death – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Fantasy from A to Z: I is for Immortality

Immortality is one of those fantasy tropes that shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. Vampires, elves, gods, liches, ancient dragons hoarding gold through the centuries—we’re fascinated by the idea of beings that can’t die. Sometimes they’re terrifying, sometimes noble, sometimes weary and wise. But always, they strike a chord.

Why? Because they brush up against one of our deepest human anxieties: death.

Death is one of those universal aspects of the human experience. Everybody dies. And compared to the lifespan of things like mountains, or forests, or stars, the human lifespan is remarkably short and fleeting. Some of us live a long and a full life, and are ready to go when the time comes, but many of us are not. Tragedy can strike us at any time. No one knows when the reaper will come for them.

This is why, in fantasy fiction, immortality often comes wrapped in awe and mystery. It’s a mark of otherworldliness, a symbol of something beyond the ordinary cycles of birth and death. Sometimes it’s a gift. Sometimes it’s a curse. Often, it’s a little bit of both.

Personally, my favorite fantasy author who captured this complexity is J.R.R. Tolkien. His elves are perhaps the most iconic immortal race in all of fantasy. They don’t age or grow frail. They don’t die of disease. They are not eternal in the divine sense, but their lives are bound to the life of the world. When they are slain, their spirits travel to the Halls of Mandos, where they can eventually be re-embodied. But they are still bound to the world. They don’t pass beyond it. They don’t get to move on.

That’s the heart of their tragedy.

Elves in Tolkien’s legendarium aren’t happy fairytale creatures dancing in the moonlight. They are ancient beings with long memories, deep sorrows, and wounds that don’t always heal. They remember battles and betrayals that happened millennia ago. They carry the weight of history like a cloak that can never be removed. And for all their beauty and wisdom, they are fading. Slowly, subtly, inevitably. Their time is passing, and they know it.

In contrast, humans are mortal and thus are not subject to this curse. As Tolkien writes in The Silmarillion:

“And the Doom of Men, that they should depart, was at first a gift of Ilúvatar. It became a grief to them only because coming under the shadow of Morgoth it seemed to them that they were surrounded by a great darkness, of which they grew afraid.”

That’s a remarkable insight. Mortality, which we so often view as a curse, was originally a gift. The elves envy us not because we die, but because we get to leave. To move beyond the world. To have an end.

And yet, we don’t often treat it like a gift. In fact, we go to absurd lengths to avoid it.

You don’t have to look far to see that our obsession with immortality isn’t limited to fantasy stories. In Silicon Valley and other corners of the tech world, there’s a growing movement of wealthy futurists who are pouring money into the dream of defeating death. Some want to reverse aging at the cellular level. Some are working on brain-uploading technology, convinced they can digitize the human soul. Others are experimenting with biological “enhancements,” anti-aging therapies, or even transfusions from younger people in an effort to extend their lifespans.

This hunger for immortality is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, but today it wears a lab coat and calls itself “biohacking.” The names have changed, but the impulse remains the same. We want to stay. To cling to life. To hold onto what we have, no matter the cost.

But is that really such a noble goal?

Fantasy offers us a counterpoint. Again and again, stories show that immortality comes at a price. Vampires lose their humanity. Liches surrender their souls. Gods become detached from the world of mortals. Even the elves, for all their grace, are caught in a long decline.

Immortality often brings with it a kind of existential exhaustion. Without death, there is no closure. Without loss, there is no growth. Without time running out, nothing truly matters.

Mortality, by contrast, sharpens everything. Because we are mortal, our choices matter. Because time is a scarce resource—indeed, perhaps the only resource in our world that is truly scarce—our relationships carry weight. Because we will one day die, every act of love, courage, sacrifice, or faith becomes immeasurably precious.

And that’s something that fantasy, at its best, understands better than any philosophical treatise or TED Talk ever could. Again, Tolkien writes:

“But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.”

The elves call us guests. Strangers. Not because we are lesser, but because we do not belong to the world in the same way they do. We are pilgrims passing through this world—strangers in a strange land. Our road leads elsewhere, and that elsewhere—whatever lies beyond the circles of the world—is part of the hope that makes us human.

