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Mid-October Magnificence
As anticipated, the long weekend was a much-needed reprieve from a year of being constantly busy. Didn’t get any writing done, but I needed the R&R more than the word count.
Catching Up At Last
I can, therefore I am. ~Simone Weil
With the comforting knowledge that I have no more Mondays for the rest of the year, I’m finally in the right frame of mind to catch up on some outstanding stuff at work and at home.
You’d think that having a shorter work week would make it harder to keep up, but it seems to have the opposite effect.
Fortunately, the extra rest has lubricated my mental gears for the load that’s looming ahead.
Additionally, I had a bit of an epiphany of where to go with the first trilogy of the Sentinels tridecology. I’ll need to stew on that a bit, but at least I have a better idea of how to weave that tale now.
I even got a slow start on some domestic projects, really slow. I’ll have to devise a more efficient way to go about those in order to get them all done.
All in all, the change in seasons is having the desired effect.
Now, if I can find a moment to yank the ACs out of the windows, Kelly will be almost as pleased about 🍂Autumn🍂 as I am.
Golden Autumn October
Beautiful Relaxing Music, Peaceful Soothing Instrumental Music, “Golden Autumn October” By Tim Janis
Here are some glorious hygge 🍂autumnscapes🍂, chill tunes and sweet tweety birds to relax with.
I did get a tiny bit of writing done this weekend. The Black Diamond Writers Network October meeting featured a challenge to write a one-page Halloween story. I had to shrink the font a bit to get the last few words to squeeze on a single page, but I did get it done.
I’ll leave a copy here for you if you’d like to take a look at it: The Vivimancer’s Revenge.
Apart from that and a sewing project, I didn’t get a darned thing done last weekend apart from catching up on some much-needed sleep and relaxation.
Happy Death
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. ~Leonardo da Vinci
There are a lot of opinions on character death in fiction. Some characters are known to have “plot armor” to the extent that no matter how dire the circumstances, you know they’ll be there for the next episode, movie or novel.
After all, one of the most famous conclusions to any story in Western literature is “…and they lived happily ever after.”
On the other hand, there’s George R. R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire in which it’s not a question of if any given character will die, but how soon and how horrendously they will go.
A lot of fiction falls somewhere in between. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings aren’t nearly the meat grinder that Game of Thrones is, but there are a few key characters who succumb to a fatal case of hubris.
Character deaths can be very valuable plot elements. If Obi-Wan Kenobi hadn’t let Darth Vader cut him down in Star Wars, Luke probably wouldn’t have had the grit to participate in the Death Star bombing raid.
Character death can be as gentle as Yoda fading away in his bed or as jarring as the Red Wedding.
As cruel as it may seem to kill off characters, it can serve as motivation or be completely demoralizing for other characters in the story.
Character deaths can be as random and meaningless as real life death sometimes is or they can be extremely poignant. It depends on what you mean to do with them.
Depending on your genre, it may be unrealistic to have characters that never die. This is why Star Trek had Red Shirts. The command crew (regular cast members) had names and they had “plot armor“. Even when they died, they came right back. The nameless or last-name-only red shirted guys were basically toast.
Despite what Mr. Martin would have us believe, death for death’s sake is not worth much unless it somehow speaks to your theme. The never-ending horror of his fictional world speaks to the cheapness of life in an imaginary medieval world with perpetual war, skullduggery and an impending invasion of arctic zombies.
Some people (myself included) find that interesting. Some people find it appaling.
There are plenty of stories set in a world at war with coast to coast strife that are less grim and gritty than A Song of Ice and Fire, but it does not make them any less interesting or enjoyable.
The idea that hope springs eternal is an underlying theme for many stories set in a perilous world.
Even in a relatively mundane world with basic human interaction, character death can play a valuable part.
Someone struggling with terminal illness or a loved one approaching the end of their time can play a part in a contemporary or historical character study. Depending on how the author treats the matter, it can be a tear-jerking departure or a merciful release.
The death doesn’t even have to occur during the course of the story. Stand By Me is a story about a group of boys who are investigating a rumor of a body near some train tracks. In the end, finding the dead boy leads them to face their own mortality in a way that children seldom have to in modern times. This unknown boy was already dead before the movie began, but his passing had a profound impact on the kids who sought him out.
So, when you’re writing your story and you’re hesitant to kill off a character, it could be because you need to get your head around what that means in the context of the story. Does this character need to die? If so, why, when and how? What do you mean to convey with their passing?
If you can answer that, it will probably make sense to the readers. If not, you’ll probably get a lot of hate mail.
That’s all for now. I’ve got tons to do and even more sleep to catch up on. The weather is perfect for both. I hope your week is productive, too.