Okay, so today we're doing another "dear authors" and we're talking specifically about
death scenes. I've read through almost all the comments. I collected the things that were upvoted
the most or repeated the most frequently so if you don't know, "dear authors" is a series that i do
where i post a community tab, ask about a specific subject and a bunch of people give their opinions
and it's kind of a collection (at least within my corner of the internet) of readers chatting with
readers about what we like and don't like. I'm gonna kick it off with the most upvoted comment,
which i'm only showing the beginning of the comment because it hits on several things
and a lot of these things were repeated so i'm just gonna hit the beginning of it so that we can
unpack that and then we'll keep moving on. "It's very unrealistic when a character is killed in the
middle of the battle scene and our main characters stop fighting to mourn them and cry. Like, you
don't just stop fighting in the middle of a battle and of course their opponents will be like, 'oh
no. Their friend just died and there's a golden chance to kill them while their guard is down,
but no. I'll be a nice person and let them mourn in peace.' That doesn't happen. You let your guard
down and you're dead." So i think this is one of those things where it translates fine to movie,
but in book format it doesn't work. I don't really watch that many movies, but i've seen some and
it's not an uncommon thing from what i've seen to slow things down. Your friend just died in battle.
Slow down the frame rate of the film, play sad music, show them turning at them and going...
"NOOOOO" etc. And that can work in film because you can take a moment of your heart dropping,
of the characters just letting their guard down and crying for a second and you can drag that out
for minutes and have the viewers really feel the impact of that moment and then
speed things back up to normal speed and they have to spin back around and keep fighting.
But in a book you can't slow down time like that. Every minute feels like a minute to the reader
and slowing down time or more frequently just taking a minute to mourn always draws me out of
the book as well. I really agree with this comment because any time a character dies in battle or in
a fight or in any instance where there's high stakes surrounding it and then the characters
pause to have a long internal monologue, to cry, to drop to their knees, to sob over the body,
whatever it is that they're doing... i can't soak in that moment because all that's going through my
head is "There're people that are around you that are trying to kill you right now! Get up!
What are you doing?" And then if they don't die, if they sink over a body and cry and i get like,
paragraphs or even pages of mourning and they don't die while they're mourning,
i don't believe you! And it ruins the impact of the death for me. The same thing happens (off
topic), the same thing happens for taking a minute in battle to uh say some nice last
words or to finally have that heart to heart about how you really feel about each other or
whatever. Anytime we're in the middle of a high stakes moment and we stop to do something
i don't really soak in that moment because all i'm thinking about is everything around
you. It's like, remember the Avatar movie when there were like several scenes of action where
our main characters would be fighting one on one and then everybody else in the surrounding circle
would just shuffle their feet and wait until it's their cue to rush forward? That's what i imagine
in books whenever whenever our main characters pause to mourn, to reflect, to have a nice
conversation, to do whatever and they don't die or at the very least get injured. My immediate
thought is, "Is everybody just standing around shuffling their feet? What's happening? What's
going on with the ring of people that are trying to kill them?" "Don't make a huge and big scene
where people are crying and they're crying their eyes out because someone died and it's supposed to
be devastating for our characters, but on the next page they act like nothing happened and are like,
'ah you died. Oh, anyway.' " I've brought this up several times, but there have been books that i've
read that i actually thought were quite good and that are well received and they didn't work for me
even though i liked a lot of things that happened, specifically they didn't work for me because of
this reason. If a character just experiences some devastating, traumatic, horrifying experience like
let's say, watching someone get slaughtered in front of them, especially someone they care about
and then they just kind of move on and either talk about it really casually from that point forward,
or they don't seem affected by it. They just move on and don't think about it. Like, we're in their
head; they don't think about it, they don't talk about it, they don't do anything until
plot dictates: "We need to talk about it again." And then they bring it up and then
they have something to say and then they seem to forget about it again. I can't,
i can't deal with that! You don't have to go into Brandon Sanderson level emotional turmoil, getting
really deep into their head while they're dealing with stuff. You don't have to go all out, but if a
character doesn't seem to have PTSD from extremely traumatic situations, or even just seem affected
by it at all it actually does kind of ruin a book for me because i i don't believe you. I just don't
believe, i don't believe that the character feels nothing unless they're written this way, they're
supposed to be disconnected from their feelings then that's fine, but i'm not going to believe
that a character that i'm supposed to relate to, root for, or is supposed to be a normal person
is not going to be affected by certain events and just forget about it next page. "How long can
someone actually see their farewells while dying? These people with 10 stab wounds seem to talk for
a while." This is one of the most frequently commented things. So many people had opinions
about long deathbed monologues and i do agree. A lot of times, I guess i don't see this as often
anymore, but it does still come up where someone is dying and then they have their final words,
they need to tell you that secret they've been keeping this whole time, they need to let you know
how they feel, maybe they have that special piece of information that we need in order for our plot
to move and they're gonna give it with their final breath, or many breaths depending on how long it
takes to say it all. And again, when this happens it really affects my reading experience because
sometimes i'm just sitting there reading this long monologue thinking, "Man, you sure you have a lot
of breath with that punctured lung. Isn't there a knife, isn't there a gaping wound where your lung
is? Aren't your lungs collapsing? You got a lot to say?" Following that up with this... "Not to
be morbid (hey, you're the one who made this) but if a character was stabbed through a vital organ,
instead of saying their goodbyes, they should be coughing and vomiting up blood." So it's up to
the tone of the story naturally. Not everybody is writing grimdark and not everybody wants a really
gruesome death in their book, but having some realism in the death scenes is nice sometimes...