In my own fantasy, I like to play with this idea. My characters all live in the Mortal Realm, but there is an Immortal Realm that lies beyond the bounds of their current existence, and the veil that separates the two can sometimes grow quite thin. In The Sword Keeper, there is a Void between the two realms that Tamuna must cross in order to confront the evil that afflicts her world, and to find the lost spirit of her father. In Bloodfire Legacy, when Lord Arion is assassinated in the first chapter, he temporarily gives up the indescribable glory of the Immortal Realm in order to linger as a ghost and help guide his orphaned daughter.

All of these characters are bound, in time, to pass from this Mortal Realm, but that isn’t a curse—it’s a gift. There is far more to this life than the bounds of our material existence. There are more things in heaven and in earth than we can comprehend with our mortal understanding.

In the end, fantasy doesn’t just explore our fear of death. It teaches us how to find meaning in the brief time we’re given. So the next time you read about some deathless sorcerer or ageless elf queen, remember: you have something they never will. An ending, and a beginning. A home beyond this world. A story that can reach its conclusion.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Rethinking some things

So I had an extremely vivid dream last Friday night where I got cancer and learned that I had only a month to live. Among other things, I found myself asking: “What am I going to do about my writing career? Who is going to finish all these books? Are they going to fade into obscurity, or will someone promote them so that my family will benefit from them after I’m gone?”

The whole thing made me feel like the race was suddenly over, and I hadn’t finished it, but had to hand off the baton to someone else who would. So instead of spending that final month of my life writing, I would have to spend it outlining things in such a way that the person who carried it all after me would be able to do it right.

(And then, hilariously, when I told my friend and cowriter Scott Bascom that I had terminal cancer, his response was: “So what? Get back to writing.” And when I told him IRL about that dream, his reaction was: “Well, was I wrong?”)

Obviously, it was an incredibly sobering and emotional dream, for reasons that had nothing to do with my writing. But it also got me to thinking about some things I’ve taken for granted about my writing process, and how I ought to change them or at least experiment with other ways of doing things.

For example, for the last fifteen years—really, since I started writing professionally—I’ve just sort of assumed that I would 1. work on one novel WIP at a time, and 2. write that novel sequentially from start to finish, rather than hopping around.

In the early years, I experimented with doing things differently and decided that I just wasn’t wired that way. But that was also when I thought I was a 100% discovery writer and didn’t have any sort of outlining process. Basically, I tried to keep the whole novel in my head, a nearly impossible task even for a veteran writer.

Now, I have a much more rigorous outlining process that divides each novel WIP into chapters and scenes, so that instead of trying to keep an entire novel in my head, I can eat the elephant one small bite at a time. So I’ve actually got the infrastructure in place right now to experiment with those things, in a way that I didn’t before.

Another thing that I’ve always taken for granted is that in order to be a working professional, I need to set strict deadlines for each project and schedule those deadlines at least a year in advance. Never mind that I have never kept an original deadline that I’ve made for a project, or kept to those schedules. Instead of finding a better way, however, those deadlines and schedules always just keep getting pushed back.

I’ve also been trying to find a way to write a novel all the way through from start to finish, without getting stuck in the middle and feeling like I need to put it aside for a while (on the “back burner,” as I used to say). In fact, that was one of the main reasons why I developed my outlining process in the first place. But even with a well-developed outline that still has some flexibility to adapt to a changing story, I still can’t write a novel straight through without having to take a break.

Another thing I’ve always failed at is hitting my daily word count goals consistently. Instead, I typically write in starts and fits, especially when I’m in the messy middle of whatever novel WIP I’m working on at the moment. However, I did have some success with those nanowrimo challenges where I worked on short stories—in other words, where I hopped from project to project.

Also, until this year, I could never manage to read very consistently. I’d go through phases where I’d read a lot, followed by long reading droughts where I’d read almost nothing. But then, I discovered some reading hacks that completely changed everything, and now I’m reading between one and two dozen books a month (most of them just the first and last chapters, but about 6-10 of them all the way through).

One of those reading hacks was—wait for it—reading more than a dozen books simultaneously and hopping from book to book. And the thing that made that possible was my reading log, which provides some structure and helps me to see how much I need to read from each book to not just totally drop the ball.

So why don’t I try something similar with my writing? What if, instead of working on one novel WIP at a time, I used these outlines to break them all up into scenes and just skipped around, writing whatever stands out as the most interesting thing to write at the moment? The outlines will help to keep it all straight, so I don’t have to keep an entire novel in my head. And when I inevitably get stuck with one WIP, I don’t have to lay it aside for months on end—instead, I can jump to something else, since I’m already jumping around in the first place.

