Blogflog - Life, Death, and Fiction

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Life, Death, and Fiction
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

I’ve been having fits with the current book I’m writing. I’m over 500 pages in, over 200,000 words, and usually by this point in a book I’m writing as fast as I can, just to keep up with myself, but not this time. I’ll get a productive day, and then the next day it’s like all my momentum is gone. It’s like throwing a punch at the heavy bag without rotating your hips. You’re still going through the motions, but you’re leaving most of your energy somewhere else. Today I figured out what was wrong, someone is going to die.

I’m a writer of mysteries, police thrillers, with relationship growth and a huge dose of the supernatural thrown in, so there are usually dead bodies and a villain to stop. I like my fiction neater than real life, so the good guys usually triumph and the bad guys get punished, sometimes they get punished to death, which works for me in fiction. Like I said, it’s neater and more black and white than real life, at least in some areas. I try to make my vampires, zombies, and ghouls as realistic as possible, so there are also huge gray areas where my characters struggle with moral dilemmas and balancing work and relationships. Crime busting can be very hard on couples, or threesomes, or fourples, or any family arrangement.

I love my world and my characters, so why is this book dragging its heels? Because I have a character on stage that is in the hospital. I know what’s wrong with him, and I’d planned on saving him, but . . . I realize now that it may not work. He had another close call a couple of books back, though anyone reading the book wouldn’t have realized it because the moment in the climatic fight scene where he might have died didn’t make it into the final draft. When push came to shove, I couldn’t do it.

I’ve had this problem before where I’d planned on killing off a character, but we realize that I, and my main characters, would miss him. The most famous example of this to me and my fans is that I planned to kill Jean-Claude off at the end of the third book in the Anita Blake series. That’s right, the sexiest vampire on the planet, and now king of them in the United States in my world, though I didn’t see that one coming either, was supposed to die at the end of The Circus of the Damned. But when the moment came, I couldn’t do it. Anita and I would have missed him. I wanted him dead because he was taking over my series and stirring it in directions I hadn’t planned on, but I let him live. I was right on him taking my series to places I hadn’t planned on, or wanted to go. He was a very strong character with very definite Ideas about what should happen, and when, and with whom. It would be a very different series if Jean-Claude had died so early, and maybe I wouldn’t be writing the twenty-fifth book featuring him and Anita. Who knows what would have changed if I’d followed my original plan; so I’ve had this happen before, but never twice to the same character.

I knew he was slated to die at the end of a novel, and I flinched. He’s a good guy, we like him, what harm is it that he’s still alive? Well, he’s changing the game on me, not as profoundly as Jean-Claude did, but he is impacting my plans for the other characters and the world in general. If I leave this character alive, will it have as profound an effect on my series as Jean-Claude’s survival did? If so . . .do I want that? Or do I want to stay with my own over-arching plot line for the series? How much freedom do I give my characters? How much do I play god? He’s destined to die, should he get a reprieve?

I find myself regretting every time I kill a character off. I miss them. I miss writing them. I miss what the rest of their story might have been. It’s not even just major characters that I miss, even the minor-major ones, make me think, “If only . . .” I hate regrets, and unlike real life I have so many chances to undo it. I could write the death scene and then get up tomorrow and rewrite it so that he makes it. It’s one of my favorite things about writing fiction, I can always fix the mistakes tomorrow. In real life there aren’t take-backs, or do-overs, at least not for death. That’s about as final as we get in real life.

I’m going to break for lunch, but when I come back I have to decide. Does this character live, or die? Do we lose him forever? Or do we save him a second time? It’s bugging me a lot that this is the second time he’s come up on the chopping block. It must mean something to my subconscious that this same character keeps almost dying. Does it mean I’m uncomfortable with him? I was with Jean-Claude back in the day. Does it mean I don’t know what to do with him on paper? That he’s getting in the way of other characters that are staying? Maybe, maybe not? I don’t know, I really don’t. All I know for certain is that when I get back from a late lunch it’ll be go-time, and he will either live, or die.

Comments

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

She needs to get braver about killing off characters. I think the Anita series would have been much stronger and truer to its initial promise if she'd had the courage to kill off Jean-Claude.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

I'd be happier with her killing off Richard first.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

Clearly I'm just a terrible person/writer, because I can name a dozen characters from this series I would not miss in the slightest were they to die, with Anita right at the top. There's no sense LKH pretending that killing off Harem Member #23 or whoever is going to derail the series in anyway, because no doubt Anita picked up a replacement somewhere in the course of this book anyway.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Now the question is if she did kill of JC, what would the storyline be like then?

