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Post by Cynus on Jan 22, 2016 17:48:17 GMT -5
Cynus said: Hope my killing of characters hasn't ever made you hate me, but I still wouldn't apologize even if it did. I saw a plot reason to kill any character I've ever killed, and I did it for the story, not gratuitously. Well, I've not read everything you've written but what I have read I've not been particularly offended. I've actually appreciated your work a great deal but then I do not recall having run across a story yet where a main character has been killed off let alone killed in a way that leaves me twisting in the wind either. I'll just quit while I'm ahead, then, and recommend you stay away from Ashes of Fate. It's dark... really dark.
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Post by TeddyBower on Jan 22, 2016 19:10:15 GMT -5
Thanks! :-)
I honestly didn't mean to hijack the thread off into this vein but now that we're here... I remember a time when the killing of characters in a story was just part of the story and made it more interesting. Sad, yes, but it didn't really impact me. That ended for me when I encountered one of life's unfortunate traumas up close and personal. That experience has put me in a place where I'm a great deal more sensitive to the kind of thing we're talking about here. Who knows? The time may come again when I'm once again more robust in taking the killing of characters less seriously.
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Post by Cynus on Jan 22, 2016 19:47:30 GMT -5
Thanks! :-) I honestly didn't mean to hijack the thread off into this vein but now that we're here... I remember a time when the killing of characters in a story was just part of the story and made it more interesting. Sad, yes, but it didn't really impact me. That ended for me when I encountered one of life's unfortunate traumas up close and personal. That experience has put me in a place where I'm a great deal more sensitive to the kind of thing we're talking about here. Who knows? The time may come again when I'm once again more robust in taking the killing of characters less seriously. I think Dave is probably glad we're having a discussion here, period. On the topic at hand, I suppose this is as good an example as any of how we all deal with trauma differently. I lost my first boyfriend to an accident when we were sixteen, and it devastated me. Not only had I lost the person I loved the most in the world, but I also couldn't talk about it with anyone. We weren't out, his parents were devout Christians and wouldn't have appreciated knowing their now dead son was gay. My parents wouldn't have known what to do with me, either, and it made me withdraw from everything. His death completely destroyed my life for many years. What helped me begin to overcome that trauma was reading stories about death. Maybe it sounds odd to people, but it's what worked for me. One of my favorite books is "The Taste of Blackberries", which is about a boy losing his best friend at a young age. That book helped me see how one could overcome the oppressive darkness which comes with the death of someone close to you, and I've loved it ever since. I write death into my stories for the same reason, and I find it cathartic, even if that may seem morbid to others. When my muse calls for me to kill a character, I endeavor to show how the survivors cope and then move on, hoping that a reader who has suffered a similar trauma will be able to derive strength from it. I completely understand your point of view, however, and respect where you're coming from. Death is perhaps the most difficult subject to handle, for anyone, and I have no idea if my answer is the right one. All I know is that it was right for me, and hope it will help others who see the world similarly to me. I think, as long as your goal is to benefit your reader in the end, that there is more than one right answer to this.
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Post by TeddyBower on Jan 23, 2016 17:05:46 GMT -5
I respect what you say. It makes sense, and it has given me some food for thought. While we humans are predictable when it comes to life and death and everything that happens in between, we are still different, and as individuals handle those things somewhat differently. Our predictability does not equal sameness. On the surface that would seem to be a dichotomy but I don't believe it is. I think there is evidence of that dichotomy in my own life. I was raped at age eleven. I did not begin to recover from that trauma till well into adulthood. The thing that was the most beneficial in that recovery was talking about it. Talking about it was also the most unbelievably painful thing imaginable for me. Perhaps there is a lesson for me, a parallel if you will, between that and this issue of killing main characters in a story, and my reaction when an author does that. Perhaps...
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