It sounds kind of crazy, but I’ve found that my ADHD brain actually works better that way, at least when it comes to reading. So why not writing as well? It’s worth a shot, at least. And maybe one of the upsides will be that I won’t have to angst so much about those deadlines. If the focus is on hitting daily word count instead of staying on deadline for my current WIP, then solving the first problem will ultimately solve the second one, once I hit my stride.

So that’s what I’m going to experiment with: hopping from project to project, with a goal of hitting my daily word count goal rather than advancing a single project to an arbitrary deadline.

In order to do that, I need to make some outlines. Here are all of my unfinished novel(ish) WIPs that I haven’t trunked yet:

The Sword Bearer (Twelfth Sword Trilogy #2)
The Sword Mistress (Twelfth Sword Trilogy #3)
Captive of the Falconstar (Falconstar Trilogy #2)
Lord of the Faconstar (Falconstar Trilogy #3)
Children of the Starry Sea (Outworld Trilogy #2)
Untitled (Outworld Trilogy #3)
A Brotherhood of Swords (First Sword Trilogy #1)
Untitled (First Sword Trilogy #2)
Untitled (First Sword Trilogy #3)
The Lifewalker Chronicles (standalone)
Starship Lachoneus (standalone, may be a collection)
The Justice of Zedekiah Wight (collection)
The Mercy of Zedekiah Wight (collection)
Christopher Columbus, Interstellar Explorer (collection)

Of those, only Children of the Starry Sea and Captive of the Falconstar are fully outlined. So I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Instead of taking time off to outline all of these, however, I’m going to prioritize hitting word count, and work on the outlines on the side, in my voluminous spare time </sarc>. It’ll probably take a while, but I’ll eventually get it done—and that will provide some extra motivation to hit word count each day.

Also, I plan to outline all of them, even the book 3s where book 2 still hasn’t been written. The reason for that is so that I’ll have something to hand off to another writer, in case that crazy dream comes true. I don’t think that it will, but I’m gonna go sometime, so it’s better to get into the habit of doing that now. Besides, it may be helpful to skip ahead to the next book and write a few scenes: give me something to write toward.

TL;DR: I’m going to be doing a lot of experimentation in the next couple of months, skipping around in all of my WIPs instead of focusing on one at a time. It’s going to be crazy, but hopefully in a productive way. And a fun way too.

Trope Tuesday: Death Seeker

The Death Seeker is a character who wants to die, but for whatever reason isn’t willing to commit outright suicide. The TVtropes page has a good summary:

At some point in the past, some characters have had a traumatic experience, found themselves dishonored, committed a crime they could not repay, or lost everything worth living for. For whatever reason, rather than turning to suicide, they went off seeking battles to fight, hoping to find an enemy who would kill them, and achieve an honorable, heroic, awesome, or otherwise acceptable death, sometimes going as far as outright surrendering and offering their life to their enemies.

I’ve written a surprising number of these characters, but more often than not they end up living instead of dying. Quite often, they have a mentor who used to be a death seeker themselves, who makes them promise to find a reason to keep on living.

Escapist fiction is fun, but I like to read stories that are meaningful as well. The two are not mutually exclusive. When the protagonist is a death seeker, the question “what is worth living for?” tends to be a major driver for the story.

One character who’s very much on my mind right now is Mara Soladze from Sons of the Starfarers. A refugee turned marine, she has a traumatic experience in Comrades in Hope that very nearly pushes her over the despair event horizon. She can’t just give up and die, though, because there are people depending on her. As she climbs up the ranks from first mate, to captain, and finally to commodore, that tension never goes away.

Probably the biggest difference between a death seeker and someone who’s simply suicidal is that the death seeker is looking for something to die for. They’re much more likely to make a heroic sacrifice or go out in a Bolivian army ending.

But if something is worth dying for, isn’t it also worth living for? That is ultimately the question.

The Legend of Deathwalker by David Gemmell

legend_of_deathwalker I’m not even going to try to write a synopsis of this story. It’s just like all the other books in the Drenai series, which is why I love it so much. Basically, this one gives the story behind the rise of Ulric, khan of the Nadir, and the origin of the Nadir people. Interestingly enough, Druss the Legend plays a major role.

