Creative Suicide

Recent themes focus on many negative elements, and that is because negative elements are interesting. Positive elements, on the other hand, while noteworthy, are generally boring. To a great extent, the novelist must focus on the negatives far more than the positives in order to write a compelling story. Conflict. Trauma. Pain. Loss. But there is a line that is all too easy to cross. Another silent killer of completion that even the most prolific writers have fallen into. The obsession with suffering. And fixation on death. This writer need not mention any names: they are well known, and every generation has a full deck. Famous, financially successful writers who won't (or cannot) finish a series. Unfinished compendiums, dangling trilogies: good sentences without periods. The beautiful, horrible irony of these unfinished works is always the same: the writer's obsession with death and suffering ultimately causes the death of the story itself. Whether by ceasing inspiration or an avoidance of a forced, unsatisfying conclusion. Because all the good characters died. They were slain. Or maimed. Or traumatized beyond recovery. And all that is left is brokenness. Bereftness. Many stories do end this way, from one perspective. Some might call it realistic, and to an extent, it is. But if everyone dies, then there is no one left to tell the story, figuratively and literally. It is creative suicide. This writer says that in the bigger picture, even if we are indeed talking about realism, everyone does NOT die. It's unrealistic to think everyone will live, certainly, but it's just as unrealistic to think everyone will perish. Because that's not how life works. Existence isn't a pure horror story at its worst, regardless of how much horror is to be had within it. And life is just as persistent as death, if not moreso.

As I seek to present my characters with every opportunity to live for enjoyment and suffering alike, I must give them the opportunity to advocate for their lives. No one, absolutely no one will be 'killed off' as a plot point. It's weak writing. Shoddy sensationalism. And I would be shooting myself in the foot. And of course, people die all the time. Some are assassinated, others unjustly slain, yet these things do not impact the lives of most to extreme degrees, only the lives of those most closely involved. In the same way, when characters die in novels, parts of the novel die as well...but only a few. But if you kill em' all? Pick them off one by one because it's so interesting and shock provoking? The novel goes with it...rest in pieces. But I am not a paragon of goodness and life. No. Because I know very well that that are many things far worse than death. And characters that are faced with such things are far more interesting than ones that are simply killed off. Though...they might wish they were dead instead.