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.

Welcome to another week of the world not knowing the difference between winter and summer! Last week, there was a glitch in posting, so expect another post to make up for last week's lack of a post.

But for today, I thought the next most important topic would be the thing that everyone struggles with. It’s worse than writer’s block. It’s scarier than your final chapter. It’s even more frustrating than the query letter. Even authors who somehow manage to pull this thing off barely escape with their lives. It is … exposition.

So you have the idea for your book. You know what makes the legs of the world’s table. Regardless if it’s a realistic fiction piece about a middle-aged woman who has just filed for a divorce and enjoys planting her garden, or if it’s a sci-fi adventure about space cowboys trying to save the final hope of humanity, there is always the “stasis” that we begin with. There is an already established world when we open the first page and begin to write.

Problem is, the reader has no clue what this already established world is.

So here are four key rules to have a successful reveal of exposition:

1. Just the Facts, Ma’am
Have you ever had that conversation with a friend where you just wish they’d get to the point? They’re going into more detail than need be, and you’re not sure why they’re talking. Look at these two different dialogues:

- “So we went over the Jane’s place, and she’s got like this new parakeet that just keeps honking or … tweeting … whatever a bird does. And she’s like, ‘Go ahead, sit down I just gotta get the dog in the basement.’ So we sat down and she had Nickelodeon on, which I was a little confused about but whatever. But yeah, Sally’s doing good. She seems better. All things considered, I’d be a real wreck after last month, but she’s tough. Always has been. But so like we got into Jane’s car and Sally was talking about it. And I was surprised she was talking about it. She doesn’t really talk about stuff like that. And Jane starts talking about Dan, and I’m like … yeah is Dan still around? I know, Dan. Dan’s still around. You know, John doesn’t like Dan very much. I know, John doesn’t like anyone. But he has reason not to like Dan. But so anyway … no, Dan wasn’t there. I didn’t mention that. Dan didn’t come with us cause that’d be awkward. I think Dan knew that Tom knew. Maybe John told him. But anyway, so we pull up to the Golden Corral. And we go in and pay and stuff. And Sally and I are just hanging out and I finally ask her like, ‘You seem to be doing better. Are you doing better?’ And she goes, ‘Yeah. Well. I don’t know.’ Which worried me again … and all of a sudden, Tom comes in. And he’s furious. Like, I’ve never seen Tom like that. It was terrifying. And Tom’s like, ‘Jane!’ In front of everyone. And he goes up to Jane and Jane’s got this attitude like, ‘Why are you late?’ And Tom’s like, ‘Outside. We’re talking outside right now.’ And Jane’s like, ‘No.’ And Tom’s like, … well they go back and forth, and then Tom says, ‘Dan just told me what you did.’ And Jane doesn’t say a word. She just leaves. And Tom …”

- “So we went out to the Golden Corral afterward and Tom found out Jane had been cheating on him.”

The second one is much clearer. We know that they went out to eat. We know that Tom found out Jane had been cheating on him. We don’t care about Sally. Who is Sally? Not important to our plot, that’s who. We have no idea what we’re supposed to be paying attention to, so we get all tangled up in our following the story. Look at Dickens for a good example of how exposition can be simple.

- Not Dickens: “Scrooge was an old man who lived in London. It was the 19th Century, and he was somewhat miserly. And by somewhat, I mean a lot. He was all crouched over and had money bags on him at all times. His closest employer was Bob Crachit, but even Bob didn’t like him very much. Scrooge hated Christmas, too. Just plain hated it. Every year when his nephew Fred invited him over to dinner, he told him, ‘Bah humbug!’ Scrooge used to have a friend, and his name was Jacob Marley. However, Jacob Marley had died. It had been a stormy evening, and Scrooge didn’t seem to really care that Marley was dead. He thought about Marley from time to time, how they went on that trip to the country when they were boys and he was still with Isabella. That had been a good summer. They’d had cucumber sandwiches, the three of them, and Scrooge actually smiled back then. But Marley and him had grown into misers and bankers, both terrible things. And so Marley had finally kicked the bucket, and he wasn’t coming back. Yes, it was Christmas and Marley wasn’t there.”

