Stephen King and 'killing your darlings.'

[SaddleRider]

There are times that I contemplate new stories that exist within the other stories I've created and contemplate killing off existing characters. I can rationalize why I could and what I could do with things afterwards, and see in previous stories that I have sort of planted the seeds for these options in older stories without even thinking about it.

But...when it gets down to it, I like those existing relationships and interplays, and still enjoy writing them, and it's really hard to pull the proverbial trigger, so I don't. I'm attached to them myself, people like them, etc.

There's also the aside that I'm not immune to feedback I help edit someone else's writings and he announced that to push himself he was actually going roll dice to decide which character to kill. He does it, kills said character and the feedback was, shall we say, intense.

But I think that was mostly in response to announcing that they were going to do it via dice roll.


So, what are your thoughts on killing established characters?

 

[yowser]

Without knowing your stories and portfolio of characters, it is hard to say other than once gone, it is tough to resurrect a character (see Conan Doyle when he thought he was done with Sherlock.) If you can make a character 'go away' or disappear for one reason or another other than death, they can always be brought back. But it also sounds like a real demise might then put you in a situation to forward a narrative trajectory impossible with that character still around?

Once dead, the only option for a further story is a prequel or an earlier spin-off tale.

Sounds like the most major issue is what is going to help your writing move forward, but if you have any plans for someone, best to still keep them around.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Character death has its place, but you can overdo it. When I read a story that keeps brutalising characters just to show me how hardcore it is, my reaction is to withdraw and not get attached to them, and then the story affects me less than one that uses death sparingly.

Arthur Quiller-Couch's "murder your darlings" wasn't actually about character death but about overly fancy writing. In the original:

To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not – can never be – extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – wholeheartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’

 

[lovecraft68]

King hasn't killed a Darling since the 90's he just gives them their own 100 page monologue or their own book.

 

[SimonDoom]

The overriding question is, what is your purpose in killing off characters? How does it serve the story?

Game of Thrones is a book series/TV series famous for killing off a lot of major characters. Doing so served two purposes: it had salacious shock value, which increased interest and spurred conversations about the show across the planet, and it served to underscore the dark, violent, and capricious nature of the world in which the story was set.

Why do YOU want to kill off characters? What's the point? What artistic purpose is served? Nobody can answer that for you.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I have killed off my share of characters, but, as others have suggested, always in service to the story. And I have never received even a single negative complaint that they died.

 

[PennameWombat]

The overriding question is, what is your purpose in killing off characters? How does it serve the story?

Game of Thrones is a book series/TV series famous for killing off a lot of major characters. Doing so served two purposes: it had salacious shock value, which increased interest and spurred conversations about the show across the planet, and it served to underscore the dark, violent, and capricious nature of the world in which the story was set.

Why do YOU want to kill off characters? What's the point? What artistic purpose is served? Nobody can answer that for you.

As Bramblethorn said, however we phrase ‘kill your darlings’ it’s about words. Not characters. Remove extraneous words. Those are the darlings.

But to the other point, I’ve used death in a few stories. It’s always been in ways meant to provide plot and character development.

And GRRM (ok, George RR Martin, GoT’s author) has been extensively quoted that one issue causing the current very long delay in the next book is that he killed off someone he desperately needs. So yes, that anyone can die at any time is a key aspect of GoT but that death is an aspect of his pantser approach. So don’t kill off without thought.

 

[lovecraft68]

As Bramblethorn said, however we phrase ‘kill your darlings’ it’s about words. Not characters. Remove extraneous words. Those are the darlings.

But to the other point, I’ve used death in a few stories. It’s always been in ways meant to provide plot and character development.

And GRRM (ok, George RR Martin, GoT’s author) has been extensively quoted that one issue causing the current very long delay in the next book is that he killed off someone he desperately needs. So yes, that anyone can die at any time is a key aspect of GoT but that death is an aspect of his pantser approach. So don’t kill off without thought.

GRRM's issue with finishing his series is he is an ego maniac who can't get enough of himself and HBO should have never committed to the series until his books were done.

He is barely halfway through the next to last book and its been years. He's never going to finish, but in the time since the last GOT book, he's published other crap no one cares about.

