Showing characters the exit.

[ishtat]

It seems to me that a lot of stories on Lit are spoiled because their authors fall in love with (identify with ?) their characters and don't write them out of the story when they have served their purpose. What do you think?

An example is "Party of five" by vertigo J

http://www.literotica.com/s/party-of-five-ch-01 which was very popular around 2004/2006. The basic plot was pretty old hat involving one angst ridden young man and three older sisters. The writer wrote good and occasionally witty dialogue and developed each of the three main female characters well. He also knew how to develop (mild) tension.

But the story eventually just ran itself into a bottleneck. the story of two of the sisters Jackie and Dawn were more or less complete - Jackie realised her brother would always mean more to her than just a brother. and Dawn came to realize there was more to a relationship than just sex. The author, however, didn't seem to realize that for the story to advance, these two characters needed to be moved out. It left the relationship with the third sister Alice only partially resolved, and that with his girlfriend completely undeveloped.

Is this a common problem, or am I being unreasonable?

 

[jomar]

They should read/watch Game of Thrones to learn a thing or two. Nobody is safe.

 

[lovecraft68]

I understand your point and agree. Putting it mildly I have run into many series that have more than run their courses and the author does not seem to be able to advance them.

My personal theory on this is some authors care far too much what their audience thinks and if the votes and comments keep coming they get stuck in a rut.

There is a series here that is pretty much a copycat of Party of Five to the point it gets mentioned in the comments and the author always deletes them (along with anything even remotely negative)

The series has been running for three years (25 parts) and is never going to end. Its one brother with 4 sisters and a voice in his head that seems to do little but talk dirty.

The author has a blog which has now broken down to him discussing video games with his readers. He has tried several plot twists all of which fail miserably,

However, he gets a lot of votes and comments and as long as he keeps the siblings fucking no one seems to care.

I believe that is what keeps writers of series from advancing. Fear of what will happen if they change their "formula"

I have only 2 chapters of SWB that have lower scores and in each one I made a significant move in changing things up in the storyline and neither was pleasant and I lost some readers on one of them.

For me it doesn't matter, when something has exceeded its lifespan its time for something new, but many readers don't seem to like it and many authors cater to those readers more than their own ideas.

You see it here sometimes when authors post a link and say :what do you think I should do next?"

So no, you're not asking for too much, but you won't get it very often here.

 

[3113]

They should read/watch Game of Thrones to learn a thing or two. Nobody is safe.

Game of Thrones is a different type of erotica--one where the viewers watch it like gamblers who love the uncertainty. I mean, that's what a reader/viewer signs up for when they watch it, and they know that. It's part of what hooks them.

That might not work for this sort of erotica where readers want what they want and if a character goes they go. No-one-safe, as in Thrones, is not necessarily what erotica readers sign up for.

 

[jomar]

Game of Thrones is a different type of erotica--one where the viewers watch it like gamblers who love the uncertainty. I mean, that's what a reader/viewer signs up for when they watch it, and they know that. It's part of what hooks them.

That might not work for this sort of erotica where readers want what they want and if a character goes they go. No-one-safe, as in Thrones, is not necessarily what erotica readers sign up for.

Don't disagree, just pointing out that you can kill off folk and the story goes on. Of course GOT is a looong series which doesn't necessarily translate to a single novel or serialized chapters.

But, at Lit, who says if a character goes the readers go? You might have data on this I don't and I would be interested in knowing about it, but I wouldn't make that assumption just because.

 

[StrangeLife]

Is this a common problem, or am I being unreasonable?

I have not read the story to which you are referring, but your argument is certainly valid.

I watched an interview with J. K. Rowling a while back, where she recalled how the death of a central and very loved character in Harry Potter book 6 resulted in her being flooded with thousands of pleading letters from crying children. She felt awful about it, but never regretted doing it. The character's part of the story was over and the demise was necessary in order to set the atmosphere for the rest of the tale.

 

[lovecraft68]

F. Paul Wilson needs to do this with his repairman Jack Character. One of my favorites of all time, but the books are going on and on and are totally predictable at this point.

Good or bad its time for closure there.

 

[sr71plt]

It seems to me that a lot of stories on Lit are spoiled because their authors fall in love with (identify with ?) their characters and don't write them out of the story when they have served their purpose. What do you think?
. . .

Is this a common problem, or am I being unreasonable?

There are some 300,000 stories here. How many have do this to be "a lot" or a "common problem"?

So, unless you've found this as a problem in over 100,000 stories you've read here, I guess I'd fall on the side of "unreasonable."

And then, even if so, so what? Surely you're not saying that everyone should write stories just to please your notions of what should happen to characters in a story(?)

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I strongly disagree, tho 2 minutes ago I strongly agreed!

People hunger for a little constancy in their lives, and that especially includes characters. So if you have popular characters, spare the world your literary genius, and simply add some enjoyment to the world instead.

