Hello all this is my first post and I'm excited to be apart of this writing community - although I am a screenwriter I am excited to discuss STORY with all of the forums members... Now to the question! Is a car crash that leads to a death a cheap way to end a story? Basically in my story character A (who is best friends with B) has done wrong to character B by cheating with his girlfriend. Although there are other elements to the story it is mainly about the broken friendship between A and B - Character A who is going through a rough stage in his life is trying to win his friendship back. However just as character A and B are on the road to recovery character A is involved in a crash that kills his best friend (Character B) and he never gets the chance to say sorry. My original intention for writing the story is that I believe most human beings put off calling that old friend of theirs or in this case say sorry so I feel that the death is necessary to illustrate the point that life is not certain and that you better make the most of an opportunity while you have it - but I could be completely wrong!
In some cases, car crashes ending in deaths are a cheap way to end a story, when the author can't think of anything else. In your case, I don't think it's cheap at all. You have a good reason for using it, so I would say, go for it!
Heh, my current novel starts with the MC dying in a car crash. Anyway, I don't think it's cheap to kill person B in this way in your novel. Though personally, I think it depends a lot on how they end up in the car crash, and if that's really the end. I mean if I were to write the story, I would continue the story with another chapter or two telling more of character A's story after he killed character B. What does he feel? How does he handle the events afterwards? What does character B's girlfriend think of character A? Does she hate him for killing character B, or could they share the grief and end up together? There's a lot of questions like that you might want to answer.
Hmm. Usually I don't like stories in which an accident resolves the plot - whether it's a traffic accident or any other kind. I complained in another thread that James Clavell used natural disasters to resolve his plots - this is the same thing. If I were writing your story, I'd probably end it with B committing suicide over his girlfriend's infidelity with A. That would really strengthen A's guilt, and hammer the point home.
It depends what you mean by accident. Some accidents are caused by recklessness, and some aren't "accidents" at all. And some are "whoopsie, wrote myself into a corner"-accidents and should be avoided.
While I believe there's more to the ending than the car crash, it's not necessarily a bad place to stop telling the story, especially if you want your audience to think about what's been said. If a story is about people and how they react to change, this story will continue with Character A's emotional and physical reaction (regret, etc), even if it's only in the mind of the audience. Just realize that if you leave the ending ambiguous, people will fill in their own way to end the story (as you can see above).
I don't think that's a bad ending at all. The impact of his dying on character A could provide a bittersweet ending, which IMO are the best ones.
THANKS ALOT FOR THE RESPONSES!!!! Sorry I didn't want to get too complicated in the introduction but the story does continue after the crash - we get to know how Character A feels about the situation and he meets both the ex-fiance (she proposes in the story to B) and father of B at the graveyard. I am defiantly going to explore the possibilties of the story ending this way - thanks a lot minstrel!
