Committing Murder... Of Your Characters

[Desiderius Price]

2 hours ago, CloverReef said:

I love horror fantasy fusions. But yeah, I absolutely believe you can be super attached to your characters and empathize with them yet still be more than happy to slaughter the fuck out of them. Doesn’t mean you’re less attached than someone who wouldn’t hurt their characters, I think it just means that you made a difficult decision, or like the more emotionally driven writers like me, let the story sweep you away and did what it demanded. 

 

“I’ll take deranged psychopathic schizophrenic serial killers for a thousand, Alex.”

As always, it depends on the story being told.  Also, with how I write my stories, death is a part of life, as I was reminded of earlier this year.  I also generally opt for simple means, gunshot, electrocution, etc, not overly complicated in the method.

[Sinfulwolf]

8 hours ago, CloverReef said:

I love horror fantasy fusions. But yeah, I absolutely believe you can be super attached to your characters and empathize with them yet still be more than happy to slaughter the fuck out of them. Doesn’t mean you’re less attached than someone who wouldn’t hurt their characters, I think it just means that you made a difficult decision, or like the more emotionally driven writers like me, let the story sweep you away and did what it demanded. 

Well I just hope I succeeded in an erotic horror/fantasy fusion. ]

As @Desiderius Price has, death is part of life in my stories. I tend to go less simple. Even a gunshot makes a hell of a mess. I personally feel its what makes my stories mine.

I’m curious though if others find that a messy death can make a character’s death less emotionally impactful. I don’t think so myself, but there’s always various opinions out there.

[CloverReef]

19 minutes ago, Sinfulwolf said:

Well I just hope I succeeded in an erotic horror/fantasy fusion. ]

As @Desiderius Price has, death is part of life in my stories. I tend to go less simple. Even a gunshot makes a hell of a mess. I personally feel its what makes my stories mine.

I’m curious though if others find that a messy death can make a character’s death less emotionally impactful. I don’t think so myself, but there’s always various opinions out there.

I personally think long, creative and messy doesn’t necessarily take away from the emotional impact. Gratuitousness miiight in some cases, depending on how it’s written. The most important thing to me, when I write a death scene where I want emotional impact, is if it’s breaking my heart to write it. I need it to break my heart if I want it to break the hearts of my readers. 

I tend to favour the messy stuff, but that comes from my horror background. Messy can make a spiral out of control more powerful and put a spotlight on raw, messy emotions. If you wanna get philosophical about it, it can be a metaphor for a lot of other emotional things going on in the story.

Personally I like my death scenes real intimate and raw. Though I don’t think I get all that complicated either. (Scene in bathroom = heavy soapdish to the head) Something that happens spontaneously to normal people who don’t have guns just hanging around, so in the heat of the moment, they have to improvise, or they’re giant winged monsters and everything they do is messy anyway, lol. I can’t say I’ve done a lot of death-by-gun bits. At least not with main characters. It usually doesn’t make sense for the circumstances I lay out, or the settings. If I wrote about gangsters or cops or hunters (or republicans?) more, I probably would.

[Sinfulwolf]

I write soldiers a fair bit, so guns are around often enough.

[Desiderius Price]

6 hours ago, CloverReef said:

I personally think long, creative and messy doesn’t necessarily take away from the emotional impact. Gratuitousness miiight in some cases, depending on how it’s written. The most important thing to me, when I write a death scene where I want emotional impact, is if it’s breaking my heart to write it. I need it to break my heart if I want it to break the hearts of my readers. 

I tend to favour the messy stuff, but that comes from my horror background. Messy can make a spiral out of control more powerful and put a spotlight on raw, messy emotions. If you wanna get philosophical about it, it can be a metaphor for a lot of other emotional things going on in the story.

Personally I like my death scenes real intimate and raw. Though I don’t think I get all that complicated either. (Scene in bathroom = heavy soapdish to the head) Something that happens spontaneously to normal people who don’t have guns just hanging around, so in the heat of the moment, they have to improvise, or they’re giant winged monsters and everything they do is messy anyway, lol. I can’t say I’ve done a lot of death-by-gun bits. At least not with main characters. It usually doesn’t make sense for the circumstances I lay out, or the settings. If I wrote about gangsters or cops or hunters (or republicans?) more, I probably would.

Like tags, for every rule I make, I break.  Messy can be fine for the story, or not, depends on the impact even though I do tend to keep the means simple (ie, not tying victim to a draw bridge and waiting for the next tall boat to come through, causing the nearby cyanide-gas filled chandelier to break in response to an elephant rampage).

i do measure the desired impact on my characters.  I did have one scene where I was going to have my main character witness a thousand being massacred, but had to change it so he’d only see a couple, because I figured a thousand would really screw him up, even a couple will haunt him.

