[Image: Death in the Sickroom, by Edvard Munch]
Well, now. Could that title be any starker? Maybe it should be all caps?
(Aside to Jules, if you’re reading this: I actually put that header in a marquee tag for a moment. It was just too, too weird.)
Some of the most interesting online content for writers, I believe, can be found at the blog of YA author Livia Blackburne. I don’t think I’ve ever left a comment there (he said, his toe digging at the ground in shame), but from the first visit I was hooked. I’d probably keep returning, if for no reason other than to savor the site’s slogan:
A Brain Scientist’s Take on Writing
How can I resist that? From her “About” page:
By day I’m a neuroscience graduate student at MIT, conducting research on the neural correlates of reading. On evenings and weekends, I write fantasy stories for young adults… I like to take the analytical approach I use for my experiments and apply it towards the process of writing and publishing. This is what I will attempt in this blog: study pieces of writing, break it down into component pieces, and try to see what makes it work.
A recent post offered some interesting peeks into the mind of a reader (Blackburne herself) coming upon a death scene in a novel — and then re-reading it, even though it tore her up on the first pass and continued to do so on the second. I’d love to have that sort of detachment. But if Blackburne is there to provide it, maybe I can just trail along in her wake. Sample advice:
- Emphasize the good qualities of the dying character…
- Draw a connection to a previous tragedy…
More here (caveat: includes spoilers about the book she was reading!).
Tearing up while reading differs from tearing up while watching a movie. There’s no actor onscreen to play with the viewer’s emotional response with facial and gestural signals; no bystanders to cue us — Time to cry now! — with their own tears.
Do you tear up at death scenes in books? Beyond the nine suggestions Livia Blackburne offers, have you found that anything is more likely to trigger that emotion than anything else? Setting? Weather? (Note: your own hormonal fluctuations might have had something to do with it, but RAMH doesn’t ask that sort of question.)
And if you’re a writer, have you had good or bad luck in writing a death scene? If the former: what do you think you did right? If the latter: any idea what went wrong?
Maybe more to the point: how important is it, do you think, to trigger tears when someone in your story dies? What’s the line (fine or otherwise) between wringing honest emotion from a reader and milking it?
I’ve killed a few characters. Most of these deaths have been, well, serviceable: in a murder mystery, obviously, you’re going to have one or more fatalities — often (usually?) characters whom the reader doesn’t know very well. I might have pushed for tears even there, but the emotional release of the tears would obstruct the emotional release of suspense.
Of the remainder, one — really a death by implication, off-stage — concluded the story of an unrepentantly evil character. I don’t think that counts.
And one scene involved the deaths of not one but two characters. One of these characters, again: not very sympathetic. The other: well, it upset me. I don’t know if that’s a good gauge, though. (Is it?) And I’m not sure what I did particularly right anyhow. I think he was a likable character, and he’d been with me through the whole book. That he’d die should not shock a reader, given what came before. And yet it wasn’t (as they say) writ large upon the wall, either.
Anyone else?
marta says
Yes, I’ve killed off characters. No idea how any reader would respond since I’ve no readers! But I think a lot of emotion depends on the other characters around the character. Who in the book is grieving for the character? I find the scene where one character is told of the death of another to be especially compelling and challenging to write.
John says
marta: That’s an interesting (and now that I think about it, pretty convincing) take on death scenes — that it helps to see how someone else is responding.
I never read Lonesome Dove, and don’t know if you have, or if you’ve seen the old(ish) mini-series with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. But the scene in which Gus (Duvall’s character) dies, especially when he’s talking to Jones’s Woodrow Call and says, It’s been sooooooome party: gets me every time. Especially, I think, because Woodrow’s face is a rigidly controlled unemotional mask.
Oh, and jeez, also at the end of just about any production of Our Town. Emily’s only “real” interaction is with the Stage Manager but ye gods… I often have to be left alone for minutes afterwards.
But books? I’m having a hard time coming up with one that affected me that way. (Which may explain why writing such scenes is tough for me.)
Froog says
I wonder why death scenes are such a special case?
Don’t you also have anxiety about how the reader will respond to… the guy asking the girl out on a date for the first time, the detective missing a really obvious clue, the first kiss, the marriage proposal, the winning home run, the school talent contest?
I guess I have a rather Zen approach to this. Worrying too much about how you tell the story stops you telling the story. Worrying too much about how your readers may respond to how you’re telling the story stops you telling the story. Just tell the story – see what happens.
John says
Froog: oh, where’s your sense of mystery, man? Must we always be so… practical??? Picking at questions with no useful answer is an essential part of the writer’s toolkit!
Kidding. (Well, sort of.)
