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.
