Alycia W Morales – Almost An Author

Why Did My Favorite Character Have to Die?

by Alycia W. Morales

When I started reading the Divergent series by Veronica Roth, friends were conflicted over the ending of the final book in the series, Allegiant. Some said to read Divergent and Insurgent and stop there, as their disappointment with the third book was great.

How dare she kill that character?[bctt tweet=”Why would an author kill a reader’s favorite character? #amreading #amwriting”]

A character everyone – obviously – loved.

Here are three reasons I could see why Ms. Roth killed off her character:

1. Someone had to die an unselfish death in order to preserve the lives of those around them. To give those left behind a better future – a hopeful one.

2. The ending for the other main character would not have been the same had the other character lived.

3. There was no riding-off-into-the-sunset-happily-ever-after alternative ending for this series. At least not that I could see.

If you’ve been a writer for more than … oh … a few months, you’ve heard that every now and then someone must die. It’s what gets you out of a writing rut. It’s what moves the story forward. It’s what gets the action going again.[bctt tweet=”#Writers, sometimes you need to kill your favorite characters. “]

And if you’ve read enough books, you already know that not every story has a happy ending. Life doesn’t. Why should every book? Yes, happy endings are nice. Yes, we want to see the bad guy die and the good guy survive, but sometimes the good guy has to die in order for the bad guy to get the appropriate judgment.

At least in the case of Allegiant, the death leaves us with a satisfying ending. It would absolutely have driven me crazy if the ending had been stilted or left hanging. I applaud Ms. Roth for leaving me in tears but with the knowledge that it was worth every word.

So, Writer, is there a character in your novel that needs to die? Could you twist your ending in such a way that your readers mourn the loss of their favorite character yet recognize the deep need for someone so brave and selfless to die?

Be a Reader First

One of the key ingredients you should look for when hiring an editor is a love of reading.

I don’t think there’s an editor who said, “I think I’ll become an editor because I hate to read.” If they did, then I wouldn’t recommend hiring them to assist you with your writing project. That would be like hiring a book burner to run the local library. It’d be a lost cause.

Before I decided to write or edit, I was an avid reader. I have been – ever since my babysitter read The Saggy Baggy Elephant and The Little Engine That Could over and over, to my delight.

By the time I was in kindergarten, Ramona Quimby was my favorite character. When I got hold of Judy Blume and met Fudge and Peter, I couldn’t put her books down. In high school, I loved Holden Caulfield’s discontent, I hated how Lenny killed everything he touched, and I grimaced with amazement as Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack experienced unsupervised life on the island in Lord of the Flies. By then, I’d also discovered books I shouldn’t be reading, like Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series.

When I left college, Anne Rice and Lestat, I’d developed a relationship with Jesus. I then married and began having children, so my reading preferences switched to the world of non-fiction, mostly under the parenting and marriage topics.

Until Edward Cullen, Bella Swan, and Jacob Black showed up. I resisted the vampire, knowing that’s where I’d left my reading when I became a Christian. But when my Christian friends kept raving about the story, I decided to give it a shot. I’ve never read an entire series so quickly in my life. I’m a processer. A slow reader. I take in the details and go back to reread for clarity when I need to. I read all four books in the Twilight series in nine days. Bad writing. Good writing. Whatever. Stephenie Meyer immersed me in a vivid fictional dream.

Since then, Steven James has kept me dreaming through Patrick Bowers’ life. I’ve also enjoyed numerous books by DiAnn Mills and Lynette Eason, among others.

I read across genres. Suspense, Romance, Contemporary. Sci-fi, Fantasy, Dystopian. I love YA. And I still read non-fiction, but my topics have broadened.

Because if you’re going to be a writer, there’s so much to learn from reading others’ work. What works. What doesn’t. What you enjoy about each book. And what you hate about it. Which rules you can get away with breaking and when. As well as which rules should always be followed.

And as an editor, I’m a reader first. Always.

There have been countless times I’ve grabbed a self-published novel and known from page one I was going to be too distracted by the errors in spelling and punctuation to ever make it into the story itself. There have also been times I’ve wished I could edit the best-seller and offer suggestions for improvement. If you can’t pull me into a fictional dream within the first three chapters, it’s likely I won’t keep reading. And honestly, I should be engulfed by the end of the first page.

So, I’d like to invite you to join me in an adventure in editing through a reader’s eyes. Because I will always be a reader first.

In my column, The Critical Reader, we’ll take a look at a book each month, and I’ll share what I thought could be improved and what worked (in my humble opinion). My plan is to reveal tips for you and your writing through looking at the work of other authors. And I’ll try to mix it up a bit from genre-to-genre and between fiction and non-fiction.

Until then, here’s to reading!

[bctt tweet=”And as an editor, I’m a reader first. Always. #editor #editing” via=”no”]