Well, 2020 is off to a great start.
I killed a character today.
I was sitting in a coffee shop, sipping a London Fog (delicious), and felt my heart race (seriously) as keystroke after keystroke brought their demise closer to reality.
Fictional reality, but reality all the same.
I knew from the moment I sat down to write this series, that this character’s death was coming.
I guess, like death itself, I just didn’t expect it to come so quickly.
Once I finish typing these words, their story is over. I can’t use them, their interactions are done, their arc will be left shattered on the ground, and the other characters will have to learn how to move on. The story has to go on without one of the most important characters. I planned for this, I just don’t know if I’m ready for it to be over yet. It’s a lot.
So, obviously, in a fantasy political and military series, characters are going to die. If they didn’t, there’s some reality problems mixed into your fantasy and people are going to notice. Consequences of actions, the reality of war, and the willingness for the seedier members of society to get what they want by any means necessary will result in more than a few characters snuffing it. That’s just how the story goes.
This character was set to die from the start, is the thing. I knew that about them. If they were real, and I could sit down with them like the director in a movie and tell them, it would be a frank conversation.
“My friend, you’re going to die.”
I’m not very loquacious with these guys, sometimes.
I don’t know to what degree knowing their death was coming affected how I wrote them, either. It may have done nothing, because if we’re being honest, we write stories knowing they have to end somewhere. There are endings planned for all the major characters in this series, the fun part is figuring out how we get there. I write by a mix out outline and, what do they call it, seed writing? There are broad stroke outlines for what’s going to happen by the details kind of get worked out along the way, and sometimes the outlines change. Sometimes they change dramatically, but this death stayed in through the long haul.
I’m kind of sad about it, too. The character went through so much change and development since the first draft of the first book. I actually like them, and that wasn’t part of the plan. Humanizing them, bringing them onto a level with goals and motivations and desires that were never in the original script for this story. Going from villain to a hero of their own story over the course of nearly six years of rewrites and edits.
Now I’ve drawn my pen and slit their throat.
There’s a good line from a song from the videogame Bendy and the Ink Machine. I’ll blog at some point about drawing inspiration from all sources, because there’s really intelligent stuff across all ranges of media. The song in question is “Can’t Be Erased,” and the lyric that sticks with me from it, especially relating to character deaths, goes:
“The pen is mightier than the sword, it has no limitation.”
It’s a nice touch up to that old adage because there really are no limits on what can be written or said, and nothing stopping me from telling this story however I like. That includes killing characters.
But it’s also a burden, and a responsibility. To the people who like them, or will like them, and just for the sake of proper writing and respect, their death needs to, in a literal and literary, sense not be in vain. I will respect everything they’ve done for the story, for other characters, and for themselves. There are chapters planned for others to dwell on what’s happened, and for both they and the reader (and if I’m being honest, myself) to come to terms with this death. I honestly hope it’s something I can properly execute. They weren’t the first named character I’ve killed, I honestly bawled killing a side character once, but they were one of the most important and it’s a wide world without them now.
Characters dying in treated with a bit of a less-serious feeling in a lot of circles these days, some stories measured by bodies counts of creative methods of executions. It’s nice when you see media that respects what death means, both in universe and to the people who’ve grown attached to characters who then have to watch them die. I hope, at least, it’s something I’ve the possibility to help foster. Maybe it’s just feelings of regret for the numerous unnamed characters who have fallen over the course of the story.
Or maybe I’m still not over having to kill this one.