 

[slyc_willie]

It seems to me that a lot of stories on Lit are spoiled because their authors fall in love with (identify with ?) their characters and don't write them out of the story when they have served their purpose. What do you think?

An example is "Party of five" by vertigo J

http://www.literotica.com/s/party-of-five-ch-01 which was very popular around 2004/2006. The basic plot was pretty old hat involving one angst ridden young man and three older sisters. The writer wrote good and occasionally witty dialogue and developed each of the three main female characters well. He also knew how to develop (mild) tension.

But the story eventually just ran itself into a bottleneck. the story of two of the sisters Jackie and Dawn were more or less complete - Jackie realised her brother would always mean more to her than just a brother. and Dawn came to realize there was more to a relationship than just sex. The author, however, didn't seem to realize that for the story to advance, these two characters needed to be moved out. It left the relationship with the third sister Alice only partially resolved, and that with his girlfriend completely undeveloped.

Is this a common problem, or am I being unreasonable?

You're speaking from a personal viewpoint, created and guided by your tastes. Other readers may or may not agree with you. Some want to see every nuance played out until the end, others are happy with letting go.

At the heart of the matter is what the writer wants to write, despite/in spite of, what the readers want or interpret from the story. You may think that a character or characters have served their purpose, but that doesn't make it so. Literature is full of supposedly 'needless' characters who apparently serve no purpose but to hand over a drink to the protagonist.

You selected as an example a series on Lit that has been idling for the last eight years. It's 'obviously' not going to be continued, so it seems a safe bet to single it out. But, given your reservations, was it a good read? Did it serve it's purpose? You mentioned that it was, at one time, a popular series. Don't you think the author would be satisfied by that?

My thinking is that this is more a personal gripe that you're trying to feel out, rather than a serious inquiry. No two writers write in the same vein; even at this level, we all have our own voice, and our own reasons for writing.

 

[lovecraft68]

You're speaking from a personal viewpoint, created and guided by your tastes.

And that's what people are doing here is expressing their viewpoints on the OP's viewpoint some agree some don't.

Very few threads on this forum are black and white answers. Short of "how many words on a lit page" or "Can I use underage in a story" most threads are answered by the opinion of each author.

Pretty much everything here is subjective.

My feeling is if you are going to write a series (especially a long one) then the author should move things along and not just say "And in this one its sex at a truck stop" and when a story ends, I don't think its a lot to ask to have a form of closure at the end, it doesn't have to be exactly I want, but it needs to be something.

And I refer back to my original answer that I believe it doesn't happen due to audience response. If a series is nothing but sex after sex after sex and its getting high ratings and a lot of good comments many authors will just keep going and not change up anything.

I have found that the "adoration" of readers seems to mean a lot to some people here. Just like some of those people in the am pic forums. YOu can tell their threads have become their lives.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

My compliments to any pedantic readers still left in the world...

Had to chuckle at Johnson's response - and I basically agree with it too.

I must say I have personally no idea about all this 'moving a story forward/advancing a story' and so on. It's not the way I approach writing.

If the concept - or, let's say the theoretical concept - of story structure is something akin to someone's professional career path, wherein you do 'all the right things' or bribe all the right people and not get caught out, and at the end you get the end office and a gold watch and a big pension afterwards and a retirement home and a satin-lined coffin and a Scottish piper at your funeral... Well, you see what I'm driving at.

Sure, if a series is getting tedious and boringly repetitive, then you've got to do something about it - but what?

Kill the characters? Why...? The assumption that story staleness is something to do with mere (story character/s) functionality and 'human vector-gram' structure is not something I agree with. It's got to do with the sense of priority and significance that is rendered or conveyed to the reader in the story by the writer. If the characters are believeable and people identify with them, you've got a leg-up on developing urgency/priority/significance, and the main target, at the end of the day, is whether or not the reader cares about the character.

Personally, I find it much easier to get excited about the sex elements if I care about the character doin' the fucking! Or getting fucked.

If the writer has already bored the reader into thinking 'I don't give a fuck about this character' it might be a bit too late to kill the character off; might as well kill the whole story. Might as well get a new job!

Unless it was just a cunning strategy so that you can NOW mercilessly torture the character to a painful death a la Stellen Skarskarde in the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo! Or Wolf Creek or some such miserable, gratuitous, ...

Meanwhile, however, are there any readers left that will wait patiently for you up to say page 100/200 while you go about pulling off this 'cunning strategy?'

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

My compliments to any pedantic readers still left in the world...

Had to chuckle at Johnson's response - and I basically agree with it too.

I must say I have personally no idea about all this 'moving a story forward/advancing a story' and so on. It's not the way I approach writing.