[CloverReef]

6 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

Like tags, for every rule I make, I break.  Messy can be fine for the story, or not, depends on the impact even though I do tend to keep the means simple (ie, not tying victim to a draw bridge and waiting for the next tall boat to come through, causing the nearby cyanide-gas filled chandelier to break in response to an elephant rampage).

i do measure the desired impact on my characters.  I did have one scene where I was going to have my main character witness a thousand being massacred, but had to change it so he’d only see a couple, because I figured a thousand would really screw him up, even a couple will haunt him.

Absolutely. I think it depends on the story and the impact I’m going for too. I just touched on messy in response to the comment before mine. I like quick and clean just as much as messy; it always depends on what’s right for the particular story. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy writing the messy ones best. 

[Desiderius Price]

3 minutes ago, CloverReef said:

Absolutely. I think it depends on the story and the impact I’m going for too. I just touched on messy in response to the comment before mine. I like quick and clean just as much as messy; it always depends on what’s right for the particular story. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy writing the messy ones best. 

The grisliest in my stories has to be the woodchipper.  (If you google right, you can get the coroner’s report to a real one.)  Though I’ve used trains, chainsaws, and, of course, bullets.  Electrocutions, unfortunately, leave no mess (which was good at the time, I didn’t want to get blood into the furniture beneath the victim, gotta save that!)

[Sinfulwolf]

52 minutes ago, Desiderius Price said:

The grisliest in my stories has to be the woodchipper.  (If you google right, you can get the coroner’s report to a real one.)  Though I’ve used trains, chainsaws, and, of course, bullets.  Electrocutions, unfortunately, leave no mess (which was good at the time, I didn’t want to get blood into the furniture beneath the victim, gotta save that!)

They can, from what I’ve learned from my father who works as an underground electrician. Not only can burns be nasty, but he’s had groundhogs get decapitated when they get into substations. Electricity moving through the body can cause both entry and exit wounds, and those wounds can go quite deep. While not always visible on the surface, it certainly can be.

[Desiderius Price]

6 minutes ago, Sinfulwolf said:

They can, from what I’ve learned from my father who works as an underground electrician. Not only can burns be nasty, but he’s had groundhogs get decapitated when they get into substations. Electricity moving through the body can cause both entry and exit wounds, and those wounds can go quite deep. While not always visible on the surface, it certainly can be.

In the case of the electrocution, it was premeditated while also trying to have it be masked as “natural”, so big wounds would be a give-away that it wasn’t natural.

Edited July 13, 2018 by Desiderius Price

[Sinfulwolf]

2 minutes ago, Desiderius Price said:

In the case of the electrocution, it was premeditated while also trying to have it be masked as “natural”, so big wounds would be a give-away that it wasn’t natural.

Not necessarily. An accident in a substation, or from a transformer (the electrical devices, not the robots in disguise), can cause from very very serious wounds. However, I don’t know all the specific details of your particular case. I just wanted to state that electricity, even by accident, or perhaps especially when it’s an accident due to the massive amounts of power that’s in certain devices, can make messes.

[Desiderius Price]

5 minutes ago, Sinfulwolf said:

Not necessarily. An accident in a substation, or from a transformer (the electrical devices, not the robots in disguise), can cause from very very serious wounds. However, I don’t know all the specific details of your particular case. I just wanted to state that electricity, even by accident, or perhaps especially when it’s an accident due to the massive amounts of power that’s in certain devices, can make messes.

Yep, I’ve plenty of stories about instant BBQd squirrel bits.  So high voltage can most definitely do interesting things.   In my story case, I simply needed a murder, and the killer knew what he was doing, so it was relatively clean, so to speak.

[Sinfulwolf]

9 minutes ago, Desiderius Price said:

Yep, I’ve plenty of stories about instant BBQd squirrel bits.  So high voltage can most definitely do interesting things.   In my story case, I simply needed a murder, and the killer knew what he was doing, so it was relatively clean, so to speak.

That’s fair. It's all what works in the context needed.

[Desiderius Price]

Just now, Sinfulwolf said:

That’s fair. It's all what works in the context needed.

Yep, sometimes it’s a clean electrocution, other times, we’re tossing the nun into the woodchipper.

[Sinfulwolf]

It was a nun? Oh dear oh heavens me! 

[Desiderius Price]

1 hour ago, Sinfulwolf said:

It was a nun? Oh dear oh heavens me! 

Move along, nun-thing to see here ….

