When moving from a living individual to a dead individual, yet they maintain a sense of consciousness, how would you draw the line for the reader? Is it enough to describe the inability to re-open your eyes and discuss the cliche white light?
To be perfectly frank, this is what would make or break a book for me. This is the sort of thing that's really a test for a writer & their ability and ingenuity and imagination. You can reach for the familiar or on hand cliches to get the idea across quickly & easily, sure But as a reader I'm hoping for the author to do something different, unique, and so creative that I just want to admire their craft. I would suggest you experiment, really think about what you think the difference between live consciousness and what it is to be other beyond this life—whatever that means to you. Depending on how you (specifically in your story/world, but even your general worldview typically bleeds through) view the seperation of life & death, methods to illustrate the transition alters. Consider the distinction between Life and Death. And then fiddle with depicting your view of that distinction. Cheering for you~
You talking a linear POV of a character "crossing over" from life into death or just a posthumous character overseeing the living world?
I think the white light may be a little too cliche unfortunately. Think about the universe you're writing in and then use your imagination. If it's a fantasy world then you can do literally anything you want you can make the transition peaceful, or painful, or overwhelming, or so calm that when they have crossed the line they don't realise at first. But if you're using our world, and you don't want it to be too extreme, you could maybe just tweak the white light cliche. Zoupskim makes a good point; how does the character die? If it's violent, like a gunshot to the head, you could have the change to be instantaneous. The gun goes off, but he doesn't even feel it, the whole world around him just seems to freeze. When he tries, he can certainly move, but everything apart from him, even time, has stopped. And then he looks at the man who pulled the trigger and contemplates his situation, he's not in pain, so perhaps he didn't shoot? Only, his heart was racing with fear a minute ago. Etc etc etc If it's a peaceful death, like in their bed, you could have their lasts thoughts to be of family, or of unfulfilled goals. If he knows it's his time, then maybe there's just this feeling you get and suddenly you're very conscious of the fact you've passed on. You could let the reader know that everyone feels this. Or if you don't want that, you could have one minute they're lying there, and then the next, they're still in bed but they slowly realises that they're no longer breathing. Their senses are heightened or stopped. And then when he's come to grips with the afterlife he struggles with the fact that he'll never get to face the things he was last thinking about.
I imagine the moment before death would be sheer panic, your survival instinct in overdrive, a desperate and futile search for some reprieve. It would be a few moments of consummate terror, and that would be your last memory of life. Or you might go in your sleep.
Thank you for the responses! I am avoiding the 'white light'. The issue I am having is that I had someone read the switch from the person dying, to describing the feeling of death, and they got confused. They read it the way that I meant for it to be read, but he did not understand as to why I described death and then carried on with the character. This also could be due to the fact that he hates reading, and isn't the best source for constructive criticism, but it had me thinking. The character dies in a very formal way; due to old age. She has lived a happy and fulfilling life with a family, starts to slip away when the loss of her pain is replaced by the feeling of falling. She is blinded by the lack of light, wakes up strapped to a metal bed and the first voice she hears is a woman over an intercom. All the woman says is “Greetings, Prisoner 11384. You have served your sentence. You are free to go.” Once her awareness returns, she realizes she is back to being 23 with absolutely no family, completely alone, and the memories of her current life return. When the reader finished the short story, his only critique was that he "didn't understand". I can't tell if the lack of understanding would be from the type of writing prompt I was responding to, or the detail of the death being confusing whenever the character turned out to be alive.
I don't understand either lol Why 23? Who held her prisoner? I hope you just washed over this because it's a forum and your book answers it.
It is just a daily writing prompt. The prompt is meant to leave the reader with questions versus answering them. Maybe its a flaw with how I chose to respond to the prompt.