This was the last book in the Drenai Saga that I hadn’t read, so reading it was a very bittersweet experience. On the one hand, this one is just as good as all the other books in the series, and made me want to revisit Legend and some of the others. On the other hand, I knew that once I’d finished it, there wouldn’t be any more Drenai books left. So I took it slow for the first half, but naturally I finished it at a breathless late-night sprint a day or two later.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I love David Gemmell’s books so much. There are many reasons, but I think the main reason is that his writing is honest. He strips away all the incidental stuff and gets right at the heart of the stuff that matters. He doesn’t pussyfoot around, either–if his characters do something despicable, he doesn’t make any excuses for them. He tells it like it is. This can make for a very brutal story, but it also makes for a very cathartic one.

The other reason I love his books so much is because he does such a good job depicting raw, unrepressed manhood–not the stupid stuff like driving big cars and eating meat, but manning up and facing your greatest fears. It’s about friendship, and honor, and fighting with all of your strength for something you believe in. It’s about all that raw, pent-up energy we all have, that animal urge that drives us to competitive sports and first person shooters, and channeling it for a heroic cause.

The craziest thing is that the fight itself is actually more important than whatever side the characters are fighting on. In this book, Druss is actually fighting to help bring about the rise of the Nadir khan who later invades his homeland and kills him on the walls of Dros Delnoch. None of that matters, though, because Druss doesn’t fight with malice. For him, it’s all about fighting for something, not against something, and the battle itself is just as important as the victory. I don’t think I can put it better than this:

“Can we win here?” Sieben asked, as the shaman’s image began to fade.

“Winning and losing are entirely dependent on what you are fighting for,” answered Shaoshad. “All men here could die, yet you could still win. Or all men could live and you could lose. Fare you well, poet.”

The best thing about David Gemmell’s books is the fact that none of the characters–not even the bad guys–are defined by their own evil. The Nadir are supposed to be the evil chaotic race of the Drenai universe, but when you come to understand what they’re fighting for, their hopes and dreams for a better future, you can really see what’s good in them. Likewise, the more civilized Gothir are kind of like the evil white men who want to put down the savages and keep them in their place, but there are good and honorable men among them too.

And yet, even though the two sides clash, and good men die on both sides, it somehow isn’t tragic. That’s the crazy part. It’s almost like you can feel the characters salute each other as they die in a good cause, the way Ulric gave Druss a proper funeral in Legend, even though the two were blood-sworn enemies. In David Gemmell’s world, honor and courage are more important than life or money. Everyone dies; dying well is more important than living without honor.

This book is incredible. As I was reading it, I decided it was the best David Gemmell book I’ve ever read–which is something I do every time I read one of his books. I feel like I’m a better man for having read them. If he had written a hundred books in this series, I would happily read them all. The fact that there are no more new ones deeply saddens me, but I know I’ll revisit these stories again in the future.

Trope Tuesday: It Has Been an Honor

If there ever was a phrase that invoked manly tears, it’s this one.

“It has been an honor” is pretty much the go-to catch phrase for any Heroic Sacrifice or Bolivian Army Ending. It’s often a precursor to a Crowning Moment of Awesome, and as far as last words go, it ranks right up there with “I die free,” “I die as myself,” and “I regret nothing.” Expect to hear it a lot from blood knights, members of the proud warrior race, or anyone who belongs to a martyrdom culture.

Occasionally, you’ll hear a villain say this when he acknowledges the hero as a worthy opponent. In such cases, the villain may evolve into a friendly enemy or a fire-forged friend. Or, if the trope is played straight, they just die.

One time you won’t hear this phrase is when someone is trying to play More Hero than Thou. In that case, two or more good guys in a friendly rivalry basically argue over who has to bite the bullet, so the honor becomes a point of competition between them.

In my opinion, the heart and soul of this trope is the idea that some things are worth dying for. Obviously, a character facing death is not going to say this unless he values his honor more than his life. What exactly constitutes “honor” may be up for debate (with the potential for some unfortunate implications, especially in real-life martyrdom cultures like Japan), but the core element here is that the hero is fully willing to give up his life for something greater than himself. Bonus points if he starts out as a coward and this trope marks the conclusion of his growth arc.