If the concept - or, let's say the theoretical concept - of story structure is something akin to someone's professional career path, wherein you do 'all the right things' or bribe all the right people and not get caught out, and at the end you get the end office and a gold watch and a big pension afterwards and a retirement home and a satin-lined coffin and a Scottish piper at your funeral... Well, you see what I'm driving at.

Sure, if a series is getting tedious and boringly repetitive, then you've got to do something about it - but what?

Kill the characters? Why...? The assumption that story staleness is something to do with mere (story character/s) functionality and 'human vector-gram' structure is not something I agree with. It's got to do with the sense of priority and significance that is rendered or conveyed to the reader in the story by the writer. If the characters are believeable and people identify with them, you've got a leg-up on developing urgency/priority/significance, and the main target, at the end of the day, is whether or not the reader cares about the character.

Personally, I find it much easier to get excited about the sex elements if I care about the character doin' the fucking! Or getting fucked.

If the writer has already bored the reader into thinking 'I don't give a fuck about this character' it might be a bit too late to kill the character off; might as well kill the whole story. Might as well get a new job!

Unless it was just a cunning strategy so that you can NOW mercilessly torture the character to a painful death a la Stellen Skarskarde in the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo! Or Wolf Creek or some such miserable, gratuitous, ...

Meanwhile, however, are there any readers left that will wait patiently for you up to say page 100/200 while you go about pulling off this 'cunning strategy?'

True. I have a character I'm fond of but she morphed from a Goth wild child to Suzy home-maker, and was boring. So I thought about it and made her unstable again. I imagine she'll become a rich madame down the road.

 

[3113]

But, at Lit, who says if a character goes the readers go? You might have data on this I don't and I would be interested in knowing about it, but I wouldn't make that assumption just because.

I put this wrong; I wasn't assuming that erotica readers can't deal with characters dying. What I meant was that the advice for writers of erotica to read/watch GOT (or watch the Sopranos, or the Wire, or any number of earlier HBO series where no character was safe) and take their cue from that might not be a good one as the two are not synonymous when it comes to why readers are reading it. Erotica readers often have particular wants and expectations, as with LW. As in this story which is incest. They want to see a certain type of story with certain types of people (faithless wives, brothers/sisters) fucking.

So, while GOT might give a writer a lesson on the fact that it's okay to kill favorite characters, that readers can survive it as can a series, that doesn't mean that this lesson will work for the erotica the person is writing. It may work, and I certainly wouldn't tell any writer not to kill off a favorite character if that's what the story required. BUT, I wouldn't tell them to take their cue on writing from any series that did it as a matter of course (like GOT, the Soprano, etc.), not unless they were writing a similar series.

I mean, imagine if the Twilight series had killed off Edward the vampire? In GOT, the series would have done that. But in Twilight, doing that might well have put an end to the readership. The readership wasn't reading it with the understanding that any of the main characters could die, the readership was reading it for the on-going romance between Bella and Edward. End that, and you end what keeps the readers reading.

So the question isn't whether erotica readers can deal with a character dying or just leaving. Of course they can. The question is: what do they expect from this or some other story? The reason they are reading it. In the example given, the reason they are reading it seems to be to see the brother and sisters having sex. Which means killing off--or getting rid of any one of them might disrupt that. Which might ruin the read for said readers, however good an idea it might be from a storytelling standpoint.

 

[sr71plt]

Writing a character out of a story, per the OP, isn't the same thing as killing a character off in a story.

I just see this thread as yet another "I want all 300,000 stories here to do what I personally want to see in a story." That's getting really tiresome, I think.

 

[SecondCircle]

The death of a character, in any medium, should always serve the overall story like any other detail. There are those that say you should never just kill off characters, and those that agree with the "kill your darlings" approach.

The GoT observations are pretty accurate. Those deaths serve the overall theme of the story. There's so many POV's that you read from, so many awesome and likeable characters. But they live in an extremely dangerous world of politics and the struggle for power. Anytime one of them dies, it isn't because the author had exhausted every possible story he had for said character, it's because it fits the story. And when it happens, its much like death in the real world. Sudden, cruel, and saddening, often frustrating.

I balk at the idea of killing one of my characters because they got "boring" or I ran outta things to write for them.

As for continuing a character's story (or not), no one should just write more about the character unless there legitimately can be more to tell. I'm reminded of all the damn movie sequels there are. When there's a damn good movie and it's well received, there's always talk of the "next one". Then when they make a new one (and by now there is such expectations to live up to, and the fresh idea of the movie is no longer fresh and exciting) people say that it wasn't as good as the original. Sometimes, I just like seeing a good standalone story. I say "Man they could definitely add more and do a sequel." But usually, I'm satisfied with the original single telling of a good story.