Its also tiring to see him getting credit as the only fantasy author who killed off his characters. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant first and second series did it, a total dark depressing sorrow riddled two series with an air of pure despair, no character safe, murder, betrayal, rape, suicide, name it, its there

And without profanity, over the top torture, violence, countless scenes of rape, underaged sex and treatment of women that makes the loving wives section here look like feminists.

he shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Tolkien, or any other writer who had an original premise. GOT is the fantasy version of 50 shades, every prior element of the genre tossed together with tits and gore, impressive if you're stuck at the age of 14.

 

[SimonDoom]

GRRM's issue with finishing his series is he is an ego maniac who can't get enough of himself and HBO should have never committed to the series until his books were done.

He is barely halfway through the next to last book and its been years. He's never going to finish, but in the time since the last GOT book, he's published other crap no one cares about.

Its also tiring to see him getting credit as the only fantasy author who killed off his characters. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant first and second series did it, a total dark depressing sorrow riddled two series with an air of pure despair, no character safe, murder, betrayal, rape, suicide, name it, its there

And without profanity, over the top torture, violence, countless scenes of rape, underaged sex and treatment of women that makes the loving wives section here look like feminists.

he shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Tolkien, or any other writer who had an original premise. GOT is the fantasy version of 50 shades, every prior element of the genre tossed together with tits and gore, impressive if you're stuck at the age of 14.

Lovecraft, have you actually read Game of Thrones? Have you watched the series?

You have an axe to grind against it a mile wide. There's plenty to criticize, but there's plenty to praise, too. I've never watched or read anything like it. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, but Tolkien's characters are cardboard cutouts compared to the characters in GOT. There's plenty of salacious female T & A in GOT, but it's also the only TV epic drama I can think of where the central conflict is between two women (Cersei and Daenerys), who have agency and drive everything that happens throughout the entire series. And several other women characters (Sansa, Arya, and Brienne) have extremely important, fully fleshed-out roles. You can't say that about Tolkien. Women have no meaningful role at all in his books.

 

[Payne_Hall]

Lovecraft, have you actually read Game of Thrones? Have you watched the series?

You have an axe to grind against it a mile wide. There's plenty to criticize, but there's plenty to praise, too. I've never watched or read anything like it. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, but Tolkien's characters are cardboard cutouts compared to the characters in GOT. There's plenty of salacious female T & A in GOT, but it's also the only TV epic drama I can think of where the central conflict is between two women (Cersei and Daenerys), who have agency and drive everything that happens throughout the entire series. And several other women characters (Sansa, Arya, and Brienne) have extremely important, fully fleshed-out roles. You can't say that about Tolkien. Women have no meaningful role at all in his books.

So, with the topic at hand, killing characters seems to work pretty well for Martin when none of those characters, at least in the book, are likable. The show did a better job with it, but... For instance, Cersei is an idiot in the book. Catelyn and Sansa’s perspectives are far too whiny to come from people who live in the north. And I don’t even know where to begin with the Dany parts. At some points, they display what seems like redeemable qualities, but all those moments are very quickly ruined.

But I think a pitfall for that is A) you don’t really have much emotion when the characters die and B) you just... get desensitized to it after so many times.

In fantasy, I think a better representation of deaths done well would be Erikson’s Malazan books. All of them serve a purpose to the story and because it’s such an epic tale, there’s enough reaction to the event of death without having so much reaction that it would throw a reader off. Which is probably another thing.

 

[Payne_Hall]

That’s kind of a compliment to Martin, as a side note . I get that the characters were supposed to be flawed to make them more real, but I couldn’t stand any of the perspectives. Still kept reading for the world and story, though, so he made up for it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

And without profanity, over the top torture, violence, countless scenes of rape, underaged sex and treatment of women that makes the loving wives section here look like feminists.

Lovecraft, have you actually read Game of Thrones? Have you watched the series?

You have an axe to grind against it a mile wide. There's plenty to criticize, but there's plenty to praise, too. I've never watched or read anything like it. I'm a huge Tolkien fan, but Tolkien's characters are cardboard cutouts compared to the characters in GOT. There's plenty of salacious female T & A in GOT, but it's also the only TV epic drama I can think of where the central conflict is between two women (Cersei and Daenerys), who have agency and drive everything that happens throughout the entire series. And several other women characters (Sansa, Arya, and Brienne) have extremely important, fully fleshed-out roles. You can't say that about Tolkien. Women have no meaningful role at all in his books.

Here's a fun game to play:
1. Go to https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/
2. Find the page for each of those characters, or any other Compelling Female Character of your choice
3. Hit Ctrl-F and search on the word "rape".