While this phrase often leads to a death of some kind, that isn’t always the case. The cavalry can still show up to save them, or one of the characters can ultimately survive (either the one who says this phrase, or the one to whom it is said). The important thing, though, is that the characters face death in a meaningful way. Without that, this phrase doesn’t have nearly as much power.

In my own work, this trope tends to pop up a lot, especially in the more military sci-fi books in the Gaia Nova series. It shows up multiple times in Stars of Blood and Glory, and also in Bringing Stella Home, though more in a posthumous way than anything else. I suppose you could also say it happens in Star Wanderers: Homeworld, if you use a broader interpretation.

But either way, I’m definitely a big fan of this trope. Expect to see it many more times in my own work in the future.

As a final note, it’s worth pointing out that the bandmaster’s violin from the real-life Titanic has recently been recovered and confirmed genuine. It’s now on display in Belfast, less than two miles from where the Titanic was built.

The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend by David Gemmell

druss_chronicles Before Dros Delnoch, before Skeln Pass, before the Legend there was a seventeen year old woodsman and his young bride Rowena. They lived a happy, simple life until slavers attacked their village and carried her away.

But Druss would stop at nothing to save her. With the demon-cursed blade Snaga, he crossed oceans and continents, fighting corsairs, brigands, armies, empires, even chaos beasts to find her. And with each battle, the legend grew.

But the greatest challenge Druss would face was not a warrior or a monster, but an old family curse from beyond the land of the living.

Oh man, it’s been far, far too long since I’ve read a David Gemmell book. Far too long. And this one was perfect. It had everything you could possibly ask for in a book by David Gemmell: honor, glory, blood, war, mystics and evil sorcerers, monsters from beyond the grave, great empires and epic sieges, and even a good deal of romance. And Druss himself is such an awesome character, an unassuming, simple hero who may be brash and may have a temper, but is never completely corrupted by evil.

That said, this is a brutal, brutal book. The pithiest way I can describe it is Taken meets Lord of the Rings. People get killed. Women get raped. In fact, I think most of the women in the book get raped. Certainly, more than 50% of the characters die, most of them in a grisly, violent way. And not everyone is redeemed. In fact, some of the noblest characters fall.

But man, this is a good book. Where other fantasy books start off with the lore of the world, painting an exquisitely detailed picture of the world and the magic and the history, Gemmell just throws you right in and grabs you with the story. Things happen, and they happen quickly. From the beginning, he snags his hooks in you.

But more than anything, the story means something. Not in the sense that there’s some kind of underlying moral, or the characters are all black and white. They aren’t. People do good things for the wrong reasons, and bad things for the right reasons. Some of the most despicable characters rise up to do heroic things, while some of the noblest and most honorable characters end up fighting for evil through no fault of their own. But through it all, there’s so much truth, so much insight, that you can’t help but come away feeling like you’ve been through life and death, and seen the best that both have to offer.

I’m gushing, I know. This book is INCREDIBLE. Definitely on par with Gemmell’s best. I wish he could have written a hundred novels just like it. I would have read them all.

This is the second to last book in the Drenai series that I’ve read. The only one that I haven’t gotten to yet is The Legend of Deathwalker, and I plan to get to that one right away. After that, I’ll probably move on to the John Shannow novels, and then the Rigante series. In three years, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve read every book that David Gemmell has ever written. He’s just that kind of an author to me. And if he were still alive, you can bet I’d be ravenously devouring every new book that comes out…

Sadly, the number of David Gemmell books in the world is finite. But still, there’s quite a few left before I read them all. And one day, somewhere in the far-off future, I hope to write books as incredible as his. To one day surpass him would be an impossible dream…but as the Ventrians say, may all your dreams come true save one, for what is life without a dream?

Awesome, awesome book. If you’re a fantasy reader and brutal stuff like rape doesn’t trigger you, you definitely need to give the Drenai Series a try. Start with Legend, but get to this one shortly thereafter. It’s an amazing, incredible read.

Trope Tuesday: Came Back Strong

This trope, also kown as apotheosis, is by far my favorite part of the hero’s journey.

Up to this point, the hero has faced a lot of tests and trials. Some of them he’s passed, some of them he hasn’t, but the setbacks haven’t yet been enough to stop him. Sure, the costs have been high–he may have lost a friend or mentor, for example–but at least he’s still in the game. Then, just as he experiences the power of love (meeting with the goddess) and reconciles with the ultimate power in his life (atonement with the father), what happens?

