On October 17, 2010, Jill wrote, I have just decided to go ahead and ask my complicated question that has been bugging me for a very long time now.
    I am writing a story about revenge. This girl is getting revenge for her family. Her whole family was killed during a civil war in her kingdom (her family was in power, and she was the princess). Everyone except her brother was killed so she and her brother are working together for revenge, actually.
    ….How can I make the reader truly mourn for the girl’s family with her? I definitely want them killed off in the beginning. I have fallen in love with her family during all my planning and the fact is that I based them on my own loved ones (living and deceased), so I know I am mourning for them but how can I make sure the reader at least feels for the main character and doesn’t just think she is a drama queen who needs to get over the fact she isn’t in power anymore?

This is a specific question from a particular story, but there’s a more general question about making a reader feel sad about a fictional death.

I don’t know the ins and outs of this story, but let’s suppose the girl’s mother, father, grandparents, and two older sisters were killed, and let’s assume the girl (I’ll call her Octavia) was old enough when they were killed to have known them and to have a store of memories. We want to commemorate all the dead and make sure Octavia is sympathetic.

Suppose the girl’s birthday comes around, her first birthday without her family. Let’s say her present circumstances are bleak. She’s alone or with her brother, who is so unhappy he’s forgotten what day it is, and she remembers the last year’s celebration. This can be from her first-person POV, or it can be in third person. At the party the year before, her grandfather recited a poem for her, and she remembers the words and her grandfather’s rumbling voice as he said the words. A dish was served that she hated, and her grandmother helped her get away with not eating it. One older sister, who used to tease her about her wild hair, gave her silver barrette and spent an hour showing her how to roll her hair on top of her head.

The reminiscences don’t have to be all good. Octavia’s mother might have scolded her for not thanking someone properly for a gift. Now Octavia misses having someone who cares enough to scold, or she wishes she hadn’t snapped back at her mother. It torments her that their final words were sharp.

What I just suggested combines the qualities of the members of Octavia’s family and her perspective on them. If the mother had beaten Octavia with a belt or stopped talking to her for months at a time, Octavia might still grieve, but her feelings would be more complex. If Octavia were the selfish drama queen Jill is worrying about, her thoughts would all revolve around herself; she wouldn’t be capable of bringing the departed to life.

You can and probably should recall the beloved dead frequently. Doing so will keep them alive in the reader’s mind and will make Olympia more sympathetic too. There are lots of ways to pull this off. You don’t have to stage a birthday to make it happen. Olympia meets a possible ally and her sister’s voice in her mind sizes him up. She mentally debates a course of action and internally asks her father for guidance. In an argument with her brother she calls him by her mother’s pet name for him. Other people can remind her of her dead. She can see someone from a distance who has the same build as her grandfather and for a moment she thinks the killing didn’t happen. She can even think that the people she lost are so much with her that she’d like to get away from them occasionally. I don’t think that thought will make her unsympathetic.

Of course you don’t want to slow down an action scene with long memories. These are just touches, a little here, a little there.

If Octavia isn’t introspective or if she’s traumatized, the writer’s job is harder. Her feelings are suppressed. She may be sad without understanding why, or she’s always tired. When her birthday comes she may push aside the memories because a year has passed since the deaths and she thinks she should be over them. You may need a device to reveal the people you want her to mourn and the depth of her feelings. Make her find a box of letters that the reader can read. Or have someone else talk about the family. And think of other devices.

There may be after-effects of the killings that you can dramatize, ones that aren’t as personal. The country’s new rulers are despotic. The old queen, Octavia’s mother, wouldn’t have tolerated the corruption. The old king, Octavia’s father, strengthened the parliament, but the new king has dissolved it. Beggars’ Day, which Octavia’s grandmother initiated, is no longer observed, and the poor are rounded up and imprisoned.

Here are a couple of fanciful ideas:

•    The dead can return as ghosts that only Octavia can see and hear or that everyone can. They’re not forgotten because they’re present. They can urge her on to revenge, as the ghost of Hamlet’s father does, or argue against it or disagree among themselves.

•    This society can be ancestor worshipers. Octavia can light candles nightly at their shrines and pray to them.

Back to the worry about Octavia being a drama queen who’s sulking because she isn’t a princess anymore – this may be Octavia’s fear, that she isn’t really grieving for the people she loved, that she’s actually moping over a loss of status. If so, you can have her think this in writing, like, I missed being wealthy and having everyone notice when I entered a room and people talking if I wore my orange gown rather than my blue one. It was shameful to care about these things, and sometimes I wondered if I regretted the objects the war took away more than I regretted the people I lost. These thoughts don’t make her less sympathetic, in my opinion. Self-doubt is touchingly human, and the reader is likely to feel more for Octavia and know that of course she misses her family most.

A few prompts:

•    Lon is haunted (literally) by ghosts of ancestors who died a century before in some terrible way. He is familiar with their story from family lore, but as far as he knows no other relatives have been visited by these people. Write a scene involving Lon and his ghosts. Make the ghosts come to life, so to speak, as individuals. If you like, go on to write a story about how Lon deals with them.

•    Tina’s dad dies suddenly when she’s fourteen. They were very close, and she misses him intensely. Write a session between her and a grief counselor. Have Tina bring up some of her emotions that shame her, as well as more acceptable feelings.

•    Sticking with Tina, a month later she and her mom move her father’s desk into her bedroom because his desk is bigger and better. Write about her first night with the desk in her room.

•    Tina again. In the back of the top desk drawer she finds a big brown envelope. The contents – letters? newspaper clippings?  a journal? – throw Tina back into turmoil. Write what was in the envelope and what happens next.

Have fun, and save what you write!