"Something very meaningful and definitely not the Fall Out Boy lyrics I wanted to put here." - Fancy Header
j.r. dawson
  • Home
  • About
    • Press Kit
    • Editing and Contact Information
    • Recent News
  • STORIES
    • Blog
    • Eligibility 2021

Day Four: Weddings, Weddings, Tigers, Weddings

5/31/2015

0 Comments

 
Today was a weird day. I have to admit up front, it did not go as planned. My plan was to get up early, read read read, write write write, and go see Game of Thrones at our weekly GoT party.

That didn't happen.

Alex got up later than I thought he would, which put my schedule off, and then I tried to get through Life of Pi. This book is due on Wednesday with an annotation, and I got about halfway through it today. It started off slow. So goddam slow. I was on page 100 when the ship sank (come on, you've had years to read it and you know the ship sinks, the movie was up for an Oscar). Knowing the twist ending, it makes it really interesting to see how Martel prompts his reveal. It's totally there. It totally makes sense, and it's haunting when you see these little remarks he makes. Chilling. I started crying when the hyena was ripping the zebra apart.

It's such a rich story, and it's a different pace than what I'm used to. It reads much more like a meditation on religion than it does a narrative, which I like, but it's just a detour from where I usually go.

Richard Parker. Phew, man. Phew. And Pi himself is a likeable ... although a little pretentious ... protagonist. But you're rooting for him.

So I felt like writing something else that wasn't my main thesis. I wrote about a page of something that will probably go nowhere. It was about ghosts and stuff, which I'm still trying to decide how exactly to go about writing on. Still not there. But it was good writing. My writing is getting better, I guess.

Yesterday, I got my packet back from my mentor, Nancy Holder. Nancy said that I have a career ahead of me, which made me smile. That meant a lot to me, to hear that. She says my writing is getting stronger. My scary scene played out the way I wanted it to. So that was a good packet to get back.

She talked to me about "set pieces," which is something I'm trying to keep in mind as I read Martel's work. Martel is amazing at set pieces. As Nancy explained, set pieces are (long story short) when a scene is working in the larger framework of the story. Martel knows exactly where his story is going, and each of these scenes push forward into the larger picture. It's a masterpiece.

Now just to figure out all the other scenes in that book.

I closed my eyes and laid back on my bed, listening to the Life of Pi soundtrack, and tried to think through the scenes I'm working on right now. It helped a little, but then I got sidetracked with working on my playlist for my wedding.

We realized today that we have 102 days until our wedding. 30 of those days don't count, because I'll be out of the country. So we have a lot of work to do, and we're trying to get some headway on it. We got really excited about our music selection and sort of let all the chores go to the side.

Tomorrow, I need to keep reading Pi, and I need to get my two manuscript packets ready, because they're due on Wednesday. That means doing a lot of revision on the first chapters. I don't have a lot of time tomorrow, because I work at my contract job tomorrow for an hour, and then we have a concert to go to at night. Also, our dishwasher is broken.

So here's to Sunday! On my last note, this is the first Sunday I don't have to dread a Monday. Huzzah for me!

Picture
0 Comments

A Musing on Killing Characters.

5/22/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Death is a weird thing. We don't know what happens afterwards. We're not sure anything happens. All we know is the story of the survivor; the people still on this side of the curtain, missing and hurting and hoping. It's not fun to die, not from our perspective. And that causes turmoil when death happens. We don't see it as a moving on; we see it as a loss. As an end.

So something weird happened to me this week while I was writing. I killed a character, and I actually couldn't continue to write the scene. It gave me the same visceral reaction the end of Harry Potter gave me when Sirius Black died (and the plethora of other characters who followed).

I actually packed up and went home and refused to finish the scene.


"This will be the last scene I write," I told Alex. "I can't. If I write this scene, and it's done and this is the way it has to go, then I cannot in good conscience write these characters just to end them in this much hurt."

"Well," Alex shrugged. "That's a good thing, right?"

This might sound like the dumbest conversation ever, to people who don't write. To those of us who have had to kill a character, it is a struggle we've faced since we started being "Gods of our Universes," as an old professor said. There is a lot of philosophy and theory that goes into writing a world, because honestly, in order to have a realistic world, it must be real. If someone doesn't believe writers think like this, please direct them towards Zack Helm's Stranger Than Fiction.

So if the world is real, does that mean then, that in some way, we are killing an entity? When Sherlock dove off the cliff, when Sirius fell behind the veil, or when Mufasa slammed into the bottom of the canyon, were those not deaths that made a difference? Was that not the absence of an entity in our world?

For anyone who has ever read vigorously or written passionately, the answer would be yes.

During Nanowrimo, one of the prompts read: "Write a letter as your protagonist to yourself, the author." This is all my letter said:

"Dear Ms. Dawson,

Please don't kill them.

- (Character)"

I showed it to Alex, and he started crying.

That's how ridiculous and invested we may be.

But is it a good thing? If I feel physically ill and mentally spent after killing a character? Does that automatically mean a good ending?

Honestly, it doesn't.