- Dickens: “Marley was dead, to begin with.”

See the difference? Do we need to know that he loved Isabella? Do we need to know about Freddy and Bob yet? Do we need to know that he’s a banker and a miser and no one really likes him? We will know all of this through the development of the characters and plot once the story gets rolling. All we need to know to start off is that Marley is dead.

Try this with your own manuscript. If you only had three sentences to set up the world with, what three sentences would it be?

2. In and Out
Which leads us to our second point. Think of the first day of school. The teacher has to tell you her name, what the class is, go over the syllabus, get yourself acquainted with the expectations, etc. But all of this is usually done quickly because we need to actually start the class.

When a reader begins your book, you have them for about the first two pages before they’ve made a decision about your work. That’s frustrating, but it’s the truth. How many times have you picked up a book and then put it back down? Books are laborious tasks and not always the cheapest things to invest in. So why would you spend a few days reading a book that doesn’t pull you in from the first chapter? It doesn’t matter how wonderful that scene on page 72 is; we aren’t going to get to page 72 if page 1 isn’t stupendous. Believe me, I have this problem myself. In the book I’m preparing right now, my favorite scene is on page 200. The first forty pages (usually what you send in a query) are not as great as I wish they were. So before I go congratulating myself on page 200, I need to go back and pave the way to that scene.

Thus, with the first pages being crucial, the exposition has to be in and out. Three sentences. One paragraph. Not thirty pages of setting everything up without the plot moving.

Some authors, such as George Orwell, figured out a way around this. Orwell’s whole entire first two chapters of 1984 is setting up his world. However, he has his main character moving and being active while he shows off the world to us. It isn’t just a description, it’s exploration.

3. Let the Reader Discover
There is a universal truth about people; they like to be treated with respect. They also like to discover things for themselves. How many times have you felt like someone is spoon-feeding you information? Probably none of those times was during a read of a very good book. Great authors know that they need to “show, not tell.” Don’t start your book off explaining the world in such great detail that the reader is an expert on the subject. We don’t need a textbook. We need to be immersed into the main character’s head. We need to see it through their eyes and feel smart when we find something out about the world on our own. This makes it personal. This makes us connect.

Two wonderful examples of this is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Stephen King’s The Green Mile. Lee does what Mark Twain does in a lot of his novels; use a child as a protagonist in order to discuss difficult adult topics through a child’s innocent eyes. Because Scout doesn’t understand her world completely, we don’t either. But we discover it along with Scout, thus making Scout our best friend instead of some sort of informer or forced character that we have no connection to. Stephen King does it a little different in The Green Mile; there were specific facts that he needed to share with us about Louisiana in the 1930′s, about electric chairs, about death row, etc. However, when he has to tell us the exposition of how John Coffey ended up in prison, he gives Paul Edgecombe a report to read, and Paul has a viceral reaction to the report. It pushes the story forward, both through plot and character. And aside from the exposition, we don’t know everything about the world. We don’t know how Paul is still alive eighty years later. We don’t know why John Coffey is so odd. There are questions unanswered because Paul hasn’t got all the answers.

4. Clarity and Focus
This pertains to something touched in the first point. Think back to Sally. Why did we need to know about Sally in order to get Jane and Tom’s story out? We didn’t. This is a pitfall that happens to the best of writers when they’re world creating, especially in fantasy and sci-fi. We get so excited about creating a world that we have notes upon notes about what each character’s favorite food is, why they wear what they wear, what the correct protocol for exiting a room is on the planet of Zuba … none of this really matters if your thesis to your story has absolutely nothing to do with exiting a room. When giving us the exposition, keep it simple. And don’t only keep it simple, but have it guide us in the right direction.

