Murdering Your Children
Day 35 of Writing
The term “murdering your children” has been used to refer to when you have to cut out parts of a story you really like. The picture above is a study by Rubens for his Medea Slaying Her Children. She was far less prudent than I have been, as I only kill when I feel it is necessary, and unlike her, never for revenge. It can be because it disrupts the pacing, or because it no longer fits with the changes you made later in the story, or for many other reasons. I have learned to be quite brutal with this.
What I was not prepared for was murdering my characters. I have had these characters in my mind for quite awhile, and they have become surprisingly real to me. Just before I began writing the actual text, I realized that a character I really liked needed to die. I could not think of any way around it that would not be cheesy or far fetched. I had put him (or her- no hints) into a situation where in order to get the story where I wanted it to go, they had to die. Permanently.
It sort of hit me harder than I would have thought. It was strange, as they were not real. Still, I went through a short period of sadness that I had to kill this character off.
So far I have only killed off one main character. There may be others. I don’t know how the writers on The Walking Dead do it.
Right now we are living in a real disaster novel. Lots of people are dying. It is unlike anything any of us has ever experienced. As a writer, I think this entire scenario that we are going through right now would make a terrible fiction novel. It is too over the top and improbable.
In the early stages of conceptualizing my novel, I had a Trump-inspired villain. At the time, he had announced his run for the presidency, but few took him seriously. He has played a villain before, as the model for the Biff character in the three Back to the Future movies. Since my original conception included a lot of political dystopia, that just cut a little too close to reality, so that idea was nixed.
I thought long and hard about whether this blog should get political. I am not a supporter of this president and have very strong feelings about it. I had included some comments, but they felt impassioned but out of place, so I took them out. I decided to keep the focus on science, technology, science fiction, and the process of writing. I just realized that is an excellent example of murdering your children.
What’s Up with Us
California just lost the first child to the virus. We don’t seem to know why this kills some and not others. Obesity, preexsisting conditions and age seem to be risk factors, but people without underlying conditions are certainly dying. It is such a slow motion nightmare where we know way too little.
Unemployment applications are skyrocketing. I am so thankful that Belle has a job. Even with our Cobra payments we can keep our heads above water, but just barely.
Governor Newsom said we may have to shelter in place well into the summer. California took the lead in getting people to shelter in place, and now 15 other States have followed. That makes for over 158 million Americans sheltering in place. How much of this we can take I don’t know.
I understand the science of why it works, but it is a stopgap measure. The next step is massive testing, tracking, and quarantining. That is an area where we are totally failing, and it is the fault of the Federal Government and their bizarre, delayed, and incompetent response to this crises.
The science is clear. We can’t end shelter in place until we have massive testing. For reasons that make no sense to me, everyone is still having problems getting the tests and the elements needed for the tests. This is insane. This is the man-made part of the crises.