But I do think there’s something special about death scenes vs. those other sorts, just as there’s something special about death itself vs. other experiences. “How to write a convincing and non-manipulative first-kiss scene” is barely on the same planet of difficulty as “how to write a convincing and non-manipulative death scene.”
And this isn’t only a matter of telling a story. It’s a matter of revising a story, once committed to paper (or hard drive). What elements might a writer want to consider — watch out for, choose to emphasize, etc. — in working on a passage containing a death scene? That process can’t be handled quite so intuitively and Zen-like, although I’ll grant you the need to get rid of as many obstacles (especially intellectual ones!) to the initial creative act.
marta says
@John – I’m a weepfest when it comes to film. I’ll start to tear up just talking about scene that made me tear up. And I still cry even if I’ve seen the film or show many times.
Books…that is harder. I can get more emotional talking about something in a book than when I read the actual scene. But A.S. Byatt’s Possession gave me a hint of tears at the end, and so did the ending of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. And in an article I read the murder scene from The Lovely Bones. I didn’t cry in the reading, but I can’t talk about it.
I haven’t seen Lonesome Dove. But in all my crying–the one film that got me to cry like no other film ever or since–Pan’s Labyrinth. I loved that film and never want to see it again.
Generally though, I never used to cry at movies. Almost never, and then not much. I don’t understand why I can cry at the drop of a hat these days. Motherhood? Hormones? Life experience?
Hmmm…
whaddayamean says
wow. this Livia is incredible. dammit, JES, there goes my productivity quotient for the day! ;)
thanks!
Froog says
Ah, yes, the response of other people to the death: http://youtu.be/zGBTrCZObyA
Froog says
I think the factors affecting how much of an emotional impact the death of fictional characters may have are principally how likable they are, and how long we’ve known them. Whether the death is particularly violent/painful or sudden/unexpected or tragic/undeserved may heighten the emotion somewhat, but I think we’ll be moved by the loss of a well-loved character even if they pass in their sleep at an advanced age.
The classic example from the movies is the death of ‘Goose’, Tom Cruise’s navigator and best friend in Top Gun. It is completely unexpected, a freak accident half-way through the film; and he’s such a thoroughly nice guy. Cruise’s ‘Maverick’ character is kind of annoying, and I don’t think we really care all that much about how upset he is; but we feel devastated to have lost the most appealing character in the story.
Then, of course, you’ve got the issues of presentation: off-stage or on, prefigured or not, other characters become aware how?
But the only thing that really creates the possibility of a strong emotional response in the reader is how much they liked the character.
Froog says
And I disagree about death scenes. Comparatively few good books have them, and in those that do I find them among the least memorable elements – off the top of my head, I honestly can’t think of a single death scene in a novel (well, apart from Little Nell, of course – snigger).
I think love scenes are much harder to do well. And arguments. And epiphanies.
marta says
Isn’t there a quote floating around out there about death being easy and comedy being hard.
Sure, writing a death scene is hard if you want it to be meaningful but not maudlin or meaningless. But getting a reader to laugh or feel something surprising, something complicated, that’s much more difficult. And I agree about love scenes. They make death easy…
Jayne says
Gosh, I feel so callous saying that I’ve never been significantly, emotionally affected by the death of a character, but I have to say it since I don’t remember otherwise.
That being said, I’ve never killed off one of my characters. And I’ve tried. I should have, especially where there was, in one story, a smoking gun… but it seemed too… brutal–even though she was a rather unsympathetic character. I did shake her up, though!
And I thought I had a backbone…
John says
whaddayamean: yeah, some cool stuff there.
(Naturally, one of the things keeping me from commenting at her site — neurosis and paranoia run deep — is that she’s a brain scientist. I presume that she will see, in every clumsy phrase and typo, the misfirings of neurons.)
John says
Froog: I’d never seen that drinking-game skit before. Instant classic — thank you! (And for those who, like me, need a leg up on the dialogue: go here, and scroll down/search until you get to scene #29, labeled “TED AND RALPH: “BAD DAY FOR EVERYONE”.”)
Utterly by coincidence, The Missus and I watched the first season of HBO’s Middle-Ages fantasy Game of Thrones series over the last few weeks. It includes the sudden death of a character so major, so admirable, so involved with everything (we both assumed him to be the main character) that it left us pretty much literally with our jaws unhinged. Apparently it had that effect on everyone who saw it without having read the books on which the series is based.
A number of lessons can be drawn from that apparently audacious moment. The first is just to calm down, and realize that many more episodes are likely to follow — that without that death, early in the story line, there probably would not be a complete story line. (The books on which it’s based, collectively called A Song of Ice and Fire, currently number at least seven. And they’re loooong books!)