He dies.

This may be literal or metaphorical, physical or spiritual–but whatever form it takes, the hero has to lose something significant, up to and including…well, everything. After all, there are so many things worse than death. While all the other failures up to this point left him more or less intact, this one completely shatters him–and in the process, transforms him.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the hero comes back from the dead, often with a level in badass. By dying, he gains that last piece of knowledge, experience, or resolve that he needs to defeat the big bad and gain the ultimate boon of his quest. Whoever or whatever he was before, that person wasn’t strong enough to pass the test–but now, he is.

When done well, this is a stand-and-cheer moment of the best possible kind. It’s the culmination of everything the hero has gone through, not just in terms of plot, but character as well. Years from now, you might forget everything else in the story–even the parts that you loved–but you’ll remember how you felt when you got to this part.

One of my favorite examples of this trope is in the clip I posted from the Matrix. Seriously, when Neo realizes that he is The One, that is one of the best moments in all of cinema. The Empire Strikes Back also has a moment like this, though since the movie is essentially a tragedy, there’s a lot more emphasis on Luke’s death (falling through the gas mine shaft after confronting Darth Vader) than his resurrection (getting a new hand and reuniting with his friends). The oldest examples, of course, come from mythology–Odin gained the ability to use magic by sacrificing himself on Yggdrasil, and before returning to Ithaca, Odysseus first had to journey to Hades to pay his old friend Agamemnon a visit.

So as writers, how are we supposed to get this trope right? I’m by no means an expert, but my gut instinct tells me that the way to nail it is to be as excited about this moment in the story as we want our readers to be when we get to that point. Even though storytelling is ostensibly just making stuff up, it’s not something you can fake–if you aren’t excited about your own story, how do you expect your readers to even care?

Fortunately, this is often the part of the story that drives us to write everything else. There have definitely been times when I could hardly wait to get through the other stuff and finally write the chapter where this happens. Bringing Stella Home was a big one–and that’s all I can say, at the risk of giving spoilers. Star Wanderers is another one, though it wasn’t until I was midway through Fidelity that it really came to me. Desert Stars was more of a Heroic Second Wind, which is basically Came Back Stronger without the death. However, there was definitely a transformation, both for Mira and Jalil.

So yeah, I really, really, REALLY love this trope. When done well, it’s one of those things that can turn a run-of-the-mill adventure story into something both soul-searching and powerful. You can definitely expect to see me play with it a lot in the future.

Trope Tuesday: Mentor Occupational Hazard

Being a mentor to the hero can be a pretty tough job. Don’t believe me? Check out the tvtropes page:

If you don’t have to convince The Chosen One who just wants to be normal to grow a spine and accept the Call to Adventure, you have to convince your blindly excited and dangerously eager young pupil that You Are Not Ready to learn the Dangerous Forbidden Technique. When you try to protect The Hero from the Awful Truth, you end up facing their Rage Against the Mentor. You have to maintain an ongoing conspiracy to keep The Hero Locked Out of the Loop. If they’re an orphan, you have to find them a set of Muggle Foster Parents while keeping social services in the dark. You have to endure accusations of insanity when you’re trying to teach your charge that Your Eyes Can Deceive You, give them advice on how to tell a love interest “It’s Not You, It’s My Enemies,” and keep a close eye on them 24/7.

And what is your reward for all this patience and effort?

You die.

And that right there is the heart of the matter: mentors tend to die. And stay dead. Even if they do figure later in the story, they tend to be spirit advisors from the other side with little or no chance of coming back from the grave–even if everyone else does.

So why does this happen?

The most obvious reason is that if the mentor and the hero are both working toward the same goal, the mentor cannot overshadow the hero–otherwise, why not forget the hero and send the mentor off to save the world? The hero may start off weak, which is why he needs the mentor in the first place, but at some point in the growth arc, he’s going to have to stand on his own two feet. Oftentimes, the most poignant (and convenient) way to mark that transition is to knock the mentor off.

That doesn’t explain everything, though. If the only reason for killing the mentor is to give the hero a growth arc, you can accomplish that just as well by putting him on a bus. So why does he have to die?

