Jen at Crazy for Books restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another, but then couldn't continue, so she handed the hosting responsibilities off to Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them.
This week Billy asks: Have you ever thought of writing a respectful, but angry letter to an author to ask them WHY they killed off one of your favorite characters in a novel?
No. I have not.
If an author writes a fictional character well enough, and brings them to life vividly enough that you care when they die, that author has done their work really well. That's something to appreciate and celebrate, not something to be angry about.
Previous Book Blogger Hop: 251 Is a Sophie Germain Prime
Subsequent Book Blogger Hop: Aemilianus Was Roman Emperor for Three Months in 253 A.D.
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Great answer Aaron! That's so true that if we do care enough about the characters then the Author has done a great job, never really thought about it that way.
ReplyDeleteAngelica @ Paperback Princess
@Angelica: There is a reason the "seven deadly words" for a book are "I just don't care about these people".
DeleteI agree. It’s their character and their choice and if it is done properly, the character had to be killed off for the novel to work. I admit I have been put off reading any more horror fiction because of a very good horror novel by Dan Simmons. His characters were so very good, when he killed them off I just didn’t think I could continue with a genre whose whole point, if done well, is to kill off characters you care about.
ReplyDelete@Sue: If I care about a character, the manner of their death almost doesn't matter to me. Even seemingly random deaths work, because death is often unexpected and stories that include that sort of randomness often ring even truer than ones in which deaths are "heroic" or "meaningful".
Delete