I feel compelled, to mention or perhaps admit, that I am not, in fact, Mrs. N. Not yet, anyway, thought I might as well be... I suppose I'm just horribly impatient.
As I was reading Guilty Pleasures today, I realized something. Here I sat, reading at the keyboard (as I so often do, these days, to escape the boring everyday happenings of choir choreography) and I found myself totally frustrated with the book because nothing seemed to be going well for Anita. Granted I was only 60 pages in at that point, but it suddenly occurred to me that the author is god. The author has the power to do whatever he or she wants to do. So why not make everything go perfectly for the main character?
How boring would it be if books were always perfect fairy tales? Nobody would ever read again! At least I wouldn't. I like knowing that my characters suffer as I do. Ok, maybe not like I do. I'm hardly kicked around a room by vampires or chased by insane sadistic fairies with floor length hair and skin much fairer than mine. (unfortunately ;) )
A perfect example:
In the Outlander series, by Diana Gabaldon (one of my allll time favorites), Mary Hawkins ends up raped and wounded in the streets of Paris. The book is set in the 1740's. Mary is now ruined. She's no longer fit for marriage, society, anything. For the longest time I was angry with Diana for not saving Mary.
But... why should Mary be saved? Do not misunderstand me, I want Mary to have exactly the life she deserves, but why should she escape the trials and perils of life just because she lives between the pages of a book? The fact that she is a figment of imagination should change nothing, alter nothing.
What do you think? Do you ever get frustrated with authors for not saving the characters or even for not ending the book or situation the way you want it to end?
I felt the same way while reading it last night! And when I was done I had my list of things I wish had been different in the book, just like I do with almost any of the books I read. I think that by not saving characters and ending books in realistic/every day ways allows the reader to connect more with the character. Because even though we haven't had the exact experiences she has we've all symbolicly struggled the same way those characters have, whether it be mentally, emotionally, whatever. And by making the character go through tough times we want to keep reading so that at the end of the book everything works out for the character and all the loose ends are tied up. Laurell writes so that all of the loose ends within the book are tied up, but still leaves a few things dangling for the next book. Like when Jean-Claude doesn't tell Anita what something means at the end. It's frustrating but leaves the reader wanting and coming back for more. And I think it helps (no matter how frustrating and heart breaking it is for the reader) to have a character close to the main character and someone the readers like die. Because we've almost all been there, too so we can feel empathy for the main character in that instance. And not everyone gets to live in reality so not everyone gets to live in fiction either. I think death in books, for me personally, is one of the hardest things to deal with. I guess I should say the death of someone I like, so sometimes I wish the writer would do something different to save that character, like maybe have them have an emotional/mental problem with what happened but still be alive.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading these comments with interest. As an author of fiction, I like to tie up loose ends at the end of my books. I think it stems from a desire in a lot of us to have our loose ends tied up.
ReplyDeleteI haven't killed anyone in my books yet, (I have written three books) but in the one I'm working on a character is ill and I haven't decided what significance that will have, perhaps she'll die?
Sometimes I've wondered if authors have killed someone off and then later on in a series wish they hadn't. Like if the dead character had some special gift or knowledge or something that would help the main character at that time. With the Anita Blake series, I think if Laurell had stuck with her original plan to kill of Jean-Claude at the end of book 3 she would have regretted it later. But what do you do when the books already published? When I read a book and a character comes back as having not really died, the main character just thought that they had died, or as a vampire or something like that when they shouldn't really have is a time when an author decided that character shouldn't be dead after all. Maybe because they needed them at that point for some reason, and hadn't thought they would.
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