I\u2019m working on a fantasy story.\u00a0 And I\u2019m at the point in the origin phase where the protagonist needs a crisis to propel him into a new and horrible life.\u00a0 And I\u2019m wavering between some deus ex machina scooping him out of his normal life or a horrible injustice killing off one or more of his family.<\/p>\n
And the funny thing is I feel bad about killing off his kin.\u00a0 I mean, they\u2019re good people and they\u2019ve never done anything to me and all things being equal I might need them later.\u00a0 So, I\u2019m vacillating and trying to thread the needle.\u00a0 Can I just kill off his father?\u00a0 But I kind of need him for later.\u00a0 How about his mother?\u00a0 The murder of his mother would be a great catalyst.\u00a0 There\u2019s guilt and rage and despair and hunger for revenge and all sorts of mixed emotions. \u00a0That could work well.\u00a0 But it feels like a cheap trick.<\/p>\n
I could kill off his newlywed sister.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to happen at the wedding reception anyway.\u00a0 But that\u2019s even more conflicted.\u00a0 There\u2019s the bride groom and the other sisters and then the parents won\u2019t be distracted by one of them dying so the protagonist will be dealing with all kinds of messy emotional baggage.\u00a0 Everyone will be whining for a hundred pages and I don\u2019t need that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m planning some kind of mob hit.\u00a0 I\u2019m undecided between a shotgun blast coming out of the reception or a bomb thrown through the window.\u00a0 Either way it\u2019s not ideal.\u00a0 Very messy.\u00a0 Definitely not the beautiful death.<\/p>\n
So, as you can see there won\u2019t be any easy way to write this. \u00a0All kinds of angst and messy follow-on consequences.\u00a0 But let\u2019s face it, murdered family has been a great plot device since Cain killed Abel.\u00a0 I\u2019m already trying to work my way through a father with conflicted feelings about the son whom he loves but who is responsible for the death of his wife.\u00a0 That\u2019s got all kinds of possibilities.\u00a0 As I said I need the father around later and his grudging cooperation in some plot devices would add a nice amount of resistance to some scenes that would otherwise lose all tension.<\/p>\n
So, she has to go.\u00a0 But I am grateful for her part up to this point and I will give her a nice close-up scene before the finale.\u00a0 She\u2019ll get to talk to her son and they will share something personal before I finish her off.\u00a0 Then she\u2019ll upstage her oldest daughter\u2019s wedding. \u00a0What mother could ask for more than that?<\/p>\n
So, as you can see, for me the characters in my story take on a life of their own and I have to think carefully before I bring anyone in.\u00a0 The butterfly effect is in full effect and especially when my character has a very long-life span, I have to be careful about cutting off all descendants of present characters because I might need their grandchildren or even great grandchildren at some point.<\/p>\n
And finally, this action is meant to cut off his normal life and send him forward into a future where many of his actions are going to appear to him to be pretty evil.\u00a0 To make that happen I\u2019ll need something to disorient his moral compass.\u00a0 The random brutal death of someone who symbolizes normalcy and happiness to him is just about right.\u00a0 Add in a feeling that he is culpable in the death and I think I can work that into a tragic figure.\u00a0 Will Shakespeare, hold my beer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m working on a fantasy story.\u00a0 And I\u2019m at the point in the origin phase where the protagonist needs a crisis to propel him into<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,2510,1289,1263,237,242],"tags":[200,1290,2744],"class_list":["post-13779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-fantasy","tag-my-fiction","tag-things-that-really-interest-me"],"yoast_head":"\n