a lot of times. If that side character over there got stabbed in a specific place
and then died instantly and then this character over here got stabbed in the exact same place,
but it's going to take them a long time to die. Why? Because they're a main character.
It IS kinda rough, or they have some other kind of mortal wound and they're somehow able to drag out
their death to give us the scene we really don't want. Now don't get me wrong, dragging out a death
can be really effective. Having us believe that a character could survive and making them suffer for
a while... oh, I sound so bad! Or also just making them survive to increase tension, to get hope get
the hope up of the reader as well as the main character. Something that feels natural and not
forced and then eventually we still have to reckon with the death when we had a little bit of hope.
This can be done really well too, but just make it realistic and make it consistent. Killing out side
characters for something and then not killing a main character for over the exact same thing,
or giving a character some intense wound that they would definitely die from and then
and then they don't, or they take forever, or they deliver a long monologue with a
punctured lung... it draws me out of the story. It really makes me stop and think,
"No. That doesn't really make sense." Keeping with the theme of realism... "I find it odd how
in most death scenes no one attempts any kind of first aid." I won't spend a lot of time on this
because it's pretty self-explanatory, but this is also something that i've thought about a lot where
sometimes, i mean don't get me wrong. Sometimes people are in shock and they're not thinking
and they have the ability to save them, but they freeze up or they just don't think of
the right things to do because their mind is all over the place and that's fine if that's
what's depicted. But again, just making reactions realistic is really great. I mean, having someone
kneeling over a body trying to stop the bleeding, trying to apply a tourniquet, trying to do
something and they still die can add a lot of impact. "The best death scenes (as in terribly
heartbreaking and touching) is when a death brings the other characters together to mourn.
Nothing gets me more than a character breaking down immediately or a long time after the events
and some of his best friends being there to help him." So we've already talked about
if there's a high-stakes situation like a battle and someone dies and then everything stops
so we can mourn. It draws a lot of people out of the story. This is not contradicting that.
This is talking about either not in a high-stakes situation where there's time to mourn,
or if somebody falls and all they can do is just scream and then turn back and keep fighting and
then after the battle is done, searching through bodies to try to find their friend
while sobbing, or just staring blankly and having nothing to say and then breaking down
days later, or however it plays out. Whether it be in the moment because they can,
or whether it be a while later because they weren't able to in the moment, or because
they just shut down and it didn't hit them until later, which is very realistic to happen;
taking the time to mourn is so important. There were several comments as well about uh character
death gets a sentence and then we move forward and even if it's something like in battle,
giving them more than a sentence is good for the reader so that we have a second to process
and then maybe we'll keep going and then come back to it, but the point is...
give the readers and the characters time to process and to deal. A lot of times
for me personally, a lot of times people reacting to death is way more impactful than the death
itself. Someone might die that i don't even care about that much, but because they were important
to the main character i care about this death. There's a lot of examples i want to give, but i'm
trying really hard not to spoil. Or it could be someone that i do care about. I see their death,
it hurts me. I don't appreciate it and then i see other characters i care about being absolutely
broken over this. They could turn evil over this death, they could rise up over this death,
or they could just be a human and not react in any way other than sobbing and it will hurt me.
