would you feel cheated

[Jo Zebedee]

So, let's just say, for argument's sake, , you read a book and after 20000 (about a quarter) words all bar 3 of the main character's were killed (I know, it makes GRRM look attached to his character's....). The ones in the first part have an important part to play in terms of the main protagonists, and their various interweaving roles.

Would you feel cheated? At having bought in for so long only to lose them?

 

[HareBrain]

It would depend on a lot of things. Three main characters is enough to carry a lot of stories. How many main characters die? Are any of them POV characters? How attached would you expect your readers to become to those ones?

I think this is one of those questions where you'll only be able to know once a few people have read it. (As an example of this, I change POV character in my WIP only after six chapters. In theory, this is highly inadvisable, but it seems to work.)

 

[Peter Graham]

Would you feel cheated? At having bought in for so long only to lose them?

Provided the remaining three were characters I liked, then no. I love King Lear, Othello, Hamlet et al. By the end of any one of those plays, people are not so much exeunting severally as clambering over the heaps of the slain severally.

In fact, a bit more protagonist slaughter would be quite refreshing - provided it's done dramatically and not just as an exercise in gore for gore's sake.

What I hate more than anything is main characters endlessly surviving in unconvincing and/or deus ex machina ways. When they are gone, they are gone. No time twiddling, magical amulets or any of the rest of it, please.

Regards,

Peter of Malfi

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It would depend on a lot of things. Three main characters is enough to carry a lot of stories. How many main characters die? Are any of them POV characters? How attached would you expect your readers to become to those ones?

Only one POV character from the first half survives, but the other 2 survivors do become POV characters in the second half. the concensus has generally been it's shocking, but ok - one person felt maybe it was done for the shock value/was gratuitous. the difference is now, I'm much closer in, with the characters much more developed than previously, and I think it changes the focus/buy in a little. Also, they don't all die in a great shocking gore fest, it's just the book skips 10 years, so there's a bit of - um - natural wastage...

No time twiddling, magical amulets or any of the rest of it, please.

Couldn't agree more. They're gone; no magic.

 

[Vertigo]

Also, they don't all die in a great shocking gore fest, it's just the book skips 10 years, so there's a bit of - um - natural wastage...

Ummmm that statement worries me. If I've bought into the characters I want to be there at their deaths. If you just skip 10 years and they're gone then I might be a bit upset.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It's only one that dies when we're not there. I know what you mean, though, although I'm not sure if I can do anything about it.

 

[MemoryTale]

I didn't feel cheated when I read that part. Reason why is in white text to avoid spoilers, highlight to read:

The book is called "Abendau's Child", not "Abendua's children, their father and surrogate mother" - I had a pretty good idea at least some of them wouldn't be around forever.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

For once this thread wasn't in response to feedback, so don't worry MT, and I know your concern was more over why one of the characters was there in the first place, only to get killed off. Although there has been a title change to make it less leading.

No, I just wondered, as I got closer to POV - and something came up in the sequel that made me think about it (no I haven't killed my entire cast again) - if it had got to the point where the buy in for the first characters might make the plot line seem too shocking. And then I started to think of books where it had happened and struggled to do so, but Peter's right on that score, there's plenty in the past where they did it.

 

[Mouse]

Would you feel cheated? At having bought in for so long only to lose them?

Nope. There's still three left, right? Besides, I'm a sucker for tragedy.

 

[Abernovo]

Sometimes a good spilling of blood in a story is effective, springs. As to characters that you like being killed off, well, it'll invoke an emotional response, which is what it should do.

As to the one killed off-stage, so to speak, you could possibly work in a flashback, even use it as a sub-plot for revenge on the killer.

You still have three central characters, so that should be enough to carry the story.

 

[Mouse]

Oh yeah, the one killed 'off-screen' might be slightly different. I was highly narked when a certain main character was killed off-screen in Being Human. One episode there, the next - gone.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Well, I see we're all not in the Cinderella school of readers. (There is closure on the one death we don't see, it comes a little further on than when we find out, but he is suitably mourned.)

@Mouse, just seen your's; we are told straight away that it has happened, so there's no sense of him being missing and us not being told.

 

[Abernovo]

Sorry to go off-topic for a second, but... please Mouse, shh! They've only just finished broadcasting Season 2 here. I'm avoiding the Being Human thread like the plague in case of spoilers.

Right, back to the topic...

 

[Mouse]

@Mouse, just seen your's; we are told straight away that it has happened, so there's no sense of him being missing and us not being told.

Oh, no that's kinda not what I meant. I meant that I'd like to see the death - even in a flashback like Aber suggests.

Sorry to go off-topic for a second, but... please Mouse, shh! They've only just finished broadcasting Season 2 here. I'm avoiding the Being Human thread like the plague in case of spoilers.

Right, back to the topic...

Heh! No worries. Exactly why I didn't name names! Don't want to spoil anything.

 

[Pyan]

Hmm - if I wasn't prewarned, and the story was good, and the ...eliminations relevant to the plot, yes, I'd probably feel a little cheated, but it wouldn't stop me finishing the book, or, for that matter, buying a sequel.

But - and it's a big "but" - if I felt it was being done for effect, or because I thought the author had thought "Whee! Lookee here, I can kill people off!", or there were too many deaths of characters that I'd invested in: I'd probably stop there, and it'd be in the Oxfam Bookshop on Saturday.

Nice clear answer, then - yes and no...

Incidentally, the reason I've never reread ASoIaF, and haven't even bought ADwD is a perfect example of this - too many deaths of "good" characters at, apparently, the whim of the author. I haven't the time or inclination to read another installment where the rug's going to be pulled out from under me yet again. Sorry, George...

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I can probably stick a flashback in. I have a couple of pov's could do it pretty smoothly.

 

[Jammill Khursheed]

Personally, no I wouldn't feel cheated, as long as they didn't come back to life again, but in Sci-Fi and fantasy that feels more 'CHEAP' than 'CHEAT' because it happens so often.

In fact, it might be a problem to some readers who are assuming their deaths are all part of some plot device to ressurect them later in the storyline. Then they wouldn't feel cheated because they died, but might by the end if they're still dead.


Jammill

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Hmmm, interesting, that may be the case. In which case oops, they're dead, and the whole book is based around it; the motivation of the main character comes from it, it runs through the sequel and the next one, and perhaps I didn't quite realise how much it'd hit. And there's no magic here; it is as it seems (perhaps it's refreshing, I'm not sure....)

 

[Warren_Paul]

Well you already have my thoughts on the matter. Personally, I didn't like it, and went the way Jammill mentioned. I didn't believe they actually were dead.

Maybe if I read the whole book I'll know better, but having only just got up to that point, this is where my thoughts sit on it.

 

[HareBrain]

It might be an idea to diminish the apparent importance of the doomed individuals, and emphasise those who are going to survive. That way, the reader doesn't attach to the doomed so much, which lessens the chances of them both feeling cheated and suspecting you're going to bring them back. That might reduce the emotional impact of the deaths, but I think you could bring this out carefully through the survivors' POVs without giving the impression that the story itself is too attached to them to let them go for good.