For how many good reasons to kill a character, there are a hundred bad reasons. I've seen characters die of God complexes, shitty twists, tear-jerkers, and stupid-shitty-writer-itis. What is stupid-shitty-writer-itis? When you do something stupid and shitty just because you're a writer.

"It will mean something if I kill him." "It will cause stress to my readers if I kill her." "Ah, but I will surprise and shock them because it hasn't been done before!" Or the worst, the stupidest, and the shittiest: "If these people die, then you just don't know who's going to go next!"

That last award goes to George R.R. Martin. To clarify, Martin is not a shitty writer. But as much as I absolutely love Martin's prose and language and character building, I can't bring myself to read the next book and I am forced to watch the TV show. While I agree with and love the the idea of "Drew Barrymoring" a character in order to create the feeling that no character is sacred (see: Scream), I do think that Barrymoring every character in every other chapter is just too overwhelming and gives no reason to keep reading. We connect through our characters.

But I will also argue that I am much younger and not as brilliant as George R.R. Martin, so I may completely agree with him in twenty years.


When you kill too much or you kill for the wrong reasons, then the book becomes meaningless and contrived.

So when is it okay to kill characters?
Some people make the mistake of never killing a character. Everyone either Disney Deaths back to life (getting in the sobs of a death scene only to cough a little and open their eyes to a "Baloo! You're alive!"), or they protect all of their main characters out of a fear of doing them wrong or having to say goodbye to them too soon.

So here it is, the reason why you should kill a character. It must push the story developmentally through one of the elements of fiction (minus "language," because no you don't get to kill someone off just to write a beautiful paragraph about butterflies and gravestones):

1. It moves a character forward. (Harry must move alone without his parentals in order to grow)
2. It moves the plot along. (Because of Voldemort's death, we lead into the denouement)
3. It sets the tone for your time and place. (Cedric Diggory is dead, and things are getting real)
4. It
fits into your overall theme. (Sirius Black dies without any reason, which is how death works, and it teaches Harry to heal and keep moving on)

Those are the only four reasons why you should kill a character.

One other thing you need to look at: What does death mean in your book's world? In some of my own books, I have no afterlife. In the one I am writing right now, there is an afterlife. Continuing with the Harry Potter examples, Rowling most definitely has a clear afterlife involved in her mythos. Because of this, death does not take on the same weight as death takes on in Westeros, where you are dead and cold as soon as the blood drains from the heart from whence the Hound stabbed the ever-living crap out of you.

So if you have created an atheist world, that means your character is gone forever. If you have created a Christian world, that means your character is being judged. If you have created a world with resurrection, or reincarnation, or hauntings, or other dimensions or other levels ... what does that mean for the growth of your surviving characters?

So looking at my story, I agreed to kill this character off. I will not write it now, because it hurts too much. There needs to be a sense of choice in the story, a sense of the character maybe getting off easier. But I won't erase what I've written. I can't save them. No matter what I do, I can't. It fits, and it is going to be sad, but it makes sense.

So I'm sorry, Character, I can't save them. I would if I could, but I can't.





0 Comments

    What is this?

    Dawson is a writer. This is her blog. In it, you shall read about reading. And writing. And cheeseburgers. Sometimes there are tangents. Huzzah.

    Categories

    All
    Advice
    Angela Patten
    Animal Farm
    Animorphs
    Applegate
    Applying
    Art
    Bad Writing
    Bats
    Bella
    Best Writing Places
    Blue Line
    Bradbury
    Caffeine Dreams
    Chicago
    Classy
    Colorado
    Community
    Complicated Characters
    Concert
    Dad
    Day Job
    Dead Poets Society
    Death
    Depression
    Draft
    Dundee
    Elements Of Fiction
    Exposition
    Famous
    Father's Day
    Favorite Books
    Fox Hollow
    Frankenstein
    Frozen
    Gaiman
    Game Of Thrones
    Grant
    Grateful
    Harry Potter
    Hermione
    Heroines
    Home
    Hunger Games
    Introduction
    Iowa
    Ireland
    Katniss
    Kevin Barry
    Killing Characters
    Life Of Pi
    Lindsey Stirling
    Mardra Sikora
    Marketing
    Martin McDonagh
    Memoir
    MFA
    Motivation
    Music
    Ocean At The End Of The Lane
    Old Market
    Omaha
    Opera
    Panera
    Paradise Bakery
    Pen Names
    Personal Life
    Pikes Peak Writers Conference
    PitchWars
    Procrastination
    Radical Face
    Reading
    Residency
    Revision
    Robin Williams
    Scooter's
    Self-love
    Set Piece
    Setting
    Shelf Life
    Short Story
    Sick
    Starbucks
    Stonecoast
    The Lion King
    The MFA Years
    Thesis
    Twilight
    Twitter
    UNO Library
    Urban Abbey
    Village Inn
    Wedding
    Women
    Wordsworth
    World
    Writing
    Yann Martel
    #YesAllWomen
    Zen

    Archives

    May 2019
    July 2018
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from smoorenburg, Erik Daniel Drost, prasad.om, Feral78, spbpda, Môsieur J. [version 9.1], markus spiske, jcasabona