A time to live, a time to die

The Death of Arthur, by John Mulcaster Carrick 1862

"I may not be able to save her, but I can bear witness to her fate as a friend, and I can stand nearby when she meets her darkest hour."
~Mage Corey, from High Maga


A couple years back I had a very interesting experience while doing a beta read for my good friend and fellow author Terri-Lynne DeFino. 

In the original version of the manuscript she sent me, one of the major characters faded into the background during the last third of the book. This situation didn't sit right with me. 

On the one hand, the story was very well constructed up to the last page; lots of tension, uncertainty, and conflict all around. Terri had tight character arcs for everyone -- except this particular individual. He had played a crucial role in the first part of the book, but by the end it was like reading about a ghost, a person unseen and without any power over the events at hand.

Then it hit me:  I felt like I was reading about a ghost because this character was a ghost. Terri had passed through a crucial moment in the story when he should have died, but did not. 

When I brought this to Terri's attention, she knew immediately that I was right. In fact, she confessed that for several reasons she had conscientiously resisted the instinct to 'kill' him in precisely the same place that I identified as his moment to die. 

Terri went on to 'fix' this part of the manuscript before the book went to press, making the character's story much more fulfilling, moving, and heroic.  More worthy of the extraordinary person he is. (In case you're curious, her wonderful novel is now available as A Time Never Lived, another great title from Hadley Rille Books.)

When Terri and I first had this discussion, I was not new to killing characters.  I had sent a fair share to their deaths in Eolyn. As for High Maga, it is a veritable blood bath by comparison to my first novel, as many of you will soon find out.

Letting my characters die time and again hasn't been easy for me, but I've done it, for the most part because I've recognized how important those deaths are for plot, tension, and story building.

Sure, we all wish Romeo and Juliet had lived, but would their
story be nearly as compelling if it were written any other way?

But in reading Terri's manuscript, I gained a new perspective on this age old aspect of the craft. I learned that in order to truly respect a character, we must allow him or her to meet their destiny, especially when that destiny is death. 

If we force a character to live past their moment, we condemn them to being a ghost in our fictitious worlds, to becoming personalities without form or reason; the types of characters our readers tend to get annoyed by and may even come to hate.

If we allow them to die in their moment, we give greater meaning to their life.  Everything they desired, fought for, did or failed to do stands out in sharp relief against the impact of their absence.  The reader comes to appreciate the character more, to remember them better, and to say long after they finish reading the book, "If only he  (or she) hadn't died. . ."

All of this has come back to me in recent days, because in the writing of Daughter of Aithne, I've had to let another character die. Who, how, or why  is irrelevant at the moment (after all, this particular death may be edited out again by the time the novel hits press).  What matters is the impulse it gave me to share these thoughts with you.

Like Mage Corey in the war-torn world of High Maga, we as authors cannot always save our characters.  But that's okay, because sometimes what's more important is to bear witness to their fates; to stand close by when they meet their darkest hour.

~*~

 

 

I have a fun post up this week on Heroines of Fantasy about The White Queen, and how the incomparable Philippa Gregory has inspired me as an author.  Stop by to read and share your thoughts when you have a chance.

 

Also, my Orangeberry Book Tour will continue next week on August 19th with a guest post on the Quality Reads UK Book Club.  Please stop by to say hi, and by all means, share the link with your friends!

I hope you are in for a great weekend.

 

 





Death and Mourning in Eolyn's World

Lear and Cordelia by Ford Maddox Brown

I suppose this seems like an odd topic to write about on a sunny June day, but 2013 has been a year in which death has touched my family in many ways, taking both relatives and friends, in some cases expected, in others not so much. 

As I've mourned these losses, and supported others in their mourning, I've realized that this is one of the many themes relevant to Eolyn's world that I haven't yet touched upon in my blog. Rites and beliefs concerning death are a fundamental part of any culture, so the fantasy author must give some attention to death when building her world, whether or not the rites in question will be a part of the story.

According to the tradition of Moisehén, death entails the passage of the spirit from the living world into another reality called the Afterlife.

The nature of the Afterlife is almost impossible to decipher or understand through the lens of the living.  It is thought to be a place of relative peace, yet of greater challenges.  Spirits that enter the Afterlife gain a larger perspective on the conflicts of the world of the living. If those same spirits are particularly rich in magic, they can, under special circumstances, intervene in the living world.  How and why they do this is not well understood.

In order to reach the Afterlife, a spirit must first pass through the Underworld.  Unlike the Afterlife, the nature of the Underworld is fairly well understood by the people of Moisehén.  This is because on very rare occasions, particularly powerful mages and magas have sent their spirit into the Underworld and returned to the world of the living to tell what they experienced.

The Underworld is a place of constant decay.  Many souls get trapped here, fettered by their own illusions and fears.  Spirits confined to the Underworld are known in Moisehén as the Lost Souls. Eventually, the Lost Souls fade into nothing.  Their slow decay ignites a hunger, of sorts, for the light and magic of souls that have recently been released from their living bodies.  As a result, the Lost Souls prey on spirits attempting to make the journey to the Afterlife, and they can quickly drag others into the same state of decay. 

The rites of death in Moisehén are mainly focused on helping the recently deceased navigate the dangers of the Underworld.   The basic idea is that a bridge can be created between friends/family in the living world and friends/family in the Afterlife. 

At the time of the person's death, certain herbs are burned, such as winter sage. These are believed to help strengthen this bridge.  Loved ones who accompany the dying person will also sing songs of passage, the lyrics and melody of which are crafted to alert helpful spirits in the Afterlife of the pending descent to the Underworld.

Of course, not everyone dies in the company of friends and family, so the rites of passage are adjusted to fit different circumstances.  Warriors, for example, will burn winter sage and sing the songs of passage on the eve of battle, so that the foundations of their bridge are already laid in case they meet their doom in combat.  High Mages accompany every army and cast sacred circles on the edge of the battlefield to help guide the souls of the fallen safely into the Afterlife. 

Death of Elaine by Thomas Hovenden 1882

Despite these precautions, it is understood that an individual who suffers a violent death runs a higher risk of becoming one of the Lost Souls.  For this reason, battlefields and any other site where a soul was torn violently from its body are considered dangerous places where the curtain between the world of the living and the world of the dead is ominously thin.  Mages and magas will often return to battlefields weeks, months, or even years after the conflict to attempt to 'seal' these holes by casting spells and planting new life in the form of trees or wildflowers. 

One of the dangers of the Underworld that I haven't yet talked about are the Naether Demons.  But they are complex enough to deserve their own post, so I'll come back to them later.

The people of Moisehén do not believe there is a god or any other entity that sits at the gates of the Afterlife and decides who is worthy of entering.  Rather, they believe that one builds a bridge to the Afterlife by living well in this world, by establishing positive relationships with others who will sustain one's spirit in the moment of death, and guide one safely into the hereafter.

It is the quality of those relationships -- not the quantity -- and the strength of the magic held within them that matters. Even one person well-loved has the potential to redeem a lifetime of wrong-doings and ensure a safe journey to the other side.