Once again the BS asks for help

The main characters father figure is slaughtered before her, cliched?

Total Votes:

[ 0 ]

This poll closed on August 6, 2004.
No longer accepting new votes.

[Lady_Brimstone]

For starters, BS is me (BrimStone).

In the story im writing, the main character is an orphan who later becomes a person of fate/destiny/whatever and has to destroy the 'evil' (keeping things very simple so i dont have to go into detail). the original outline calls for the dude who has been taking care of her since she was a baby to be murdered in front of her. But looking back over my three year old outline, that part really seems cliched and overdone. It is necessary to the plot and part of her character development, but ive dropped necessary parts of the plot before, and im willing to do it again.

I would like opinions on the idea of the father figure being slaughtered in front of her. Cliched? Overdone? Or if used nicely, could it be a nice assessment? I would like a readers standpoint from this angle. Thanks for reading this.

[crime in the city v2]

Eh, I'm sure it COULD be done well, but I'm personally sick of seeing it.

[Sarehptar]

It would take a lot of work to make it a fresh and original idea, but I think you should keep it and work with it a bit. There's lots of ways to tweak the situation into something surprising and effective.

[Nubecula]

*is sooorely tempted to go for the last option* whee

The "witness to the murder of a loved one" is an ancient cliche. It's what, "instant symapathy"? One of the easiest methods to get readers to identify with a character. On principle, I dislike that kind of plot element because I run into it so often. However, there are always, always outstanding exceptions. If you are absolutely sure that your approach to this tired old line is fairly unique, then go for it.

I knew a girl whose main character either suffered a personal tragedy or got the stuffing beat out of her in every damn chapter. At first I felt bad for her, then I wondered why the author was beating on her characters so much, and it really made me speculate too much on the girl's home life...

Don't just toss in violence for the sake of violence. 3nodding

Perhaps you could do a cause-and-effect "chart" of sorts. The death directly causes event one, which leads to event two. Are event one and event two absolutely essential? Is killing the guy absolutely necessary to bring about those two events, or could other methods be arranged? Is his murder, despite the cliches involved, the best option?

*shrug* Good luck figuring it out. I always hesitate to kill characters until I'm sure that they won't be needed later on.

[Lady_Brimstone]

the whole point of the slaughter, is to give her a dark side. She blacks out after she sees him die and when she awaks the murderers are dead, horribly slaughter. Her friend is there so she assumes that he saved her, but in reality she has a dark side hidden beneath her perky exterior. And when she gets angry/sad she snaps. Im just wondering if the whole murder thing is too much work to keep. I could just as easily show her dark side through other events as well if i thought hard enough xd

[wolfbynight]

hmmm...

i would recommend to means of salvaging this scenario.
(personally, the i feel the death of the mentor is a necessary archetypal theme that can be pulled off well)

1) you may have the death of her mentor come about as a result of some folly on the part of your protagonist. Like the cause and effect statement above, it ties the death to your hero, as opposed to some gratutious plea for sympathy or drama.

2) you may turn the mentor against her. brainwashing, spell, symbiote, or blackmail. But a corrupted mentor is a very cool character in my opinion. plus, the advent of the corrupted mentor leads to the equally cool training under a second mentor of a second school of thought.
(ie-if your mentor has been teaching the girl the nobility of life, the new mentor could teach her how to play dirty...etc)

there are many roads to take. but please don't abandon the idea altogether. gandalf sacrafices, obi wan sacrafices, the mentor's death goes hand in hand with giving your hero a new life.

[Lethean Wolf]

An idea and situation we seem to see a lot of. It can work yes, but you need to make sure to tweak it and add a new and efficient background to the situation, or else it just might not work.

[Kadevi]

Yup. 3nodding What everyone else said.

Try to think of a new background/cause for this father figure to die before her eyes. If you think hard enough, you may just come up with something new that hasn't really been done before, or perhaps has not been done at all. If this murder/death is really essential, then find a way to salvage the event. There's always SOMETHING you can do.

[M4GNUM]

before you jump the gun, you have to take a moment and study the situation. will this death have some significance that will be important if not crucial to the story plot line later in the work? is this death a moving, altering experience for the character, enough so that we, as the readers, can see where the change sprung from and why such a change was made? if it is, then i say leave it.

this isn't so cliche. lots of people in the world witness the death of a loved one. it happens everyday. to many, many people. and yes, it can have the affect of altering, changing, for better or for worse, a person's life. it can even induce a course of incidents and actions to take place after.

so no, i wouldn't call it cliche. not at all. if anything, events in the real world are cliche, thus making our very lives cliche. so in fact, everything is cliche. *gets diseased look on face*

*ehem* well, it may be a bit overdone, but that doesn't mean it can't be good. but if you really do feel it's unnecessary, then chop it. i'm just saying, do what you feel feels right. whee

[Echelon Mykal]

What you should do is make everyone (including the audience) think the father is dead, but really he's alive and living as a tramp. Then at the end, she find him and the darknesss is gone.

