Writing "Whenever you get stuck, kill a character"

Thraben

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Tl;dr local autist wants to make things less ambiguous and more helpful, other equally funny jokes coming next week

The writing advice 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is widely accepted as being categorically bad in just about every way writing advice can be, so much so that I'm just going to assume that you, the reader, already know why most people think it is bad advice, or are capable of coming to that conclusion on your own. That piece of advice is bad advice, as unambiguously agreed upon by a majority of authors. This is not a defense of this piece of writing advice. Instead, I want the first part of the phrase, and go over all the ways in which I think writing advice in general fails to resonate with me specifically, and extrapolate that to ways in which writing advice could, potentially, be better phrased or presented to make it more useful to more people.

For no reason at all, completely unrelated, I'm sure, let's imagine a hypothetical author. This author is highly motivated to write stories, lots of them, of nearly any genre or perspective, working with any tropes they happen to have in their head at the time. This author just really, really, can't get enough of writing words. This author, just like every other author, isn't perfect. Not every sentence is good enough to even consider attempting to edit, and not every edit is good enough to be worth keeping. That's fine though, this author is improving with every sentence they write, every paragraph they edit, and every scene they commit to posting. However, this author wants to improve, wants to get better. Reading more isn't enough. Writing more isn't enough. Responding to feedback still is not enough. This author wants writing advice, good, solid, useful writing advice.

This is where our hypothetical author runs into a problem. The more advice they see, the more discussions they peruse, the more youtube videos on writing they watch and multi-thread forum blogs of more successful authors they shadow, none of it resonates with them. This author doesn't get writing advice. When this author looks into common ways people organize their stories, none of them sound even remotely useful, and all the ones this author tried anyway were unhelpful. None of the discussion threads on what authors have found success doing or what readers enjoy the most actually help this author write their own stories. Suggestions of 'try doing this' or 'avoid doing that' are unhelpful, because none of those suggestions, or any of the following, actually provide information in a way that is useful to this type of author or this type of person.

Stepping back out of the totally hypothetical author's perspective for a moment, the problem I'm trying to demonstrate with 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is the same problem I have with 'Use a storyboard, so you don't get stuck', and 'Audience expectations aren't an enemy to be fought against'. Even though the latter two are legitimately and objectively good advice, they still aren't helpful to the type of person who actually needed to hear someone else tell them that.

What is helpful, but that I needed to figure out on my own, is that having a separate document of out-of-character explanations for plot details makes writing natural exposition and foreshadowing a whole lot fuckin easier. If someone had just told me, when I was starting out back in my teens, 'Hey man if you just write all your lore down on a separate document in advance of when you'll need it, it makes it way easier to edit into exposition and foreshadowing' I wouldn't have gotten stuck in so many of the places I used to.

I witness so often on this forum and others that people try and boil writing advice down into these binaries, 'do x because y', 'do a because b is bad', 'most people don't like 1, but 2 is fine', and so on, and, like, if I was at the point in my development as a writer where seeking out advice like that was something I was doing, that wouldn't help me, even though I know the people giving the advice are trying to be helpful. Even some of the best advice I've seen given is effectively locked behind a closed door to people who think the way I do, and it's a shame because I know for a fact a lot of that advice can be presented in a way that would be helpful.

So, I want to break down why 'Whenever you get stuck, kill a character' is bad from this perspective. Ignoring all the other ways it is bad, I'm going to analyze this to show you what I'm talking about and demonstrate the way this piece of advice could be phrased in a way that I would understand and be able to utilize. Ok? K.

Part 1; Killing a character
So, what exactly is the phrase 'kill a character' asking the author to do? I know this sounds stupid, or like an incredibly condescending thing to ask, but I think it legitimately is worth asking in the context of what I'm trying to do here. The original spirit of the phrase implies the thing it's asking you to do is randomly select a character and begin removing them from the story from that point on. This isn't very helpful as instruction for an author, because it fails to even attempt to define what doing this would actually accomplish.