Lots of reasons! Character growth, increasing tension, making the story more meaningful–the list goes on and on. For an in-depth discussion on killing off characters, I’d recommend checking out this last week’s episode of Writing Excuses. My own personal take is that everyone dies eventually–even the immortal characters have to pass through some sort of transition from this world to the next–so the best thing I can do for a character isn’t to keep them alive, but to make their lives and their deaths actually mean something.

It’s also worth pointing out that in most stories, the mentor isn’t actually fighting against the big bad, but the dragon–the big bad’s lancer. Again, the main reason for this is to keep him from overshadowing the hero. But the dragon is a character in his own right, with his own agenda that may run counter to his boss–think Darth Vader from Star Wars. And in a lot of stories, the dragon actually tries to tempt the hero to come around and join him.

Perhaps that’s another reason why mentors often die–if they didn’t, then the bad guys wouldn’t ever be able to dissuade the hero through temptation. The hero would be so protected that he’d never have the opportunity to switch sides, or at least he’d never have to face any moral ambiguity because of the guardian mentor constantly guiding him.

So those are some of the reasons why mentors tend to have a short life expectancy. Can you think of any good ones?

Trope Tuesday: Belly of the Whale

The last stage in the departure phase of the hero’s journey is called the Belly of the Whale, after the Biblical story of Jonah. After receiving the call and passing the threshold to the land of adventure, the hero faces what may quite possibly be the darkest hour of his life and dies in some way to the home he has just left behind.

I know what you’re thinking: “Huh? Why does the hero die at the beginning of the story? Isn’t that supposed to happen later?” Well…yes, it does, but the symbolic death at this point is important, too. At its core, the hero’s journey is a story of transformation and growth. When the hero comes back from the lands of adventure, he isn’t the same person he was when he first left–he’s been changed in some way. And in order for that change to take place, the hero needs to let go of who he was and move forward.

Joseph Campbell describes it like this:

The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again.

Of course, the death and rebirth doesn’t have to be literal (though it can be, as it was with Dionysus). The point is to show that the hero has fully crossed the threshold, cutting all his ties with home and burning his ships on the shores of the land of adventure. Once the hero passes through the belly of the whale, there’s no going back–it’s all or nothing now.

So how common is this trope really? Actually, it occurs more often than you might think. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, it happens when Harry boards the Hogwarts Express and realizes he’s leaving his old world completely behind. It happens in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when Peter and the others decide to go after Mr. Tumnas instead of returning to their own world through the wardrobe. It happens in Star Wars IV when the Millennium Falcon gets sucked into the Death Star, and in Final Fantasy IV when Cecil washes up in Mysidia.

The main theme running through all these examples is that adventures are hard. If they were easy, anyone could go on them–and no one would be changed by them. They may be fun, and they’re definitely worth it, but to set out on one, you always have to give up something close to you–and that’s hard.

Trope Tuesday: Hoist By His Own Petard

One of the most satisfying ways to defeat the villain is to have his own nefarious scheme bring about his downfall. In Hamlet, Shakespeare described this as “hoist by his own petard,” or blown up by his own bomb. Basically, it’s a self-deposing villain whose evil plans have gone horribly right.

Not only is this a delicious form of death by irony, it’s also a satisfying way to show cosmic justice in action while allowing the heroes to keep their hands clean. When done best, the villain keeps the tension notched up to eleven and only commits his fatal mistake after the heroes have made their last stand. Bonus points if the petard takes the form of a minion who decides to switch sides.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, you’ll often find this trope in stories geared towards a younger audience, which generally try to avoid messy endings and shades of gray. In some ways, it almost resembles a Disney Villain Death, in that the heroes often come out with clean hands and an unambiguously clear conscience.

However, this isn’t always the case–sometimes, it’s precisely because of the shades of gray that the villain’s plans become self-defeating. Case in point, Pride and Kimblee from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. You’d think that both characters are totally evil–and perhaps they are–but that doesn’t stop the one from undermining the other at just the right moment.

When done right, this is an incredibly satisfying way to defeat a bad guy. When done poorly, however, it undermines the villain altogether, or turns the story into just another Aesop. As always, your mileage may vary, so when writing one of these stories it’s important to keep your audience in mind.

In my own books, it’s probably more common for this to happen to the heroes, which probably makes it a form of Two Rights Make A Wrong or Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. I do enjoy hoisting the villains as well, though, and will almost certainly use this trope in the future.