You win if you get a "phrase not found" result. I played with all five of those characters, and a few others as well, and I haven't won yet.

Of the five you mention:

Cersei has been in an incestuous relationship with her brother since childhood, along the way being married off to an asshole who doesn't love her. Realises that her child is a psychopathic asshole but backs him to the hilt because that's what mothers gotta do. Spends the entire series being miserable before being crushed to death in a collapsing building. Along the way, discussed by male characters as somebody they'd like to rape.

Daenerys is sold and raped at thirteen (aged to seventeen for TV). Falls in love with her rapist before losing him and her baby. Makes some highly questionable choices. Eventually killed by her lover/nephew.

Sansa gets passed around between different flavours of rapey/abusive assholes like a party favour, along the way losing her beloved pet (killed by her own father) and then almost her entire family, and being threatened with rape more than once, from which she escapes only by the grace of male protectors. She "wins", I guess, give or take a lifetime of PTSD.

Brienne, IIRC, is characterised as too ugly to attract male attention, though that doesn't stop her from being almost raped after being captured; like Sansa, she escapes only because a male character talks them out of it.

A male protector disguises Arya as a boy to protect her from, you guessed it, the threat of gang-rape! (Though she does at least get to stab a guy who threatens to rape her.) She also has to endure the loss of virtually her entire family, and is just as traumatised as Sansa by that though in different ways.

Yes, GoT's female characters get more screen time and character development than Tolkien's, and there are many points where they do have meaningful agency. But Martin is addicted to mashing the rape button when he writes about them, as if a woman can't be a fully realised person until she's had to interact with at least the threat of rape.

(Though in some of these scenes, I get the feeling it's not about developing the female characters at all, but rather about developing the male characters by showing how they react to it.)

GoT has things going for it, but it does not love its female characters.

 

[Payne_Hall]

I do have a problem with all the rape, death, and violence in those books, but it’s not because I find it disturbing or offensive or anything.

It’s just that, with that content, I know Brandon Sanderson isn’t going to finish the books when Martin dies like he finished Wheel of Time.

 

[SimonDoom]

Here's a fun game to play:
1. Go to https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/
2. Find the page for each of those characters, or any other Compelling Female Character of your choice
3. Hit Ctrl-F and search on the word "rape".

You win if you get a "phrase not found" result. I played with all five of those characters, and a few others as well, and I haven't won yet.

Of the five you mention:

Cersei has been in an incestuous relationship with her brother since childhood, along the way being married off to an asshole who doesn't love her. Realises that her child is a psychopathic asshole but backs him to the hilt because that's what mothers gotta do. Spends the entire series being miserable before being crushed to death in a collapsing building. Along the way, discussed by male characters as somebody they'd like to rape.

Daenerys is sold and raped at thirteen (aged to seventeen for TV). Falls in love with her rapist before losing him and her baby. Makes some highly questionable choices. Eventually killed by her lover/nephew.

Sansa gets passed around between different flavours of rapey/abusive assholes like a party favour, along the way losing her beloved pet (killed by her own father) and then almost her entire family, and being threatened with rape more than once, from which she escapes only by the grace of male protectors. She "wins", I guess, give or take a lifetime of PTSD.

Brienne, IIRC, is characterised as too ugly to attract male attention, though that doesn't stop her from being almost raped after being captured; like Sansa, she escapes only because a male character talks them out of it.

A male protector disguises Arya as a boy to protect her from, you guessed it, the threat of gang-rape! (Though she does at least get to stab a guy who threatens to rape her.) She also has to endure the loss of virtually her entire family, and is just as traumatised as Sansa by that though in different ways.

Yes, GoT's female characters get more screen time and character development than Tolkien's, and there are many points where they do have meaningful agency. But Martin is addicted to mashing the rape button when he writes about them, as if a woman can't be a fully realised person until she's had to interact with at least the threat of rape.

(Though in some of these scenes, I get the feeling it's not about developing the female characters at all, but rather about developing the male characters by showing how they react to it.)

GoT has things going for it, but it does not love its female characters.

All perfectly valid points. And, yes, troubling. I think Martin, and the show, play both sides of the fence. In many ways, the show portrays female characters as the movers and drivers, to a degree that's unusual for a fantasy story. You don't see anything like that in LOTR, for example. But there's no question that it has lots of gratuitous T & A and it subjects the female characters to an extraordinary degree of degradation and risk of harm. I think it was often gratuitous. It was bizarre, at times. I think the show went low to get viewers. It's a well-worn formula. You do have to wonder what GRRM was thinking when he wrote these characters.