Take a second and think about what 'Killing a character' actually does to the writing process, on the side of the author and with no thought given to the actual story. I'll give you four- Time's up the answer is almost literally anything, entirely dependent on where the author is during the writing process. Killing a character when editing over major dramatic plot events gives you a totally different result to killing a character when planning out an action scene, which in turn is a different result to killing a character while coming up with rational romance progression, and so on.

A better way to phrase 'Kill a character' while preserving its original meaning, but making the intended result less obtuse, would be something like 'Try removing a character from a scene to check if it helps you move past that scene'. It's much longer, much less 'snappy' or precise, but to someone like me, stating what the intended effect of the action is supposed to be not only solves the 'what does that even mean?' problem, it provides an actual reason to apply the advice and see if it helps, whereas the former isn't something I could be convinced to try doing.


Part 2; Getting Stuck
Here's a question. What do you think the 'whenever you get stuck' is referring to in the titular piece of advice? No, seriously, if someone were to give you this advice well in advance of when you intended to use it, what would you consider 'getting stuck' within the context of following through on 'kill a character' as a solution to it? I personally get stuck in lots of places when writing. I get stuck thinking about a definition of a phrase within the context of my story, I get stuck thinking about where the plot is going, or how I'm going to continue an action scene without repeating something I've either done before in a different scene or have done before within the same scene, and I get stuck on way dumber stuff too, like debating which synonym of 'rope' I'd like to use because if I don't choose one I'm going to rip my hair out over rope not looking like a word anymore holy fuck.

Even if I get over being 'stuck' in the ways I described pretty quickly, usually within forty minutes or so, if I was hypothetically following the title's advice, which points should I have killed a character at? All of them? If not, which ones? None? If none, why not? Obviously these are rhetorical questions, even if they totally aren't actually and I would really like your answers. The problem here, as with part 1, is in the phrasing and the interpretation. See, even if you knew what the action the advice wants you to perform would accomplish, knowing when it's applicable at all, and more important why, are still important parts of effective advice.

I think this makes more sense if you think about the phrase 'when you are feeling unwell, try taking a nap in case you are tired'. What do you consider 'feeling unwell'? Think about all the different ways in which you could 'feel unwell' but not correctly identify the situation as one in which you should try taking a nap. Think of all the reasons why you might misidentify the feeling of being tired as being something else and judge that you don't need more sleep.

Instead, phrasing it as 'If you're not sure why you don't feel well,' would result in a greater likelihood of someone like me actually identifying the situation in which I'm feeling unwell to begin with. It accomplishes the same goal, of getting someone to attempt to follow helpful instructions, and it does so in a way that better indicates what the goal actually is and when and why the instructions should be considered.

Returning to writing, 'Whenever you get stuck,' is ambiguous, and unlikely to result in a correct identification of a situation in which its following instructions could potentially be helpful. Instead, try 'If you're struggling to continue a scene for reasons you can't identify,' for more clarity of when your advice is actually intended to be used, with the added side bonus that you've now also stated why you think the advice might be helpful; it could identify the problem even if it doesn't solve it.


Part 3, Conclusion; If you're struggling to continue a scene for reasons you can't identify, try removing a character from that scene to see if that helps you move past it
I'm aware of how aggressively long that piece of advice is, but knowing what it's derived from, it's difficult for me to come up with a coherent reason why someone else would want to shorten it beyond aesthetic choices, ones that specifically make it less useful to the type of people it would be most useful to otherwise. I know it can be a difficult concept to think about the ways in which information you have a solid understanding of could be difficult for others to understand, especially when you understand that information in a fundamentally different way, but we're all authors, right? Getting other people to understand information we already understand is practically an alternative definition of the thing that we call ourselves.

Anyway, the next time you have a really good nugget of wisdom that you think other authors could benefit from, try taking the time to break down exactly what it is you find useful and why, and building it up into something more robust and unambiguous than a simple set of instructions or a list of things that you do. I'd even accept something like

[Normal, quippy phrase that vaguely gestures at the idea]

Nerd Elaboration resulting in increased length of post by a factor of ten, but hidden behind a spoiler so that it doesn't make you seem like a woke loser who cares about other people's ability to understand you

And that's it that's the whole post, I hope to get some responses, bye!
 

