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Are You a Cruel Writer?

I'd like to ask everyone: are you a cruel writer? And just how cruel are you?

By that, I mean how do you treat your characters? Are you the kind of writer for whom it's heartbreaking to have to hurt your characters? Or do you glory in piling on the pain, going on killing sprees, making your characters suffer? Do you hurt when your characters hurt and cry all the way through your death scenes or do you pump your fists in the air with glee when you've thought of a horribly cruel, emotionally traumatizing plot twist?

Some writers hate killing people off. Some recognize the necessity. And some, well...NO ONE is safe in the world of some. Some writers can't stand hurting their characters. Some, on the other hand, seem to love it.

How do you decide whether to kill a character? Do you believe in happy endings for your characters? (Do you believe in them in real life?) Are you the sort to scar and handicap and mutilate (mentally or physically), or do your MC's generally escape permanent damage? Would you kill the love interest, the main character, the main character's dog, etc...is anyone safe from your reaper's scythe?

All good questions...so, where do you fall, on a scale of rainbows and puppies to Game of Thrones...
 
Lol, for me if the plot calls for a character to die, it's goodbye. Like my thread I just posted, I'm trying to see if I can save that character. But if I can't, they die. I recognize the necessity, but that doesn't mean I don't want to do it, I have favorite characters, and I'd like to see them live happy lives. Hard to do when writing Fantasy and in the middle of a war.

No one can escape my scythe. I have a distant thought of killing my MC's love interest, but I don't want to do it. But If there is a good situation that calls for it, I'll do it.

I think I fall very close to Game of Thrones.
 
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Ireth

Myth Weaver
Between puppies/rainbows and Game of Thrones, I'm definitely somewhere in the middle. Whether I gleefully plot mayhem and pain or bring out the kleenex as I prep a character for death depends entirely on my mood (and sometimes I can do both at the same time).

A few of the non-antagonists I have killed have been resurrected by magic (99% of these are vampires who came back as humans), while others are dead for good. I have also spared some whom I'd originally slated for death, whether because it was more fitting for someone else to die in their stead, or because they did something unexpected to prove their goodness or bravery and change my mind to let them change fully from villain to hero. (One character has both lived to find redemption and died as a villain in two converging continuities.)

There are certain characters in my mind who are off-limits as far as death goes, while non-lethal suffering is par for the course. I have maimed several characters, usually robbing them of an eye (or both) or a hand. Some regain their lost appendages by magic, while another gets a magical substitute that works almost as well; others have mundane replacements that serve only to fill the space.

One character among my "unkillables" went through an incident in his early adulthood that didn't even leave him injured, but still had a scarring effect on his psyche. The incident itself made him mistrustful, even bigoted, against the people-group who caused the incident; the aftermath, which involved a two-month stint in a psych ward, left him with PTSD and possible chronic anxiety, which often plays off his mistrust as well. Thankfully his mistrust does lessen throughout the story, and he eventually forgives one of the three who caused the incident in the first place. (The second died after the incident, and the third is nowhere to be found, even if she wants forgiveness.)

I generally refrain from killing close families/friends or love interests. If I do, then it's always for a plot purpose, most often to start off a story. One character was killed on page two of her book, and her disembodied spirit became stuck in the head of her twin brother due to a magical accident; finding a way to set her free is the whole basis of the plot. Another was killed to establish the antagonists of the novel, and so his best friend's grief (and subsequent near-murderous freakout against an innocent third party who had tried and failed to ave the friend) could show his current personality and mindset, laying the foundation for character development and redemption. Yet another was betrayed and murdered by his best friend, who had lusted after his wife (and a hitch in the plot resulted in said wife being killed as well).

I don't think I've ever killed someone's pet. Probably because very few of my characters actually have pets at all.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Valar morghulis... with the occasional puppy whimper of sadness when the scene is real good, heh heh. But no character with solid time spent developing them dies without a reason. I think I had three POV characters die in 125k words... One good, one bad... and one debatable. Killing the love interest's mentor/father figure... okay, some argue she is the Protag not the love interest... was painful and poignant for me, so hopefully it comes across for readers.
 
I often have to remind my characters to not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

I am pretty cold when I need to kill a character. I take no joy in it, but I don't cry. I don't get attached. I'm a cold hearted SoB when it comes to my writing. I try to put my character's through their own personal wringers, but that's all to benefit the story and the reader. Sometimes my characters look up from the page and this scene plays out:


Instead of Gotham though I am my character's reckoning.
 
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Ireth

Myth Weaver
A few of the non-antagonists I have killed have been resurrected by magic (99% of these are vampires who came back as humans), while others are dead for good. I have also spared some whom I'd originally slated for death, whether because it was more fitting for someone else to die in their stead, or because they did something unexpected to prove their goodness or bravery and change my mind to let them change fully from villain to hero. (One character has both lived to find redemption and died as a villain in two converging continuities.).