 

[Saxon_Hart]

My first ever story on here, or anywhere other than my high school English teacher's desk, was a five chapter saga. I planned from the outset to kill off the main character. I even foreshadowed it and people got pissed. I really didn't care how pissed they were, because I had no intention of dragging the story out any further than I had planned. Commentors bitch about the lack of reality, but you kill someone off and they bitch about that too. How do you get any more real than death? I've even had commentors tell me I am a murderer for having a character snipe his wife's boy toy. I say do what you want with your characters. Kill em, bury em, let them run naked through the fields in a rain storm. Do what has to be done to get the story out there.
I likely got a bit off topic but I am sleep deprived LOL.

 

[3113]

Writing a character out of a story, per the OP, isn't the same thing as killing a character off in a story.

Well, I said "killing or leaving." But you're quite right.

There was an article recently comparing Mad Men to the Sopranos, arguing that Mad Men isn't doing as good a job tension/drama/character-wise. Now, right or wrong in their criticism of Mad Men, the comparison was unfair. The Sopranos was about mobsters and anyone could die at any time. That gave the show constant tension/drama. Every episode the viewer would wonder: is the main character going to kill this other character? Or are they going to get killed by rival mobsters? etc. And the characters themselves worried about this and had an edge because of it.

Mad Men is about an ad agency. Characters frequently leave, but rarely by dying. They get fired or quit. And it usually takes time and build up before that happens (the character comes in drunk several times before the company fires him, for example). So telling someone who is writing up Mad Men to watch the Sopranos or GOT and take their cue from those shows only works to a point. Because those universes have an easy out: people go around killing each other. But "anyone-can-leave" isn't the same as "anyone-can-die." People don't usually leave, suddenly and unexpectedly. There usually has to be a reason why they're, say, fired, and that usually requires build up.

So watching a series like GOT to learn about letting go of characters might not be all that helpful if the erotica series doesn't have a similar universe.

 

[lovecraft68]

Writing a character out of a story, per the OP, isn't the same thing as killing a character off in a story.

I just see this thread as yet another "I want all 300,000 stories here to do what I personally want to see in a story." That's getting really tiresome, I think.

Then you now know how many people here feel about you.

 

[TxRad]

[/B]

Then you now know how many people here feel about you.

And you.

 

[PennLady]

I have to say, just for me, I've never had any problems with writing out characters or ending stories. I don't get as attached as a lot of people, I guess. Which is not to say that I don't enjoy writing certain characters, or types of them, or situations, but to me a story has a path and when it's done, it's done.

 

[sr71plt]

I've had characters I wanted to off--or drop--refuse to leave. But on in the erotica stories as yet. I'm not shy about dropping them if they no longer are useful to the plotline or if they enhance the plotline by the surprise of their departure, but I don't fight much of anything the characters decide to do on their own. The ones I did jettison but subsequently decided to bring back have provided a great deal of pleasure in getting that worked out.

 

[Tyro999]

... Is this a common problem, or am I being unreasonable?

With the thousands and thousands of stories available on Literotica at the click of a mouse, I have no problem abandoning a story, however many chapters I may have stuck with it, once its characters have outworn their welcome. A new story with new characters is just around the next bend.

 

[3113]

With the thousands and thousands of stories available on Literotica at the click of a mouse, I have no problem abandoning a story, however many chapters I may have stuck with it, once its characters have outworn their welcome. A new story with new characters is just around the next bend.

That's a good reader's perspective. But we are talking, I think, from a writer's perspective. What do we (writers) do when characters are getting long in the tooth and the story/series is slowing down? And what do we do, especially, if the readers aren't getting tired of these characters/series, but we are?

The readers may have an easy way out by clicking on a new story, but what about the writer of such a story/series? It's a good question for us writers to ponder.

 

[sr71plt]

The readers may have an easy way out by clicking on a new story, but what about the writer of such a story/series? It's a good question for us writers to ponder.

I'm feeling that way about a pen name series I'm doing. Working on book eight right now and it's becoming a chug. I'd already decided to write each ending until whenever as if it's the final one and would allow me just to quit.

Sue Grafton has discussed what a chore it's become to fill out her alphabet novels.

I've written nine of a GM detective series, though (some of which are published on Lit. as the "Death in . . ." series) that just keep expanding. I am taking a hiatus from those, but I don't know as I'm tired of writing the protagonist. I wrote six straightaway, renewed my own interest by writing a prequel (which isn't here--runs too close to the underage edge), and then saw that I'd left a ten-year gap between then number four and number five. I've enjoyed the challenge of writing another one that comes chronologically after number four, the challenge being to make it both run from four and also not violate anything ten years later--in fact building in the start of a few threads played in later, already-published novels. If/when I pick the series up again, I will probably insert one between the current number five and number six. Number nine is written with an ending that I can just leave if I don't want to spin it out farther on that end.

In all, it can be a fun challenge to insert one into an already published mix and maybe add new meaning to some of the existing threads.