Valmond

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Alright fellas, time to experiment with OP. :blob_evil:
 

The_3rd_Book

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Actually, this is some pretty solid advice. To anyone looking at the replies to see if the can divine the meaning without actually reading. Just read it. You'll find helpful advice here. I promise.
 

Valmond

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Don’t listen to the above commenter, OP must be put on a Witch Trial! :blob_catflip:

Jokes aside, I never get stuck. :meowsip:

Either way, this might be worth a read. I still recommend we experiment on OP. :blob_evil:
 

Thraben

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Don’t listen to the above commenter, OP must be put on a Witch Trial! :blob_catflip:

Jokes aside, I never get stuck. :meowsip:

Either way, this might be worth a read. I still recommend we experiment on OP. :blob_evil:
Autistic? I was autistic once. They put me in the vaccine chamber, with the vaccines, the vaccines made me autistic. Autistic? I was-
 

JayMark80

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I killed a character once because I got advice that we shouldn't be afraid to kill our characters. It was bad advice.
 

John_Owl

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It's similar to "Show, don't tell." the MEANING is good, but the wording is horrid. We're writers. We literally TELL for a living. We TELL what a person is feeling, we TELL their body language, WE TELL EVERYTHING RELEVANT.

Which Is why I'm always careful to explain that telling is fine. You just have to know WHAT to tell. You could just say "He was tired." Fine. basic, but it works. But no, that's 'bad' because it's telling, not showing. Well, my bad. You want a picture book?

No, don't tell his current state, show that by telling the effects of it. "He was covered in sweat, hunched over as he bent at the waist, gulping air like a fish in water. He'd just sprinted nearly five solid minutes. His legs shook and his muscles felt like rubber."

"Show, don't tell" is terrible because it makes no sense worded like that.
 

JayMark80

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Showing is telling prosaicly in more detail so the reader can have a picture in their head. Telling is getting the reader where they need to be quickly.
 

Valmond

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I killed a character once because I got advice that we shouldn't be afraid to kill our characters. It was bad advice.
Could be worse, you could have forgotten to kill off a character. And when you remembered, all rewrites have to accommodate for their survival. So, they made it out, because of my inexperience in my early days. :meowsip:
 

JayMark80

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Could be worse, you could have forgotten to kill off a character. And when you remembered, all rewrites have to accommodate for their survival. So, they made it out, because of my inexperience in my early days. :meowsip:
I'd be okay with that. I think I enjoy improving my work and editing more than drafting most of the time. Because if I'm drafting and stop to read, I might be fine with the events but the prose makes me want to vomit. I don't want my prose to make the reader vomit but I'm okay with infliting mild indigestion.
 

Valmond

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I'd be okay with that. I think I enjoy improving my work and editing more than drafting most of the time. Because if I'm drafting and stop to read, I might be fine with the events but the prose makes me want to vomit. I don't want my prose to make the reader vomit but I'm okay with infliting mild indigestion.
Every time I do a rewrite I am like,

“You are so damn lucky man, so damn lucky!” :blob_catflip:

😂

I write tragedy, so that’s an even larger blemish on my record. :blob_blank:

When I do rewrites, I improve everything, including the prose. I think one of the hardest things, was trying to get the prose right. Then when I hammered that in, from there I kept improving on it.

Since the way I write hammers in on emotions, the prose reflects it.
 

sbdrag

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I really do agree with the premise here that a lot of writing advice is worded in a way that's too vague and often misinterpreted, and that a lot of advice isn't actually helpful (everything is a rule until it isn't, etc). I personally hate when people overemphasize story structures, like the Three Act Structure or the Hero's Journey. Like, they're great for studying and learning about how stories function, but they aren't the end all be all of how to write a story. Especially as neither was actually designed with prose/novel writing in mind.

Three Act was designed for plays, and specifically with the idea that you are going to have an intermission and need to draw the audience back in after said intermission. Hero's Journey was an exploration of mythology, and an attempt to find common threads between myths across the world - and even the creator of the Hero's Journey disclaims that there is no "universal story" (as he was seeking) and that the journey is just things he saw come up most frequently. And not every aspect of the journey was in every myth he pulled them from. Again, they're great tools for learning how stories work when you're new to writing them, and as an analytical framework - but they aren't hard rules like some people treat them. The only hard rule of a story is that it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end - not necessarily in that order.