Correction here since I can't edit the post: Meant to say diverging in the last sentence, not converging. ^^;
 

Gurkhal

Auror
I'll happily kill characters if it serves the plot but I know that I have a flaw of having a bleeding heart when it comes to killing main characters because I've invested so much time in them. But its a flaw I hope to correct.
 

AElisabet

Scribe
I'm hard on my characters, but more emotionally and mentally. There isn't much physical violence in my WIP (except in tale and memory) until the end. But I put my characters in emotionally brutal situations and I do enjoy thinking about how I can turn those up to eleven.

At the end of part 1 a bunch of major characters (including both MCs) are murdered, though not really creatively. I have no imagination for the actual means of violence and little interest in it. Swords and daggers are enough for me. My focus is more on the cruelty of the emotions, reasons, and consequences for the violence rather than how it happens.

I feel sad about the characters I kill off, but I feel just as sad, if not more so, for the characters who are left behind to deal with the consequences. The hardest are the characters who go from decent or even good over to the dark side as a result of who gets killed and why.

Two of the characters who are killed - the MCs - are brought back, but they are so estranged from the ones the love and supernaturally changed from who they were that I don't think its a cop out. They eventually get a bittersweet ending in part 2.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Killing a character off just to serve the plot is potentially problematic if the author doesn't think things through. I recently read a book that I quite liked, but one of the characters I was fond off died stupidly. Throughout the book, she's resourceful, self-sufficient, street smart, and so on. At the point where she dies, she does something so stupid that as she's doing it I'm thinking "You idiot, you're going to get killed." That's not good. The impression I was left with was that the author wanted to kill this character to serve the story (and more specifically, a desire for an emotional impact at the end of the story) but did it in such a way that it seemed completely contrived.
 

Peat

Sage
So far the books I've written have not called for much death. That is possibly a subconscious bias on my part. I know I'm a bit bored of some of the big body counts and grimness out there.
 

Nimue

Auror
I make my characters suffer emotionally and physically in pretty much everything I write, but I place a lot of weight on healing and comfort as well. I have no desire to kill off any of my main characters, though I could imagine a plot and character where I might. A good ending is something that doesn't always happen in life, but can be beautifully arrived at in fantasy fiction. I value that.

None of my favorite books kill off their main characters. I don't believe they're missing any depth or emotional height because of that.
 

caters

Sage
If a character dies in my story here are my choices from best to worse:

1) Old Age
2) Disease
3) Cryo(not really a death, just inactivation)
4) Heat
5) Thirst
6) Starvation
7) Murder
8) Suicide

So as you can see, I prefer mild deaths, ones that would happen anyway such as death from disease.

Suicide is my least preferred one and in fact I never write a story with Suicide. I might mention Suicide but that is different.

Cannibalism is a form of suicide so I never write a story about cannibalist humans.

For example, in the first chapter of Life on Kepler Bb, I mention a death. A very emotional one. It is the death of Robin's parents. They both died of disease(Robin's species can't die of old age). I mention that 5 year old Robin has a lot of emotional pain and when he gets physical pain from an accidental lizard bite, the pain increases by a lot. I mention that he passes out from pain.

But you see here, even the part where the death is mentioned is mild compared to those dark stories. Mainly because the death itself is mild and emotional pain is the only side effect.

So that is just to reinforce that I prefer mild deaths. Murder and Suicide are completely unnecessary deaths, especially purposeful ones.

Thirst and Starvation are also unnecessary but they are natural so those are milder.

Same goes for heat except that this is even milder due to some people adapting to the heat and others not so.

The cryo is very mild and is often purposeful(Keeping humans from aging after x generations). However because it is rare, it is a 3 instead of a 0. This isn't really a death but it is kind of like one.

The old age and disease happen to almost everyone so those are extremely mild deaths with only emotional pain as a side effect.
 
I am not. I see it, when I kill off a main or side character as showing that the book is real, there is danger, and people can die.

A while back, while reading a very entertaining book, I encountered the same problem that happened to Steerpike, a favorite character died, for something that could of been avoided, but the author killed the character anyway, just to make a point, that I the reader, already knew. I was pretty mad, but continued reading and bought the next book in the series. Lol, I then read as the author went about killing more characters of value, even going so far as to blind one of my favorite character, by giving him a slash with a sword to the eyes. I never learned did I?

At a side note, I don't have planned any "Returning from the dead" stuff, if the character really does die. No magic revivals for them. However I do have some characters with a few murky death scenes, old enemies, lost allies, that I do have in future them returning, since they never were actually killed.
 
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.
 
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