Look at Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. He begins his story by establishing that Huck is best friends with Tom, Huck is uncivilized, and a widow has taken Huck in and is attempting to civilize him. Why is it important that this is the exposition we get? Because the entirety of the story is about Huck teetering between the “uncivilized” and “civilized” way of doing things. There is the constant anxiety of doing right and going to Heaven and doing wrong and going to Hell. At the end, on the very last page, Twain’s still very focused on this thesis when he book-ends the story by having Huck run away and go west.

Exposition needs to be short, to the point, and involved with the plot and the reader’s discovery. It’s hard starting the engines to a story, but if done well, the rest of the book will stand on very strong legs.

There is a lot that happens when writing a book. You’ll read books that tell you the same advice, such as “don’t use had beens or have beens,” and “make sure your character changes in some way.” But I can’t count how many times I’ve finished a manuscript and couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with what I’d just done. Here are three things you may not have thought of, but need to keep in mind.

Do the characters sound the same?
Sometimes our voices come across beautifully in our prose. However, sometimes that prose is not written from our own voice but our character’s. Perhaps your book is from different perspectives of different characters. And regardless what your perspective may be, I can assume you will have different voices in your dialogue. It isn’t enough to give them different accents, nor is it enough to give them a saying, like “That’s all aces!” You have to make them separate people with separate language.

Metaphors and Similes of Doom
Do you really actually need that metaphor that you just used? Did it work like Ray Bradbury or did it just come off like a self-congratulatory undergrad? I know that we as writers have been conditioned to use imagery and figurative language whenever our brain can muster it up, but do you really need to say that she’s dressed like someone who is eloping in the thirties? Can’t you just say she’s wearing an old fashioned but pretty coat? What does that metaphor do to further your thesis along? I know you’re proud of it, but why must we read it? Make sure that everything you say on the page is relevant.

The Implications of the World
I went back and looked at an old sci-fi I wrote when I was nine. Let me preface this by saying I was nine. But the “bad guy” in the book had missed out on the mayorship of a town, and the book opens with a little boy and girl running down the street to the little boy’s father’s medical practice. Suddenly the little boy stops and says they shouldn’t go in; the bad guy’s inside talking to his father. In the middle of reading this, I realized this sounded a lot like a mob boss collecting money or intimidating in some way. I had never thought of that connection before, and I’d missed out on some really cool storytelling because of it. But it goes further than developing your main story. You have to think with your peripherals. For example, how does the action of our hero affect a man two blocks away? If Iron Man blows a building apart trying to fight the aliens, how does that affect the people inside? If a woman throws a coffee cup at her boyfriend’s head in a diner, how does that affect the waitress serving them? This makes your world a much more realized tale, and it will feel a lot richer to the audience.

What other small tidbits have you found creep up in revisions?

I’m going to get to my point, I promise. But first, I must regale you with a story. Once upon a time, I moved to Chicago.

It was a glorious time, made of L trains and freezing winters and odd smells emoting from the alleyways. But then I moved away, and was a Chicagoan no more.

Recently, I was able to return to Chicago and walk amongst the living as the one thing Chicagoans hate more than ketchup on hot dogs: a tourist.

Now most of us in the Midwest have made the sojourn to the lovely little Windy City to taste the deep dish and partake in the Navy Pier gift shop. But not all of us have lived there. Coming from my personal experience of being an outsider, then being a resident, then once again being an outsider, I can tell you there is a definite difference between visiting the city and living in the city.

My first memory of Chicago came in the third grade, when my parents took us on a whirlwind vacation. I remember driving down Ohio Street in our rental van, looking up through the tip of the window and realizing that the Woodmen Tower in Omaha was very small compared to the rest of the world. I remember the street artists with the trash can drums blazing my ears as we turned the corner into the parking garage for DisneyQuest.

I remember the Field Museum and taking the trolley to the Museum of Science and Industry. I remember all of the cool things inside those museums. I remember parking our car near Grant Park and me looking up to the skyline and thinking, “K.A. Applegate lives there. Important people live there.” But most of all, I remember Navy Pier with all of its shops and yummy restaurants and brilliant view of the city.

