off the roof of a van in front of our car. My cp was driving. Fortunately, she managed to avoid it, but we had a scary minute there. I'm going to get an accident complex if I'm not careful.