{"id":48,"date":"2013-04-13T02:05:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-13T02:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2013-04-13T02:05:22","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T02:05:22","slug":"the-mortality-or-lack-thereof-of-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/?p=48","title":{"rendered":"The Mortality (or Lack Thereof) of Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I was looking at Facebook tonight, and I came across a quote in an image.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>“If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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So… True or false? \u00a0It depends.<\/p>\n

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I have to confess, there are certain characters (and if you’ve read through my stories, you might guess who they are) who I would be\u00a0very\u00a0<\/em>reluctant to kill off. \u00a0On the other hand, I have an aversion to saying something\u00a0can’t\u00a0<\/em>happen in a story. \u00a0There are times when, for the integrity of the story (e.g., to make the story flow correctly, or to be plausible) the character\u00a0should\u00a0<\/em>die. \u00a0If you have a character fall from 10,000 feet out of an airplane without a parachute, that character\u00a0better<\/em> die. \u00a0Otherwise, you’re not writing. \u00a0You’re just stringing related sentences together on to a page.<\/p>\n

The other issue is, \u00a0your reader can’t come to\u00a0expect\u00a0<\/em>characters to always live. \u00a0Otherwise, you lose some of the drama. \u00a0After you see Batman and Robin escape at the end of every episode, you catch on that they’re never going to be killed.<\/p>\n

But as I said, it depends. \u00a0One of the reasons you don’t see Batman or Robin die is that without them, there’s no show. \u00a0If the Wiley Coyote catches the Road Runner, that’s the end of the cartoon. \u00a0And if Dave Riggler dies, well, it’s kind of tough to write Dave Riggler stories after that.<\/p>\n

But could someone Dave loves die? \u00a0I think so. \u00a0I can’t rule it out. \u00a0Maybe not\u00a0everyone\u00a0<\/em>Dave loves is vulnerable, but the story of Dave goes where it goes. \u00a0Sometimes I’m just writing down what he tells me.<\/p>\n

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I was looking at Facebook tonight, and I came across a quote in an image.   “If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.”   So… True or false? \u00a0It depends.   I have to confess, there are certain characters (and if you’ve read through my stories, you might … Continue reading The Mortality (or Lack Thereof) of Characters<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longdistancededications.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}