A new story is upon me. It's one of those stories that writes itself. All I gotta do is have a pen and paper nearby, which is what I'm doing. Up before morning, jotting lines down in the dark. (Much too lazy to get up from under the covers [the nights have suddenly turned very cool] and turn on the light).
It is also one of those stories where I'm in love with the main character and it saddens me because the character is going to die in the end. I know that already and, though I wish I didn't have to kill the character off, I have to for the story and for the level of emotional involvement I want from the reader.
I got a new book from the Writer's Digest book club. It talked about raising the stakes in a work as well as the ways that that's accomplished and one of the ways was by death-- in the example given in the book, it was said to kill off someone close to the main character but I think it also works in relation to the reader.
The other day, I read one of those headlines on the msn or yahoo sites where people were urging Rowlings not to kill off Harry Potter. But if she did, damn what the emotional impact there would be for the reader.
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