Its a New Year and i want to kill off a character or two..... Its not a spur of the moment thought, but something I've been thinking about for the past few weeks. My MC has it "too easy" in the sense that she's starting to become somewhat of a Pollyanna (in my eyes). I've been working on the WIP for years and after "Finishing it" 2 years ago, I've decided to basically redo it. The characters in bold are the ones i'm thinking about killing. Original version: Girl's clan sets up an arranged marriage with a mysterious other clan in the mountains. Girl dutifully does this. no questions asked. she meets a host of characters: a healer who becomes her mentor, a pregnant woman who's positive outlook on life becomes my MC's source of comfort, the husband of the pregnant woman (and the MC's husband's older brother), who's stern, no-nonsense mentality challenges her to always do her best another healer who hates outsiders becomes my MC's rival she's also the one who turns the villagers against my MC by telling them that she is the cause of all the bad stuff that happens in the village (deaths, floods, herds and crops getting destroyed) my MC's husband that she actively avoids, but circumstances always seems to have them bumping into each other One of the subplots is how the pregnant woman is always super positive despite her poor health and having had so many miscarriages. her husband has gotten bitter and anxious about it. he thinks the Gods are punishing his wife because of things he's done in his past. my MC, who is a healer in training, and have grown close to these two people, wants to help because she believes that the two of them deserve to have a child and a happy life together. Stuff happens later on, ad after a difficult labor, mother and child survives childbirth and my MC has gained a new ally in the husband who is indebted to her which comes in to play toward the end where the MC's rival tries to kill her and this character steps in and saves her life. my MC continues on in her perfect world where nothing else effects her. THE NEW VERSION Girl's clan is suffering from a plague, and in order to stop the plague, they want to sacrifice the girl to the Goddess of Death . they tie her up at the base of the mountain where they believe the Dark Goddess has been exiled and hope the Goddess will take the MC and spare he rest of the clan. the girl is found by the village clan and taken to live in the village who has other plans for her (main plot). Same characters are there. Subplot is still there HOWEVER... in this version, i want the pregnant woman to die in childbirth. This will make the the husband even more bitter and ups the tension between him and the MC as he starts to believe the rumors that the MC is a curse. he starts to believe that she needs to be sacrificed to stop the pain, death, and suffering in the village. brainwashed by the MC's rival, he does bad things until the end when he's somewhat redeemed (for the sake of his child). OR the pregnant woman lives and everything goes the same as the first version, HOWEVER, towards the end where the husband steps in to save the MC's life, he dies in the process. In both of these scenarios... my MC is effected because these were people she cares about. people who impacted her life. in both scenarios, she struggles with the emotions of believing she caused their deaths. she then begins to believe that everything had been flipped upside down when the village saved her-- an offering to the Goddess of Death. she then actively tries to discover why she was chosen as a sacrifice and piece together her broken memories that seem to be connected to why the Dark Goddess is so fixated on her. also, in the original, she's been a pretty passive character.... things happen TO her rather then her doing things and experiencing potential consequences. so thats something i want to address in this version, too.....
Seems like the arranged marriage, which normally would be a source of conflict, gets pushed aside and can be more or less ignored. Perhaps she could choose to become a healer in order to help avoid her husband, and that choice is what more instigates a rivalry with the other healer. It could also come about that her new husband is a key player in the conflict, and thanks to her mentors she's able to face up to her anxieties about interacting with him. As for being too optimistic... it just depends on what kind of story you want to tell. It sounds like you're leaning more grim, and it's always good to follow your gut. From an outside perspective, however, it doesn't sound like she has it easy at all, assuming all those bad things happening in the village are actually affecting the villagers (which includes herself). It seems like there are more than enough sources of strife for her, so maybe it's they themselves that need to be reworked rather than adding more. But again, that's an outside perspective.
I vote for killing the pregnant woman, because if you're sadistic enough to do that, you're sadistic enough to kill the main character, and that will get the readers desperate to find out how it ends.
I'd agree with monecarlo here were it not for House of the Dragon. That show prominently featured several uncomfortable scenes involving childbirth. Difficult but successful, miscarriage, and a couple of mother's deaths. Viewers got more than their fill of such scenes, and this is a show that was watched by a lot of people. Looked it up - the first five episodes averaged 29 million viewers. I'd let the mother and child live. I prefer characters to die happy. Call me basic. But I think a "nice" way of adding a character death here would be for the husband, dying of plague, to be able to hang on for just long enough to see his child born safe and healthy. Only then can he allow himself to stop futilely clinging to his life and die with a smile on his face, despite the unbearable pain of the disease.
fudge.... i forgot about that... in my original, he ends up in purgatory because he figured out the rival was going to kill the MC, confronted her and got stabbed. when my MC ends up in purgatory, she finds him there (he doesnt realize he's died), but she ends up getting them both out and back into the realm of the living. so really, in my original, none of the important characters die. a bunch of near deaths, but no death....
I'm okay with that. There were plenty of deaths in the story. Death is release. It's about suffering. She endures great suffering, even at the hands of herself.
Considering the comments above about readers might be tired of mothers dying of childbirth...how about instead, she survives, but still dies after? Not related to the childbirth, but you mentioned she's been sickly. It could be a nice relief for both parties, the MC and the husband. However, it would be horrible if the mother would overcome all of this, and die by casualty of the fight between the MC and the Rival. The MC would feel more directly responsible for her death. The husband can hate them both. This is just a more sinister idea, though. I don't know enough about your story to know if you can even implement it. I agree mostly with Set2Sun with the happy thing, with a mixture of Not the Territory. There are more ways to cause strife for the MC without including a character death. In fact, when I was in creative writing class, there was a classmate of mine that included a deep conflict that didn't involve one, but still felt the loss. The pain of not being with someone, despite them being alive can be seen as more painful. Considering the premise of the story, with death being connecting with the MC, it's understandable that a character death makes more sense. Maybe instead of a death, the husband can try to keep his wife and child away from the MC, because how worried he is about them? The mother can't do much at the moment since she's recovering, and him convincing the MC that it would be better for her to stay away through her guilt, could be a more engaging way to take away someone comforting for the main character, but not through death. Also, you can keep the purgatory thing, so the MC saving the husband could lead to the MC getting back the people she cares about. The purgatory thing sounds interesting to me.
you may be on to something with this! I'm going to experiment with this angle.... there is a scene where, with a few edits, this could actually work pretty well