That being said - I have never heard of "Kill a Character" being interpreted this way, and I do think it can be helpful advice in the way I've always heard it explained.

I've always heard that "kill a character" means to literally kill a character within your current scene. Not write them out of the story, kill them in prose in the scene you're stuck on. Then have the other characters react to their death and see where things go. It's not meant to be a permanent change - unless it works, of course - but a way to get you out of your own head in the scene you're in by changing things up dramatically. Ironically, it's meant to do what you're describing here - to get you to think of what's not working in the scene by taking you out of the scene you've been working on and getting your mind working in a different direction.

Now I'm going to reemphasize that this can be good advice - in that it might help some people, but won't help everyone. A large reason why so much bad advice is given is because people try to apply universal rules to storytelling, so give general advice that might not be helpful to a specific situation. I always temper my advice when giving it by asking what an author wants to accomplish first - that way I'm not giving counter-intuitive advice based on general storytelling principles that might not apply in this situation. (Or advice based on me misinterpreting the author's intent.)

You find it easier to foreshadow by writing your lore first - other writers will never start their story at all if they write the lore first, because they end up going down lore rabbit-holes and fleshing out things beyond what will ever be present in the story itself. Which isn't to say writing your lore down in some form separate from the story is bad - just that even that isn't something that is helpful to everyone.

So, yeah - a lot of being a writer is figuring out what works for you specifically and what doesn't. It can definitely be frustrating that there isn't universal advice that applies to everyone and everything, but most advice is coming from a place of things that worked for one person that they hope might help others, but usually know won't work for everyone. And figuring out which advice helps you and which doesn't is all a part of the process.
 

CharlesEBrown

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I killed a character once because I got advice that we shouldn't be afraid to kill our characters. It was bad advice.
I once killed a character just for snoring.
I really do agree with the premise here that a lot of writing advice is worded in a way that's too vague and often misinterpreted, and that a lot of advice isn't actually helpful (everything is a rule until it isn't, etc). I personally hate when people overemphasize story structures, like the Three Act Structure or the Hero's Journey. Like, they're great for studying and learning about how stories function, but they aren't the end all be all of how to write a story. Especially as neither was actually designed with prose/novel writing in mind.
I was recently introduced to the "Five Act" structure - that is the structure used for television shows and some movies - it is similar to the Three Act Structure but set up for more commercial breaks and a specific number of "beats" (which may be separate scenes or part of single scenes) per Act.
That being said - I have never heard of "Kill a Character" being interpreted this way, and I do think it can be helpful advice in the way I've always heard it explained.

I've always heard that "kill a character" means to literally kill a character within your current scene. Not write them out of the story, kill them in prose in the scene you're stuck on. Then have the other characters react to their death and see where things go. It's not meant to be a permanent change - unless it works, of course - but a way to get you out of your own head in the scene you're in by changing things up dramatically. Ironically, it's meant to do what you're describing here - to get you to think of what's not working in the scene by taking you out of the scene you've been working on and getting your mind working in a different direction.
A lot of stories BEGIN with a character being killed - this fact brings the MC or other MCs together, either to investigate their death, if mysterious/suspicious/unusual or to attend their funeral (this seems more common in movies than in novels though, at least that I've seen).

But maybe the advice should be: "If you are stuck in a scene, try killing off a character as a test to see what effect that has on the story" would be more generally useful?
So, yeah - a lot of being a writer is figuring out what works for you specifically and what doesn't. It can definitely be frustrating that there isn't universal advice that applies to everyone and everything, but most advice is coming from a place of things that worked for one person that they hope might help others but usually know won't work for everyone. And figuring out which advice helps you and which doesn't is all a part of the process.
Also some of the advice is of the "I am sick of seeing this done, here's how to avoid it" variety - which can be good advice or not.
 
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FRWriter

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When I write my story, whenever I get stuck, I'll NOT KILL A CHARACTER for a change ;-)
 

CharlesEBrown

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How about the less frequent but often more useful advice: "Whenever you get stuck, kill a critic"?
 
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