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DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
Thanks back! One of the all time greats and in my top 20 faves of all time.
There are very few things that will incite me to violence. Saying the Princess Bride is stupid happens to be one of them.
Thanks back! One of the all time greats and in my top 20 faves of all time.
Some good points are being brought up about unnecessary death/shock value deaths/etc.
I have read plenty of books that kill characters off or have horrible things happen for shock value, to make the story grittier, etc, and i've hated that. Dark and gritty is trendy right now. Cynicism and pessimism is in. Happy endings and heroes are out. I think GRRM has made being a cruel writer glamorous.
I guess so. But like I said isn't it needed to have that gritty feeling to the story? Maybe not if your writing about party for the king, but what about a war? I would think so.
Has anyone tried having a gritty theme, while still having a happy ending? I'm shooting for that, but we'll see how it turns out.
It's possible to set a gritty tone for the story without cheap, unnecessary killing and violence. Death, is, yes, often necessary to a gritty tone...but I think there's a right and a wrong way to do it.
Recently, i read a book (which i've quit now) that tried to maintain the gritty atmosphere by constantly mentioning and discussing rape. It was handled in a very flippant and tasteless manner. All the females were constantly threatened with rape, evil characters were shown to be evil by making rape threats. It was distasteful and handled badly, and there would have been much better ways to give that atmosphere. The worst part was i didn't even feel scared for the female characters or angry at the evil characters--it didn't improve my investment in the story or the characters. It was just gross and annoying.
A whole other discussion could be devoted to this. I might start one.
There are very few things that will incite me to violence. Saying the Princess Bride is stupid happens to be one of them.
Same here. That's when I unleash my R.O.U.S. on them.
Comparatively though, Guy Gavriel Kay and David Gemmell have wrote some wonderful books that would be far less, imo, without a character death. Gemmell in particular has racked up some huge body counts as well, but never while feeling boring.
Even with books set in a war, there is a huge range of possible tones. Sure, it can't be balloons and picnics, but you can have fairly light-hearted adventure fiction, or you can have heart of darkness stuff with death, rape, betrayal, maiming and everything everywhere. And lots of space in between.
On killing and cruelty to characters -
I have to say, Martin is who I had in mind, largely because I have put SoIaF down. Halfway through the last one, I twigged Jon was going to get his, turned to the back, saw I was right and put the book down *BUT*
I probably wouldn't have done that if the other non-Tyrion characters were amusing me. They weren't. My reaction wasn't solely to a diet of death.
Comparatively though, Guy Gavriel Kay and David Gemmell have wrote some wonderful books that would be far less, imo, without a character death. Gemmell in particular has racked up some huge body counts as well, but never while feeling boring.
I have a minor character sentenced to die by scaphism. We don't see it, but it gets explained to him.
>It's possible to set a gritty tone for the story without cheap, unnecessary killing and violence.
I think the converse is true as well. It's possible to have characters die without necessarily writing a grimdark type story. Some deaths can be done elegantly, movingly, even comically. It all lies in the hands of the author.
But I don't get too emotional. Oddly, I have, to a degree, with animals. I have a young girl who appears a few times in my novel, and I gave her a Roman war dog (they are both orphans, of a sort). Very early in developing her plot line I arbitrarily decided there's no way I'm killing this dog. It felt cruel.
OTOH, there's another place where I slaughter a whole mess of animals--basically all the four-footeds who would travel with an army. The sacrifice is necessary in the plot, and I try to handle the scene with some sensitivity. I don't show the actual slaughter. But it did make me feel ... uneasy? Unsure? I know I revisited the scene a few times to make sure I really did feel it was needed.
OTOOH, I have a couple of tertiary characters who keep dying and not dying during rewrites. They just aren't important enough to kill, and not important to leave alive either. They may wind up being written out entirely. Authorial limbo.
For me, all must bow to the great god Story. Characters may live or die, but always in service of Story.
Was I the only one who googled that and now needs mind bleach?