A subtler lesson is: who does not die? Without getting into a character-by-character analysis, I think it’s safe to say: even if the one who died was indeed the “main” one, s/he was also among the least interesting.
And the one who’s most likable (despite a nominal alliance with villains) seems headed for a long future in the series. If THAT character gets killed off, no matter the circumstances, you’re right: that is gonna be one emotion-drenched moment.
Surely some daring novelist must have tackled (or tried to tackle) all those difficult scenes at once — killing off a likable character, in the middle of an argument which breaks out while having sex, thanks to an epiphany at exactly the wrong moment.
(Maybe that’ll be my writing exercise for the week. Although, hmm, not enough time to make him/her really likable… hmm… have to make it a character already familiar to the reading public… *mutter mutter*)
John says
marta: Strange/Norell — loved that book. I know the feeling, too, about getting to the end. I don’t remember having actually cried but I felt enormously sad, and I remember putting the book aside and thinking something like, I really don’t want to talk to anyone right now, not for a little while. A ringing telephone or doorbell just then would have mightily p!ssed me off. :)
Death easy/Comedy hard: I don’t remember seeing that anywhere (it was probably a TED talk or something, ha). But it makes sense. Part of the difficulty with comedy, I think, is that a joke is almost always funniest the first time you encounter it… even for its creator. Fine-tuning it without ruining the timing or stepping on the punchline; adding just the right level of specific detail (“Cap’n Crunch” is funnier than “cereal”) without creating a figression — that is work. It’s always fascinating to hear comedians talk about their craft; really good ones have to be among the smartest people I can think of. (Jerry Seinfeld talks masterfully about writing comedy.)
I guess to that Ultimate Writing Exercise which Froog has got me thinking of, I’ll need to add: …and make it funny!!!
John says
Jayne: Don’t feel guilty. It seems you’re not the only one having trouble coming up with a really, really affecting death scene in a book!
One interesting thing: I have a clear memory of at least one occasion, maybe more, on which I closed a book after finishing it, putting it aside, and sitting in silence for a moment until The Missus said, “Are you all right?” And that’s when I realized my eyes were full of tears. But for the life of me, I cannot remember what book(s) might have triggered this response. I wonder if I’m just suppressing the memory, in order not to (re-)experience the emotion? Or do moving last-moment scenes simply stand out more memorably in otherwise forgettable books?
Then there’s the experience I had of finishing To Kill a Mockingbird, which I first read when I was well into my 40s. (The Missus couldn’t believe I’d never read it.) I’m pretty confident that I teared up on closing that one — not in misery, but in happiness. That book. That wonderful book…
Good for you for shaking up your antagonist. I bet she deserved it. :)
Froog says
I love Marta’s line: love scenes… make death easy. I’m going to use that on my blog -or somewhere.
John, if you incorporate that many disparate elements into a single scene, it cannot but be funny. Though I suspect that challenge might be a bridge too far even for a man of your inventiveness.
Jayne says
@John – You’ve jogged my memory, John. There was a book that made the tears well, quite a bit actually. There were several deaths but I don’t know if I cried after reading a death scene or if I just cried when it was all said and done–or if I just plain cried throughout the whole damn book. It was Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and it was just about the saddest book I’d ever read. But so darn good.
I later read ‘Tis, and Teacher Man. Loved Teacher Man. Much more uplifting.
My son is reading To Kill a Mockingbird in school this year. I’m going to read it, again, along with him. Yup, incredibly wonderful. (Wish she’d written more.) ;)
Livia Blackburne says
Thank you so much, John! *blushes* And I definitely think it’s a good sign if *you* are upset by your character dying. I’ve killed of some minor characters, myself, but haven’t had the guts to kill anyone major.
John says
Froog: It’s tempting to try. I may put that in the “I don’t know where following this up might lead me, but it’s worth a shot” pile.
John says
Jayne: I really need to give Angela’s Ashes a try.
Or, maybe not. :)
John says
Thank you for stopping by, Livia!
And I’m completely confident that the last sentence of your comment needs a “yet” tacked on at the end. :)
You may have seen the poster below which recently made the rounds, under headings like “J.K. Rowling and George R.R. Martin discuss writing”:
Cracked me up.
Jayne says
@John – I wanted to get back to this because I think it should be noted that this book, as you know, is a memoir. Knowing that the story is real, knowing the writer actually experienced extreme misery, at least for me, made this story ever so more emotionally jarring. Although I think really good fiction can have that same sort of impact.
If you should decided to give Angela’s Ashes a try, brace yourself!
John says
Jayne: right — memoirs can make for some very tough, very emotional reading. I guess because we can’t so easily distance ourselves from what’s happening. It’s happening for real.
Of course, it also helps if the reader, like you, seems to be a natural-born empathizer!