DEATH

It’s something that without a doubt we will all have to face someday. A neighbor of mine has recently been told that he has a form of cancer that is incurable, and that with treatment he will have about a year left. He is not the first person who I’ve known that has been told that he will face death in the near future.

We all know that we will die. Alright there seems to be a widely held belief that teenagers do not believe they will die, and that they act as if they can live forever..  [Side Note #1; This belief is perpetuated by the way they drive when they first get to use the family car, and other daring things that they do that of course adults, or at least those of us who have past 19, would never think of doing. First: Almost all inexperienced drivers do things that others might call stupid. The amazing thing is not that teenagers drive poorly, but that the rest of us can’t remember that we drove the same way when we first got the keys to the car.  Second: There have been a number of recent studies that have shown that the ability to see that there is a future, develops later in life than the teenage years. In other words young people have difficulty judging what will happen as they age. Since death is a future event (and if it’s not in the future, you won’t be around to worry about it) the young can’t properly anticipate that they will die. All of which brings us back to the aside, that not everyone realizes that they will die.

[Side note #2: What the heck has all of this got to do with writing you’re asking? Good question. Just hold on I’m about to answer that in the immediate future]

Despite that it is a part of all of our lives, and most of us have known someone who has died, it’s surprising how often death isn’t a part of the stories we read. Even if it is in the book that you’re holding, it’s probably the villain who will die. We have a long tradition of not seeing our characters die. Think back to those first stories that we read, or that were read to us.  How did they end? Why the heroes and heroines lived “Happily ever after,” didn’t they? “Ever after,” seems to imply the same thing as “forever.” So if they were to be happy forever, they weren’t going to die. At least some of those sweet little tikes, who had grandparents around, must have thought that somewhere there was an old folk’s home, where a very wrinkly, two hundred year old Snow White was hobbling over to give Prince Charming a cup of tea.

Now I’m not advocating that children’s books have a bunch of dead people lying around. Just mentioning, that we are conditioned from first light, to be willing to put aside the idea of dying.

Good guys wear the white hats and the bad guys get the black hats. Black is the color of mourning, just think of poor Queen Victoria and that closet of black dresses that she had. Black hats, mourning, death, all lead up to a willingness to accept the death of the bad guys, and the opposite expectation for the good guy.

Now of course there’s a certain practicality involved here. If the good guy dies, the whole idea of a series goes out the window. Not that every author plans on a series of books, each time they make up a story. However, there is a certain comfort available from the idea that at the end of the story the good guy or gal is left standing.

So after you’ve read the first fifty pages or so, who do you want to die? [Side Note #3: If you answer “the author,” you’re excused from the rest of this piece.] If the author has done a good job, you’ve already been attracted to the main character. That should mean that you won’t nominate him/her to meet their end. It’s possible the villain hasn’t been introduced yet so your answer might well be “No one.” It’s also possible that you may not want anyone to die, no matter how vile the bad guy/gal, and no matter how heinous the crime committed. In that case good for you.

However, I would recommend that you stay away from detective novels, true crime mysteries, and almost anything labeled “adult.” For it seems that every book published lately in those categories has a murder in it. In fact even young adult works have people killing other people. [Side Note Last: Sorry Ms. Rowling but even your wonderful stories of the boy wizard have death dealers. True most of the good guys kill in self-defense, and only the bad guys take a life when not threatened. Still, there are an awful lot of bodies stacked up in the final scene. No, not the Epilog, which actually is added to the rest of the story and I personally think it could have been left in the editor’s waste bin. I mean if you’re going to tidy up at the end, for goodness sake answer all of the questions you readers wanted to find out about.]