Ten years later, I lived there.

My memories of Chicago as a Chicagoan do not match up with my tourist recollections. I went to the Field Museum on a whopping two occasions. Navy Pier, which was always a staple of any family vacation to the Second City, was a bane of existence for most people actually living in the Second City. It was out of the way, it was crowded with slow walking people, and all of the restaurants (even the McDonald’s) was overpriced. The only reason why any of us would ever go to Navy Pier was to partake in the amazing IMAX movie theater for such premieres as The Watchmen, 300, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

No, the infamous Bean and Millennium Park barely came into play. And there’s a reason for this disconnect between visiting and living.

Chicago is really divided into four portions: North Side, West Side, South Side, and in the middle of it all the Loop. People visiting never usually go past the Loop. And if they go past the Loop, it’s because they know someone who lives on the North Side and can take them to that swank concert in that swank coffee shop near Southport.

But usually tourists’ view of Chicago is limited by the park downtown, the big fancy buildings, and the pretty Christmas lights on Michigan Avenue and State.

But my memories are speckled with another city.

For me as a resident, Chicago was not big buildings. It was sitting in a living room and playing Cranium with some lifelong friends I’d only just met. It was being late to class because I’d overslept. It was losing forty pounds at the gym over the course of a season. It was my first heartbreak with a guy I shouldn’t have been dating. It was eating Domino’s Pizza and watching The Office and Parks and Rec with the neighbor upstairs who picked me up and put me back together every time I fell. It was paying back a ticket to a comedy show with providing meals at the crappy McD’s down the street. It was discovering graphic novels, attending my first play reading, freaking out when my grandmother had to go into heart surgery, sitting in the park with my high school best friend and talking about him wanting to go to medical school. It was Starbucks cookies I shouldn’t have eaten, and that Greek restaurant I should have gotten around to trying. It was working on the South Side every Wednesday and being there one Halloween and watching the adorable costumes parade by.

But most of all, it was my best friend. Someone who spent hours talking about book plots and dissecting Harry Potter, and the closest thing I ever had to a sister. 

When I returned to Chicago last summer for a quick visit, a lot of those people were still there. I stayed with my lifelong friends and we had a rousing time at Giordano’s eating unhealthy deep dish. And it was great. But when I stepped away from them on the last day and took my bags down to Union Station, I stopped in Millennium Park and I was no different than the people with cameras snapping silly photos of themselves in the Bean. I looked up to the skyline and I couldn’t imagine that three years ago, this was my home. 

My apartment with the movie posters and the dirty kitchen was gone. Most of my friends had moved away to bigger and better things. My neighbor lived in Milwaukee. The boy who had broken my heart had disappeared to God knows where. My high school best friend was nothing more than a forgotten phone number. And the closest thing I had to a sister was hundreds of miles away from this place.

It was back to being a postcard.

So why do I tell you about where I lived? Because I read an amazing article today that talked about the difference between good world creation and awful world creation. When you create a world, you cannot be a tourist. I assure you, there was not a day I lived in Chicago and thought about the Chicago Fire or the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. You’ll hear that crap on the tours, but when you step off the double-decker bus and put your fancy camera down, you’ll start to see ordinary life.

Teenagers with backpacks on the platform waiting to get to school. Women trying not to cry on their way to work because some stupid jerk just shattered their world. Little girls and boys with nannies or their parents rushing to get to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Stuffy college kids walking around in scarves and ironic glasses with their frappes talking about the latest philosophy. Businessmen who walk too fast. Friends going out for a pizza run.

And I assure you, not a one of them is reflecting on the fact that they live in Chicago, which is the third largest city in the United States and was founded by fur traders. Not a one of them thinks it’s weird to get on an L train and go to work. They do not sit there and narrate to themselves, “We are on the Elevated Train and how odd we do not take cars! But back in the 1900′s, someone had this brilliant idea to put an electrical system on a —” no. They take the L. There’s construction on the rails. They’re already running behind, and now they’re going to miss their meeting. I assure you, all they’re thinking about is how much this sucks.