[teh plum]

I'm sick of it - go for something else, it could be done in so many other ways. 3nodding

[Adrehel]

Well the death of a father could be done right, but death of a mentor are a bit overused.(even if they do happen a lot in real life.) You could get the dark side to come out in another way. An interesting twist would have the murderers just wound the father and have her actually do the killing, even if she doesn't remember it.

[Saaya]

these things can be tricky but if you're creative with it then it should work out fine 3nodding

[Racer Sex]

Lady_Brimstone

the whole point of the slaughter, is to give her a dark side. She blacks out after she sees him die and when she awaks the murderers are dead, horribly slaughter. Her friend is there so she assumes that he saved her, but in reality she has a dark side hidden beneath her perky exterior. And when she gets angry/sad she snaps. Im just wondering if the whole murder thing is too much work to keep. I could just as easily show her dark side through other events as well if i thought hard enough xd

You know if her father figure suddenly threw her out onto the streets and told her he didn't want anything to do with her (have him know about the whole fate thing, and do it because he doesn't want to be involved.) she could just as easily develop a dark side over that. Hell better yet, have him do that, and have her freak out and kill him herself. There's her dark side.

[Lady_Brimstone]

Sorry for the disappearing act, i was running a couple of virus scans sweatdrop

xL0KIx

You know if her father figure suddenly threw her out onto the streets and told her he didn't want anything to do with her (have him know about the whole fate thing, and do it because he doesn't want to be involved.) she could just as easily develop a dark side over that. Hell better yet, have him do that, and have her freak out and kill him herself. There's her dark side.

Ive never even thought of that, ever since the beginning i just assumed the parents were out of her life...hmmmm...... perhaps this could be tweaked a bit, thanks 3nodding

Adrehel

Well the death of a father could be done right, but death of a mentor are a bit overused.(even if they do happen a lot in real life.) You could get the dark side to come out in another way. An interesting twist would have the murderers just wound the father and have her actually do the killing, even if she doesn't remember it.

Another interesting twist, and one that will slip down the dark side even farther. Leave it the WF to come up with ways to push a character to madness whee

Shadownet_Mykal

What you should do is make everyone (including the audience) think the father is dead, but really he's alive and living as a tramp. Then at the end, she find him and the darknesss is gone.

Although im usually all for 'he died, but not so' sort of things, im pretty sure in this story either i want him dead and to stay dead, or i want a different means of pursing my plot point. My story is complicated enough, without bring dead characters back to life xp

goatcreature__MAGNUM

before you jump the gun, you have to take a moment and study the situation. will this death have some significance that will be important if not crucial to the story plot line later in the work? is this death a moving, altering experience for the character, enough so that we, as the readers, can see where the change sprung from and why such a change was made? if it is, then i say leave it.

this isn't so cliche. lots of people in the world witness the death of a loved one. it happens everyday. to many, many people. and yes, it can have the affect of altering, changing, for better or for worse, a person's life. it can even induce a course of incidents and actions to take place after.

so no, i wouldn't call it cliche. not at all. if anything, events in the real world are cliche, thus making our very lives cliche. so in fact, everything is cliche. *gets diseased look on face*

*ehem* well, it may be a bit overdone, but that doesn't mean it can't be good. but if you really do feel it's unnecessary, then chop it. i'm just saying, do what you feel feels right.

Whatever i feels right? Well things could get a whee bit dangerous if BS starts to think that way... sweatdrop
You're right, it isnt so much 'cliched' as it is overdone, but either way i dont want to readers to start reading that part and throw the book down in disgust because they're sick of seeing the mentor kick the bucket. I dont usually kill of my characters unless (a) their death is really significant or (b) they're really driving me nuts, and this character i happen to like (Ive had him around since day one, which is a rarity when it comes to my stories). If he does die, it would be crucial to the plot, but nothing is set in stone yet for my story so i can very easily work around some design aspects. The change in the character isnt obvious at first (because no one knows of the death until later) but she has some changes about her which are slightly noticable and can be explained by the death (she likes to pick fights now, she's a bit sadder on some subjects, she cant stand evil.... pretty much the basics). And later on it becomes a crucial plot point for her to suddenly darken up, so thats when her friend unveils that he didnt kill the murderers, she did. Hope that speal made sense sweatdrop

wolfbynight

2) you may turn the mentor against her. brainwashing, spell, symbiote, or blackmail. But a corrupted mentor is a very cool character in my opinion. plus, the advent of the corrupted mentor leads to the equally cool training under a second mentor of a second school of thought.
(ie-if your mentor has been teaching the girl the nobility of life, the new mentor could teach her how to play dirty...etc)

there are many roads to take. but please don't abandon the idea altogether. gandalf sacrafices, obi wan sacrafices, the mentor's death goes hand in hand with giving your hero a new life.

You're the most optimistic person to reply yet, with keeping the death xp

I could try the corrupted mentor idea, but i think that would turn parts of my story very topsy-turvy xd And she doesnt get a new mentor, per say, but her friend takes care of her then on out (since she was pretty young, and her friend is an older dude who was friends with the deceased mentor. Whoa, starting to sound like a soap there sweatdrop ) Ill play around with the idea and see where i come up 3nodding




Thank you everyone for replying! I really appreciate it! heart