Killing Them Off
My friend Jenn Hubbard recently posted about the reader-writer contract, and how a promise is delivered to a reader within the opening sentences of a novel. It reminded me of another contract I’ve been pondering, the kids’ books one that promises not to kill off major characters.
The End of the Road
Wait. No. What makes me think such a promise even exists to break? I read White’s Charlotte’s Web when I was too young to question what was happening, and while I was heartbroken about Charlotte, I didn’t feel any particular, personal sense of betrayal. Possibly it mattered that Charlotte was old, and her death seemed natural. It was one of my first books ever, a seminal reading experience that should have been a basis for any patterns I began to recognize later. Yet, when I read Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia for the first time as an adult, I was devastated. Not only did the loss wring me out, but I also felt like the rules had been violated. In the years between White and Paterson, I’d absorbed that deaths weren’t supposed to happen to people I cared about in kids’ books. I’d imagined a promise that, once broken, could never be trusted again, and that unglued me. Since death could happen to my friends in kids’ lit, there was nowhere safe left to go. I never wanted to read anything again.
No, truly. I never wanted to read anything ever again. Certainly not a kid’s book with engaging, imaginative characters.
But I did. Eventually.
Now I’m feeling squeamish. I’d love the power of killing off a key player in my next novel and realistically, it could happen in the setting I’m working with. But I just feel like it would be wrong, with a capital “W.” In the past, stuff that felt Wrong has led me to my most disturbing discoveries as a writer, discoveries that have rippled into my real life as a person. But do I want to go there with death?
The worst thing of all, I think, would be to use death opportunistically, just for shock value, just because a writer could. That would be mean and unfair, not only to the reader, but to the stories that have truly earned their meaningful deaths. Like Charlotte’s. It’s safer to avoid it completely than risk being cheap.
Why do I even need to grapple with this? I resist, squirming. I’m nowhere near the scene, yet, where this could happen, so there’s no need yet to prepare. I’m fully aware, too, that I’ve already had some pretty awful deaths in my writing, so this isn’t completely new territory. Those deaths had to be there and I didn’t question that they did.
But certain deaths. I don’t know. They would be Wrong. Wouldn’t they?
4 Responses to Killing Them Off
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Book Trailer for Promised
Don’t fear the Reaper.
If you’re going to serve the muse, I think you have to listen to the muse. We all wanted Rick and Ilsa to go off together at the end of Casablanca, but the Story just wouldn’t have it.
I heard Richard Russo being interviewed about “That Old Capr Magic”. Early in the book the main character gets a call on his cellphone. It was supposed to be from his wife, but then something suggested to Russo that it was the character’s mother calling. “Really? His mother?” said Russo. “Well, okay.” He went on to say that although he doesn’t always use these suggestions, in this case that inner voice had it right. (And, my apologies to Erato, isn’t that what the muse is — some deeper, subconscious understanding that we have?)
As to the other voices in one’s head, I try never to listen to those. You never really know where those are coming from.
Thanks for the shout-out!
I remember reading a book–I’m sorry I can’t remember which one–where the main character was reading Little Women for the first time. She expected Beth to recover because, until then, she’d only read books with happy endings. When Beth died, she was utterly shocked!
Jim ~ Lovely points. Is it true they didn’t tell Ingrid the end of the script while filming so that she wouldn’t know which man she would end up with? Writing, for me, is definitely a combo of the deliberate and what surfaces from elsewhere, if not always as neatly as in Mr. Russo’s example.
Jenn ~ I was well warned. I never read that one. Melanie in Gone With the Wind was bad enough, but at least that was written for adults.
All best,
Caragh
Don’t do it!
Do you feel as if you wish to make your former students cry again? 🙁 Killing off a character is very hard it seems, unless you do not like them yourself. I have found this quite hard myself when I had to kill off a character in a recent story who I loved very much. And yes, he was a major character, but his death was really the center of the story. Although, I guess I can understand.
~Katie