Dear Undertaker…
It’s time for everyone’s favorite writing advice column, “Dear Undertaker,” featuring our resident former undertaker, D.L. Winchester!
Let’s open the inbox and see what queries we have today…
Dear Undertaker,
I’m writing a short story, and there just isn’t any emotion. My main character is a thirteen-year-old boy named “Dan” who has a sunny disposition in spite of his poverty. His best friend is a beagle named “Fido,” and together they fight for a better life in the town of Boringville, where the entire town is against them. I just need something to rock Dan to the core and help him transition from child to adult. Can you help?
Stuck in Saratoga
Dear Stuck,
Introduce Fido to my good friend Crotalus horridus. You’ll have all the emotion you need…
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Dear Undertaker,
I’m writing a character who is retiring from the police department to start a business making homemade Christmas ornaments. I think something needs to happen his last day on the force, but I’m not sure what. Any ideas?
Cheerful in Chicago
Dear Cheerful,
Look, you know the trope as well as I do. An officer's last day on the force before he leaves to pursue his passion, he has to die. Find a way to make it spectacular, perhaps his taser malfunctions while he’s driving and he crashes his patrol car into a tanker full of gasoline that explodes!
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Dear Undertaker,
You’re a sick freak, you know that? I wrote you asking what I could do about the ninety-year-old, wheelchair-bound granny with a sunny disposition who’s feeling a little down at the loss of her husband, and you tell me to have her launch herself into lava? You better hope I don’t find you, because if I do I’m going to shove a wheelchair up your…
And that’s all the time we have for “Dear Undertaker” today. If D.L. survives, we’ll be back next week with another edition!
Death. It’s a trope in and of itself. Stephen King advises writers to “kill your darlings.” Robert Frost tells us, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” And Neil Gaiman advises us, “Can’t make an omelette without killing a few people.”
I’ve had my fair share of fictional characters shuffle off their mortal coils in one way or another in my stories. Some deaths have been quick, others slow and excruciating. I even nailed a guy to a cross and left him there for two days once (that death I’m particularly proud of).
Death is important to story because it changes things. It’s irreversible (well, usually, I do write horror) and it can create powerful emotions in the reader.
It can conclude a story.
It can spark change in a character.
It can bring justice to the oppressed.
It can be funny as hell.
Killing a character is a writer’s Swiss Army knife because it can do all these things and more. You can desensitize a character to death, then rock their world with the death of someone they care about. An accidental death can haunt a character long after the event in question. And a sudden demise can insert emotion into an otherwise lifeless story.
So I hope you’ll consider killing a few characters, and find some interesting ways to do it. If you need suggestions, Tim Dorsey has made a career of killing assholes with appropriate and amusing methods.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s an angry woman pushing a charred wheelchair up my street, and I don’t think I want to be around to find out where she plans to park it…
Let’s open the inbox and see what queries we have today…
Dear Undertaker,
I’m writing a short story, and there just isn’t any emotion. My main character is a thirteen-year-old boy named “Dan” who has a sunny disposition in spite of his poverty. His best friend is a beagle named “Fido,” and together they fight for a better life in the town of Boringville, where the entire town is against them. I just need something to rock Dan to the core and help him transition from child to adult. Can you help?
Stuck in Saratoga
Dear Stuck,
Introduce Fido to my good friend Crotalus horridus. You’ll have all the emotion you need…
-
Dear Undertaker,
I’m writing a character who is retiring from the police department to start a business making homemade Christmas ornaments. I think something needs to happen his last day on the force, but I’m not sure what. Any ideas?
Cheerful in Chicago
Dear Cheerful,
Look, you know the trope as well as I do. An officer's last day on the force before he leaves to pursue his passion, he has to die. Find a way to make it spectacular, perhaps his taser malfunctions while he’s driving and he crashes his patrol car into a tanker full of gasoline that explodes!
-
Dear Undertaker,
You’re a sick freak, you know that? I wrote you asking what I could do about the ninety-year-old, wheelchair-bound granny with a sunny disposition who’s feeling a little down at the loss of her husband, and you tell me to have her launch herself into lava? You better hope I don’t find you, because if I do I’m going to shove a wheelchair up your…
And that’s all the time we have for “Dear Undertaker” today. If D.L. survives, we’ll be back next week with another edition!
Death. It’s a trope in and of itself. Stephen King advises writers to “kill your darlings.” Robert Frost tells us, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” And Neil Gaiman advises us, “Can’t make an omelette without killing a few people.”
I’ve had my fair share of fictional characters shuffle off their mortal coils in one way or another in my stories. Some deaths have been quick, others slow and excruciating. I even nailed a guy to a cross and left him there for two days once (that death I’m particularly proud of).
Death is important to story because it changes things. It’s irreversible (well, usually, I do write horror) and it can create powerful emotions in the reader.
It can conclude a story.
It can spark change in a character.
It can bring justice to the oppressed.
It can be funny as hell.
Killing a character is a writer’s Swiss Army knife because it can do all these things and more. You can desensitize a character to death, then rock their world with the death of someone they care about. An accidental death can haunt a character long after the event in question. And a sudden demise can insert emotion into an otherwise lifeless story.
So I hope you’ll consider killing a few characters, and find some interesting ways to do it. If you need suggestions, Tim Dorsey has made a career of killing assholes with appropriate and amusing methods.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s an angry woman pushing a charred wheelchair up my street, and I don’t think I want to be around to find out where she plans to park it…