Thursday 4 April 2013

D is for Death

I don't know why I decided today's topic would be death - it was just the first thing that came to mind.

I've only ever written one character's death that I can remember, although I've mentioned that characters have died, or had bodies in my stories. I think perhaps the reason I've shied away from writing character deaths is partly because I haven't felt they're needed for the story, and partly because I wouldn't know how to do it. With the one character I did kill off in text, the death happened as I was writing with no planning beforehand. Perhaps that was why I found I could write it out - because I was just writing it as I was picturing it in my head.

However, looking back through stories that I've written dead characters into, in some of those cases the stories might have been more dramatic with at least some description of how the deaths happened.

My challenge from today's post is to write a character's death.

I might be quiet for the next couple of days - I'm travelling...

3 comments:

  1. i hate when my fave characters die. popping in from A to Z challenge; we're name twins!

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  2. I don't like killing characters either, unless it's absolutely necessary for the story.

    Funny that you mentioned it today, though, because this morning, I had the dubious pleasure of watching the death of one of my favorite characters unfold in my mind.

    Was not nice.

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  3. Unplanned writing can often be the most powerful. I've written a couple death scenes. The one that came across as the most emotional for readers was the one where I channeled my own pain and loss, the emotion from when my grandfather died, into the story. It was a totally different situation than my grandfather, but just using those familiar emotions touched readers.

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