So when you step into your created world, do not have the characters think about the Loop. Do not have them go to the fancy hubs and talk about how fancy they all are. They are not original in their minds. They are just people in a place that are doing life-y things.

Let’s take an example.

A group of humans escape earth right before an asteroid hits. They get on a clunker of a space ship and zoom off to find another world. Years pass, and another world is not found. Three generations in, these people are still living on this clunker and that’s just the world.

A girl around the age of twelve is your protagonist. She has never known Earth, and neither has her grandmother. She lives on the clunker.

Let’s look at two examples of how to go about introducing the world.

Tourist Perspective:

Willow looked out of the Persephone’s small, rusted window to space. It had been one hundred and fifty years since Earth, and still nothing had come but more space. Sometimes a planet here and there, but nothing more than that. She sighed and pushed the buttons on the wall’s Inner-Communication panel, which would connect her to the kitchen below.

On the Persephone, the kitchen was conducted by Chef Maggie, who tried her hardest to fulfill the orders of all twenty-thousand on board. Of course she wasn’t by herself in this endeavor, but still Willow guessed it was difficult to feed twenty-thousand people a day, even with a kitchen staff and a new IronChef-3000, which was the newest contraption Maggie could get before the Persephone left the planet.

Willow put her order in and went to getting dressed in her military-issued tunic. It looked like everyone else’s tunic. But the President said it would make things simpler for them, and what else could they really ask for? It had been over a century.

Now looking at this example, we have a lot of information about the world, but what do we know about Willow? Is this what a twelve-year-old would think getting out of bed in the morning? We are acting as a tourist on this ship, not actually living there and making it real.

Let’s try again.

Resident Example:

Willow did not feel hungry when she woke. The InnerCom kept beeping at her to put in the breakfast order, but she ignored its incessant whining as she stared out the black window stuck in a nervous anxiety. Her brain liked to zoom around in circles when she got stuck. Her mother had instructed her to breathe the last time an attack had come, but this was worse than any attack she’d had before. She didn’t deserve to breathe.

Willow saw Bryan’s face, frozen in time, staring at her with those big eyes and that forlorn look of betrayal. And there was Zacharia and Weston and the rest of the boys, laughing at Bryan and throwing scrap metal at him. She saw it over and over again. There had never been any difference between Bryan and the other boys before yesterday. They dressed in the same tunic, they liked the same music, they sat at the same table in the mess hall. But now,  because of Willow and her big mouth, Bryan was different.

“You promised,” he’d said as she helped him to his feet. The boys were gone now, but scrap metal had gouged Bryan’s cheek and he was bleeding. “You promised you wouldn’t say anything!”

Willow took him to the closest infirmary she could find, which was all the way on Deck Two. It was a long walk, made even longer by their silence.

“Enter breakfast choice!” the InnerCom now screeched at her.

But Willow just stuffed her face and ears into her pillow and tried to go back to sleep.

What’s the real difference between these two scenes? In one, we figure out what Willow’s deal is. We meet the characters and get inside the head of a twelve-year-old girl as she would be. Us living in America do not get up every morning and think, “Our descendants moved here from somewhere else. There was a grand revolution! We are under King George no more!” That was 250 years ago. We care more about what we’re going to eat for dinner and whether or not the people we love are doing okay. And we also don’t call things by their full, formal names. We do not say, “Get on your cellular device and telephone him!” We say, “Call him” or “Can I borrow your phone?” or “Where’s your cell?” Because we’re real people.

Don’t just visit your world. Live there. Don’t just give us Millennium Park and the history of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Give us that night where you were heart-broken because of some stupid guy, and your upstairs neighbor invited you over for pizza and introduced you to Leslie Knope.

That’s where the real story lies.