It will hurt me so much more to see the pain of the characters i care about as well. On the note
of painful deaths... "A death for a lost cause - like a death in a battle that was pointless or a
sacrifice that meant nothing at all - are the most heartbreaking." Again, i really want to
give examples but i won't. But a death that was, it could have been avoided if character X hadn't
made this mistake, or they they rushed in to do something and then people died along the way,
but they were all... the point is, we're going to save this person. The point is we're going to stop
this person. We're going to do whatever we need to do and they all rush in ready to die; some people
we care about DO die and then they get there and the person isn't there, or the thing isn't there.
Ouch. Also, too, something that came up a ton is people hating on the resurrection trope. I mean,
i don't know. Maybe i've just cultivated a certain environment here because it's one of my least
favorite tropes of all time, but a lot of people don't like it so we can talk about it. A lot of
people said, "If you kill them, leave them dead. Don't steal the stakes from me by just bringing
people back and now i don't trust any death and now i can't mourn over anything." I've ranted
about it a lot, i'll stop there. But something that a few people brought up is that our main
character (or one of our main characters) can have those thoughts of, "I wish they could come back"
or even if it's a thing in this world to say, "Maybe they would come back. Maybe they can come
back." Only to find out that, no. They can't. Or even to have the main character or main characters
have moments of something great happening later on in the book and then they want to rush off to
tell their friend, but their friend isn't there, or something that they used to do together that is
now something they have to do alone. Bringing back those little recollections throughout it
so that it's like a fresh wave of pain for the characters that have lost someone,
it's realistic. That's what life is, man. Mourning isn't a day. It doesn't end after a week.
It it's fresh waves every time you remember you want something, you want to do something with them
and they're not there. And i'm going to end it on this one. "Don't ever introduce a character
(especially a love interest) midway through your book/series specifically so that you can
kill off that character and then focus the impact on your protagonist.
Readers can tell when you're doing that. Sometimes we can even see the death coming. It's
infuriating." So yeah. Some of my favorite books have done this and i won't say, but uh... it is
not great when that happens. When (this happens a lot with love interest) but any side character is
introduced and i get, it's so obvious sometimes when it's like, "Well, this person can't continue
on with us after this book because of x y and z. That's already been established,
so they're here just for us all to fall for them so that they can die and we can learn some lesson
or feel some impact." Not everybody sees that stuff. Coming... one book in particular i'm
thinking of Korey, my husband and read one of my favorite books and he did not see it coming.
He was just like, "Oh. Things have changed. We're just gonna add another crew member even though it
doesn't make sense that we would and everybody's gonna live happily ever after." And it's like,
no. It won't. So it's true that not every reader really,
i don't know, hyper analyzes everything like i do and like some readers do, but
it's obvious when a character was just introduced so that you can develop some sort of attachment
so that that character can die so that a death happened without having to kill someone that's
actually significant to the story. We see it. We hate it. Really i think a lot of it boils down
to making deaths as realistic as possible, making stakes real. That's something that came up a lot
not having a ton of plot armor for characters, not creating high tension situations at the very
beginning of the book but then everybody makes it out unscathed, not only killing
off some side character that nobody cares about so that it looks like there's consequences but
we all know that there was nothing impactful that really happened. But i really think that
the most important thing is based on emotions. Not making deaths super hyper predictable and not just
chucking deaths everywhere in the book just for shock or for impact, some sort of false impact.
These things are important. Every reader is different. Not every reader is me and not every
reader requires death in a book. Some some readers are really happy when their main characters make
it out unscathed. So do what you want, but i think the biggest thing is going to be that if there is
a death, especially significant death that we actually feel the impact, that main characters
don't forget about it later on in the book or the next page, or forget about it for long stretches
of time and have no feelings toward it and then it comes back up later when plot dictates it should.
Characters actually get a chance to mourn, but not in inappropriate places where they would die if
they took the time to mourn. And i guess it's just one of those things where it's best to pull from
a real life experience of pain and of loss and right from that as opposed to writing from what
you've seen because there's a lot of emotionless deaths out there in books and movies and i think
this is one of those things where we all know what grief feels like, we all know what pain is
so writing from that core emotion that we all share is going to make us all relate, but writing
from something that was really dramatic or cool or thematic somewhere else oftentimes will miss
the mark. I hope you guys enjoyed this video, i'd love to continue talking about it in the comments.
I post videos every Tuesday through Friday. I'll see you guys again soon. Bye.