Does GOT loves its female characters? No. But do the male characters fare better? They're not subjected to the sexual degradation that the female characters are. That's true. Jon Snow is never raped. But the two main male characters -- Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister -- ultimately are somewhat ineffectual. They make bad decisions. They try to control events, but they don't. The decisions they make usually have bad results. It's the women, not the men, who drive the main action in the show. That's different, and it's interesting.

One of the things I like about GOT is that while it may not love its female characters, in its own way it respects them. The female characters are not just foils. They are important characters in their own right, all of whom have interesting dramatic arcs.

 

[PennameWombat]

I do have a problem with all the rape, death, and violence in those books, but it’s not because I find it disturbing or offensive or anything.

It’s just that, with that content, I know Brandon Sanderson isn’t going to finish the books when Martin dies like he finished Wheel of Time.

Martin has stated in interviews most of the last near-decade that no one will finish GoT should he shuffle off this mortal coil before doing so himself.

Whether he’ll do as Terry Pratchett did and require all of his unfinished works be destroyed, I don’t know. But he’s expressed dismay at anyone else finishing an author’s work and at one point said his wife, assuming she survives him, won’t allow anyone else to write in Westeros. He also talked about later generations ignoring the author’s wishes. But, he has no children, so who knows.

 

[Bramblethorn]

All perfectly valid points. And, yes, troubling. I think Martin, and the show, play both sides of the fence. In many ways, the show portrays female characters as the movers and drivers, to a degree that's unusual for a fantasy story.

If we're talking specifically about screen, I'd agree, though it's not unique. The recent Witcher adaptation has its flaws, and it definitely feels a bit "hey GoT was a hit, what else have you got that we can adapt?", but it has major female characters like Yennefer and Calanthe, and as best I can recall S1 was rape-free.

Going back a few years, and much lighter in tone, Tenth Kingdom was a miniseries about a young woman who stumbles into a fantasy world and takes on a wicked witch while romancing the big bad wolf. There may be more out there, but I don't watch a lot.

Talking about fantasy more broadly though, there's no shortage of well-written female-driven fantasy books out there, just that most of them never get a look in for screen adaptations. I read the Silmarillion at age ten, I understand the appeal, but it's well past time producers tried to look beyond "what if stereotypical medieval Europe but with magic?"

 

[oggbashan]

Quiller-Couch

It was not Stephen King who coined the phrase, but Quiller-Couch:

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914
Often misattributed, e.g. to Hemingway, Faulkner, and others, or shortened to 'Kill your darlings.'

 

[Payne_Hall]

Martin has stated in interviews most of the last near-decade that no one will finish GoT should he shuffle off this mortal coil before doing so himself.

Whether he’ll do as Terry Pratchett did and require all of his unfinished works be destroyed, I don’t know. But he’s expressed dismay at anyone else finishing an author’s work and at one point said his wife, assuming she survives him, won’t allow anyone else to write in Westeros. He also talked about later generations ignoring the author’s wishes. But, he has no children, so who knows.

I did not know that this was something Martin actually addressed haha. I only knew the running joke for Sanderson fans when it comes to fantasy authors who aren’t going to finish their stories. Anytime it gets brought up online, Sanderson always responds with the same gif, so it’s entertaining.

But if Martin addressed it... we’re never getting the end of that series.

 

[PennameWombat]

I did not know that this was something Martin actually addressed haha. I only knew the running joke for Sanderson fans when it comes to fantasy authors who aren’t going to finish their stories. Anytime it gets brought up online, Sanderson always responds with the same gif, so it’s entertaining.

Back when Jordan was, I think, about four books into Wheel of Time, a good friend was always ragging on me “you gotta read this!” I always said “when the tenth book comes out, he might die.”

Oops. By all accounts Sanderson did a fine job but I’ve still never read it.

But if Martin addressed it... we’re never getting the end of that series.

He was quite explicit in a 2013 interview (Sydney Morning Herald) but has reiterated it more recently. I’ve never read GoT either, like with Wheel I’ve been waiting for it to be completed The only series I’ve broken my ‘rule’ on is The Expanse. And I’m getting rather annoyed that the ninth book still hasn’t shown up

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I've caught up with all the Expanse on TV and was thinking of reading the books. Where should I stop to avoid spoilers?

