Sacrificial Lambs - Creating and Writing Characters Who are Doomed!

I was chatting with one of my readers the other day and she told me she cried when one of the characters died. I thanked her for the compliment which surprised her. I told her I had written that character for two purposes...one of which was to die heroically.

You see, quite often in fiction, a character's primary purpose may be to serve as the sacrificial lamb to:
-- move the plot forward
-- grip the readers' attention
-- elicit strong emotions

Think about your average murder mystery. No corpse (or supposed death), no mystery! Think about all the slasher films. Definitely got your attention, eh?

Then think of all those stories in which a beloved (or even hated) character dies! You feel bad when the beloved character dies and great when a hated character dies. (Sorry, Yeller. or Sorry about that, Emperor Palpatine!)

As an author, I will use that plot devise. And I freely admit, there are some characters I've written whose sole purpose to exist at all is so that I can kill them at some point in one of my stories. If they elicit a tear or a cheer from my readers at the proper moment, then they will have served their purpose.

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Made more headway tonight on the prequel to the Terra-Bravo Saga. Wrapped up Chapter 8 and got our stalwart heroes out of a jam. They have a long trip ahead of them with more danger along the way and still more waiting for them when they reach home!

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Honing Your Instructional Skills has received Premium Status on Smashwords.com which means it will be pushed out to places like Amazon's Kindle Store, Barnes & Noble, and many other fine e-bookstores soon.

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Think I'll sign off for tonight. My eyes (and the rest of me) are tired!

Stay safe!

Jeffrey

© Jeffrey M. Fortney - 2014