[InvidiaRed]

On 6/3/2018 at 11:33 AM, Tcr said:

So, let’s not pretend this is me having an epiphany…  This is me procrastinating with a good question…  lol.

So, as I come to the end to one of the many stories I have here…  The major climax that leads to the denouement and subsequent finale and goodbye is becoming a pain in the ass to write.  I’ve been finding myself having trouble writing some deaths of characters that are both minor and major characters in the tale and have, hopefully, been good enough to warrant someone actually cheering for survival…  It’s problematic…  on every level.

So, my question, since I’m going to make a wild assumption that everyone grows attached to their characters (...we’re writers, I’m pretty sure we all do this…  Even Bob...)…  How do you all murder your characters?  Do you struggle with it?  Prefer it quick and simple as the end grows near or do you prefer long, drawn out deaths?  Do you find yourselves procrastinating?  Or is just an easy decision, like putting toast in the toaster?

Well I usually use a pillow.

I’m usually rather forward with it.  Made them fall down a flight of stairs. Falling off a building onto exposed rebar. Drowning by concrete. Hurled from a vehicle straight into a wood chipper(no seatbelt) Kissed by death, devoured by a pack of feral cats,  Entombed with a mummy, Mummified by natural exposure, Having their heart summoned directly from their chest in front of their family.  Having their clothes inverted into their insides. Curses aging them into dust and last but not least

having that bitch thrown out an airlock and then blasted by the ship’s primary weapon.

Some characters are just meant to die. Others may not have intentionally been marked for death but the story just goes that direction.  If I do like the character they should get a proper send off. Lots of foreshadowing. I’m not that much of a monster to heartlessly not give the character advance notice.

Sometimes you start off liking a character but then they evolve in ways you don’t forsee and then you hate them with a passion that no star could match. These characters are bound for final destination deaths with as much spite as possible with all speed. Authors like it or not can pretty much be naught but spiteful deities.

It depends on the character and the situation. There’s only been a handful of characters i’ve written who did what they set out to do. They knew they weren’t coming back… But they went anyway. Those ones I have the most trouble trying to keep them alive short of divine intervention. It would be rude to ignore that inherent nobility. Even if they have gruesome ends Valhalla awaits.

 

Edited July 22, 2018 by InvidiaRed
clarity

[Desiderius Price]

6 hours ago, InvidiaRed said:

Some characters are just meant to die. Others may not have intentionally been marked for death but the story just goes that direction.  If I do like the character they should get a proper send off. Lots of foreshadowing. I’m not that much of a monster to heartlessly not give the character advance notice.

I also like to give any more likable condemned a nice send off as well, a final meal/sex/etc… though it does feel a bit mean spirited, great sex, now here’s my “treat” for you,

[InvidiaRed]

3 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

I also like to give any more likable condemned a nice send off as well, a final meal/sex/etc… though it does feel a bit mean spirited, great sex, now here’s my “treat” for you,

Ah yes. Here’s the greatest sex of your life…

Now prepare to kiss the front end of a bus with failing brakes.

I disagree it would be more mean spirited to not include any such thing would make that world more of one drowning in ennui and half empty.

[Sinfulwolf]

Succubus end?

[Arian-Sinclair]

14 hours ago, Sinfulwolf said:

Succubus end?

Where a daemon sucks someone off just before that poor sap(the someone) gets hit by a bus. 

[Desiderius Price]

19 minutes ago, Arian-Sinclair said:

Where a daemon sucks someone off just before that poor sap(the someone) gets hit by a bus. 

End of the (bus) line....

[Sinfulwolf]

12 hours ago, Arian-Sinclair said:

Where a daemon sucks someone off just before that poor sap(the someone) gets hit by a bus. 

Heh, I was going for the old fashioned pulling out the soul thing through sex. But that works too I suppose.

[Arian-Sinclair]

13 hours ago, Sinfulwolf said:

Heh, I was going for the old fashioned pulling out the soul thing through sex. But that works too I suppose.

I know. I just couldn’t resist turning it into a pun. Hahaha~

[InvidiaRed]

On 6/16/2018 at 2:40 AM, Desiderius Price said:

“oopsie”

Yeah, I think these characters might have grounds to sue us for emotional distress…

Its not like their sun is gonna suddenly explode. Or their reality ends with a total vacuum collapse.

[InvidiaRed]

On 7/22/2018 at 3:09 PM, Sinfulwolf said:

Succubus end?

I’d go with with either sudden fatal aging, collapse into dust route. Or a slow decline as friends and family notice. Or A kiss of death. Or sucking the soul out of them.