Discussion Post: Characters "Checking Out" Part 2: Characters Moving On

Hey everyone! If you remember last week's discussion was characters "checking out" mean they just up and leave us (sob). Now I'm going to talk about a topic that fits right along with it which is characters moving on when someone they love or care about "checks out".

As a person, I feel like everyone should take the proper amount of time to grieve and mourn the death of a loved one, and that goes for fiction characters as well. I get that time doesn't quite mean the same thing in books as they do in real life. One book could range from a weekend to a year or maybe even longer. So I get expressing the time for grief and mourning isn't the same as expressing it in real life but it still needs to be there. Some authors I don't think get that. They don't get that if a character truly, truly, loved the person that passed away then they would mourn and grieve and miss them terribly. They wouldn't move on to the next attractive person they see almost a day later. One series that comes to mind that fits this is House of Night. They do not know what it means to mourn. I won't go into specifics but someone they love dies, they grieve for a day or so but then all of a sudden "Hey look! There's a hot person! Let's go make out with them!" and the person they just lost is gone all over again. They didn't mourn worth anything. They cried for a day and then bam they're fine. That's not how it works. Even in fictional worlds. Characters like that piss me off more than anything else.

Now I'm not saying that characters can't move on. They can and I want them to, but you need to put everything together in a way that will leave all fans happy. You kill someone off people love and then the next page you have their loved one making out with someone else you are asking for hate and rage. You kill someone off that people love and give their loved one the proper time to grieve before then slowly moving on, and perhaps not immediately making out with some hot person they just met, and you are doing it right. You have to do justice by the fans, the characters still living, and the characters we lost. It can be hard I'm sure to find a good balance and everything but you have to at least try. We all deserve that much.

I still get upset when characters die and if I had my way all the characters I love would still be around and the world would be a much happier place. But I don't have my way and that's not how the world works. Characters are going to die, characters I love and care about. I'm going to get upset when said characters die and will probably rage a lot, and in some cases cry. It won't bring them back but it'll help a little. The one thing I ask is that if you do kill someone I care about off that you give their significant other or just their loved ones in general proper time to mourn and remember them before trying to move on. If you spend like two pages on it before making your character suddenly want someone else in the same book (it's happened before and oh god I was pisssed!) then I promise that not only will I rage a thousand rages but you'll lose a lot of my respect and my love for your books and characters. It isn't fair to fans, to the characters dead or alive. I'm not asking for much I don't think.



What do you guys think? Should characters spend time grieving a lost loved on or should they move on right away? Let me know your thoughts!


~Kayla~