: Re: Killing off a character What are the long term effects of killing off a main character (early into a series) that represents someone you'd like to move on from? Would that be cathartic, or

@Bryan361

Vote Up Vote Down

Probably both!

At this current moment in your writing process, your world and its characters are vibrantly real to you and completely unknown to your future readers. So this is a wonderful time to use your story for a little self-indulgent soul surgery. If you need to strike out at someone in the real world, put their representative character through the ringer in your fictional world. Drag them literally through the proverbial dirt, then crucify them on a cross of your creativity. Vent your rage, your disappointment and your pain out onto the page and let your emotions rule your writing for a few hours.` Don't just slash them off the page in a single sentence. Fill paragraphs with their punishment and pages with their demise.

Then, when you are feeling a little better, carefully select the "Save As" option in your word processor and name this new document, TheDeathOf___.doc. That way it doesn't overwrite your existing work in progress, but it does preserve these valuable new pages for future review.

Tomorrow, or next month, when you are feeling in balance again, read through tonight's creation and notice how your emotions shaped your words. Study the raw creation, looking for rage-inspired explicates and other venomous prose. These may well be the most honest words you write this year (which is okay because you are a fiction writer. You are supposed to lie.), but if you look carefully at these words after your emotions have cooled, you will probably also find that they are real in many ways that your normal writing is not. Learn from them and thus become a better writer.

Never pass on an opportunity to write while angry or sad, in love or out. Write all the time and write with energy and passion. Write without regard for whether your future fans will ever read your latest words. Not every word which you write should be destined for publication. Most of them, should just be you, practicing and learning how to better tell your tales.

Keep Writing!

(0)

Login to post a comment!