There's clearly a school of thought that if a book or film is to be Serious Art, a main character has to die at about 80% of the way through. And it's usually badly done, having them die solely so Our Protagonist can move on or just emote at you. I'm not a fan.

I'm aware that 'if in doubt, marry them' is also a cliche but decided to apply it for my series because I wanted some fun and happiness. I'd prefer a trite happy ending to a trite sad ending, especially when reading porn.

 

[Payne_Hall]

Oops. By all accounts Sanderson did a fine job but I’ve still never read it.

I would say “how dare you set that curse in effect!” on this but the truth is that if Sanderson hadn’t gotten hold of the end, it probably still wouldn’t be finished haha. And it is most definitely an experience to read in the entirety. You can very much tell the pacing change when it happens and it’s kind of entertaining. Jordan started out with a good pace and then just got slower and slower... and then Sanderson has his own action based pace. It’s a slingshot reading effect. Anyway, it’s definitely intriguing. I might be biased though. After he finished those books for us, I was one of the people grateful enough to end up far too deep in Sanderson’s Cosmere.

Also, to address The Expanse! I got into those books more than the show and haven’t caught up on the show actually, but I know that season 3 mostly lined up with book 3 but I seem to remember that some things shown in the show weren’t revealed until book 5 maybe? It’s been a while for that one.

Another one that had a better book was definitely Altered Carbon. That second book... Ye gods.

 

[RichardWark]

Someday I will read an interview in which Martin finally admits he was influenced by/stole from Katherine Kurtz's superior Deryni series.

 

[NotWise]

Those fans/critics of George R.R. Martin will be pleased/horrified to learn that (according to the local paper, and Martin is pretty local to me) that his first fantasy story, "In the Lost Lands," will be released as a movie. It has now entered production, and there is some possibility of spinning a series off the movie.

I haven't been able to find "In the Lost Lands" in the bibliography on his website. Maybe I'm not reading right.

Edit: This is the basic IMDb entry for the movie.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've caught up with all the Expanse on TV and was thinking of reading the books. Where should I stop to avoid spoilers?

There's clearly a school of thought that if a book or film is to be Serious Art, a main character has to die at about 80% of the way through. And it's usually badly done, having them die solely so Our Protagonist can move on or just emote at you. I'm not a fan.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathByNewberyMedal

I'm aware that 'if in doubt, marry them' is also a cliche but decided to apply it for my series because I wanted some fun and happiness. I'd prefer a trite happy ending to a trite sad ending, especially when reading porn.

Amen to that. I'm not above exploring sad themes but when it's all grimdark all the time there's not much incentive to slog through it.

 

[PennameWombat]

I've caught up with all the Expanse on TV and was thinking of reading the books. Where should I stop to avoid spoilers?

Also, to address The Expanse! I got into those books more than the show and haven’t caught up on the show actually, but I know that season 3 mostly lined up with book 3 but I seem to remember that some things shown in the show weren’t revealed until book 5 maybe? It’s been a while for that one.

The last couple of TV Seasons of The Expanse jumbled together books 3, 4 and 5. For spoilers, it's tough, but stop at book 5 To Be Certain. But they've chopped and changed many things, consolidated and introduced characters, all of the things you get compressing door stop size novels into hour long TV shows. But the TV series is reasonably faithfully following the first six books.

There's clearly a school of thought that if a book or film is to be Serious Art, a main character has to die at about 80% of the way through. And it's usually badly done, having them die solely so Our Protagonist can move on or just emote at you. I'm not a fan.

I'm aware that 'if in doubt, marry them' is also a cliche but decided to apply it for my series because I wanted some fun and happiness. I'd prefer a trite happy ending to a trite sad ending, especially when reading porn.

My Summer Lovin' 2020 story was a First Time story, followed my two MCs (F, 19, and M, 18) and their growing relationship. The last section starts out in an obvious time jump with just the guy. Then the girl appears. They've graduated from university, have budding careers, are in a little house and if not actually married all but.

So I followed one of your clichés

I don't get overall many comments but that story has more than usual for me. And one was, in essence, "it was going so well, I worried you'd make us sad. I'm so happy for them!"

I would say “how dare you set that curse in effect!” on this but the truth is that if Sanderson hadn’t gotten hold of the end, it probably still wouldn’t be finished haha.<snip>

Um, uh, you're welcome, I guess