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

I'm just guessing here, but I'd say that if she'd gone ahead and killed J-C way back when, that no, she wouldn't be writing the 25th book featuring him and Anita. :P Words, lady. Words.


Any bets on who this mystery would be corpse is? And she writes paranormal, so it's not like death has to be forever. I mean, it's not like she's got a super powerful necromancer running around or anything... oh. Wait.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

I think it's going to be either Domino or Dev.

Domino: When Anita met him, he hated her. He didn't want to have sex with her or be anywhere near her. She brainwashed him by eating his anger, and he became compliant. But he's not totally mindwiped like Nicky, so he remains a problem. Jade likes him and vice versa. LKH had Nicky beat him nearly to death in Dead Ice, but I doubt that will be enough for her. Plus Anita just gave him permission to date other women -- killing him off would circumvent that.

Dev: Though not as furious with Anita as Domino, he wasn't thrilled about being offered up to Anita as a sex slave, and Micah altered his mind to make him into someone who would fit within their sick group. But again, he's not totally mindwiped like Nicky, and he made a demand of Anita in Dead Ice: he wants to be part of the marriage. He fits "character who almost died a couple books ago" better than Domino. She might have offed him during the hospital fight in Affliction. Anita/LKH likes him better than she does Domino, but she doesn't really care about him. However, Anita still likes playing with him enough that I don't know if LKH could do it. Further, he's useful to her in that she can insult Asher through him.

It's probably some totally random character no one remembers, though. If LKH follows through at all. It should be Micah, if LKH wants her series to have any hope in the future, but of course it won't be.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

It could be because I've had not much more than 3 hours sleep today, but all this hand-wringing about "this character could DIE! AGAIN! But last time was axed so YOU DON'T KNOOOOOOWWWW" is grating on me. Like, are we supposed to feel sorry for whoever this is because they nearly died before in a draft that only LKH knows? That we're meant to somehow psychically be attuned to all the ~~~~feelings she has for her characters? Because it's not like she does a stellar job of conveying how a death or near miss will impact the narrative.

Then again, if I had my way I'd probably execute most of the cast, starting with Anita.

(Iirc, Micah was also supposed to die at the end of NiC and look how well that turned out.)

[quill-shadow.livejournal.com]

How badly would her head explode if someone told her about alternate universe fiction? As in, just because the fictional character dies in one story, that doesn't mean the writer can't do what-if stories.

...Wait, never mind, no one tell her. I have horrible visions of soap-opera 'Ha! You thought I was dead, but it was my unmentioned twin brother, instead!' happening in the main series, because, let's face it, she can't detach herself from the fantasy she's built for long enough to understand the idea of alternate canon.

[leigh stevens (from livejournal.com)]

I read "500 pages and 200,000 words" and thought "who the flying F wants to read someones shitty rambling writing for 500+ pages" Then remebered Twilight and 50 Shades. Oh. I made myself sad.

[darkestgrace.livejournal.com]

She doesn't want to kill off a character because the other characters would miss him? That's kind of the point, isn't it? That's why Rowling killed Sirius at the end of Order of the Phoenix, instead of Hestia Jones. You kill characters because it had emotional impact, otherwise what's the point?

Personally, I think she should kill Nathaniel. That would dissolve the bond between her and Damien as well, so he could go and be happy with his girlfriend. And then she and Micah could realise that without Nathaniel being the obliging yes-man, manipulating them both, they aren't compatible and have absolutely no common interests.

A cull would probably be the best thing for the series. Have someone powerful object to Jean-Claude's takeover, and then kill Nathaniel, Micah, Dev, Domino, Nicky, Richard, and Cynric. Then Anita had to help rebuild the power-base, do some actual politics, deal with grief and maintaining her hold over the different groups (since Sylvie will be in charge of the wolves, and less inclined to oblige). With the loss of the triumvirate, Anita could lose the powers that came with it, specifically the Ardeur. That could bring in some actual conflict!

But I'm betting that this will probably be like when she teased that a major character would die, and then killed Haven. She's probably going to kill that female weretiger, or Claudia, or Ronnie, or...no, I can't think of any more female characters she could kill.

[jya-bd-cp-ttgb.livejournal.com]

That's because she's alienated all the females like Catherine and the secretary from Animators Inc, Larry's wife....uhm...

*howls for Sirius and the beautiful lost Wolfstar fandom*