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.
\n 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.
\n ….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\u2019t just think she is a drama queen who needs to get over the fact she isn’t in power anymore?<\/i><\/p>\n
This is a specific question from a particular story, but there\u2019s a more general question about making a reader feel sad about a fictional death.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know the ins and outs of this story, but let\u2019s suppose the girl\u2019s mother, father, grandparents, and two older sisters were killed, and let\u2019s assume the girl (I\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
Suppose the girl\u2019s birthday comes around, her first birthday without her family. Let\u2019s say her present circumstances are bleak. She\u2019s alone or with her brother, who is so unhappy he\u2019s forgotten what day it is, and she remembers the last year\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The reminiscences don\u2019t have to be all good. Octavia\u2019s 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\u2019t snapped back at her mother. It torments her that their final words were sharp.<\/p>\n
What I just suggested combines the qualities of the members of Octavia\u2019s 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\u2019t be capable of bringing the departed to life.<\/p>\n
You can and probably should recall the beloved dead frequently. Doing so will keep them alive in the reader\u2019s mind and will make Olympia more sympathetic too. There are lots of ways to pull this off. You don\u2019t have to stage a birthday to make it happen. Olympia meets a possible ally and her sister\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t happen. She can even think that the people she lost are so much with her that she\u2019d like to get away from them occasionally. I don\u2019t think that thought will make her unsympathetic. <\/p>\n
Of course you don\u2019t want to slow down an action scene with long memories. These are just touches, a little here, a little there.<\/p>\n
If Octavia isn\u2019t introspective or if she\u2019s traumatized, the writer\u2019s job is harder. Her feelings are suppressed. She may be sad without understanding why, or she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
There may be after-effects of the killings that you can dramatize, ones that aren\u2019t as personal. The country\u2019s new rulers are despotic. The old queen, Octavia\u2019s mother, wouldn\u2019t have tolerated the corruption. The old king, Octavia’s father, strengthened the parliament, but the new king has dissolved it. Beggars\u2019 Day, which Octavia\u2019s grandmother initiated, is no longer observed, and the poor are rounded up and imprisoned.<\/p>\n
Here are a couple of fanciful ideas:<\/p>\n
\u2022 The dead can return as ghosts that only Octavia can see and hear or that everyone can. They\u2019re not forgotten because they\u2019re present. They can urge her on to revenge, as the ghost of Hamlet\u2019s father does, or argue against it or disagree among themselves.<\/p>\n
\u2022 This society can be ancestor worshipers. Octavia can light candles nightly at their shrines and pray to them.<\/p>\n
Back to the worry about Octavia being a drama queen who\u2019s sulking because she isn\u2019t a princess anymore – this may be Octavia\u2019s fear, that she isn\u2019t really grieving for the people she loved, that she\u2019s 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.<\/i> These thoughts don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
A few prompts:<\/p>\n
\u2022 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.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Tina\u2019s dad dies suddenly when she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Sticking with Tina, a month later she and her mom move her father\u2019s desk into her bedroom because his desk is bigger and better. Write about her first night with the desk in her room.<\/p>\n
\u2022 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.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[210,211,212],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}