Is it considered bad form...

Shadow_Ferret · May 2, 2006

...or cheating to write a story in the 1st person and then in the end the MC dies?

I had heard, a long time ago, maybe high school, that the reader believes the character will survive because how else could they be telling the story?

So is it not kosher to end the story with the MC dying a slow, agonizing death?

Maryn · May 2, 2006

I think as a reader I'd feel cheated if you told it first person, past tense and ended with the narrator's death. Like you said, it's not kosher because how could he be telling the story? (Unless you make it a journal or something found after his death.)

However, I'd be cool with first person, present tense ending that way. I've done that myself. Unfortunately, you face the discomfort of many readers who really are put off by present tense. (Not to mention the ones who don't care for first person.)

Maryn, hoping this is slightly helpful at least

rich · May 2, 2006

First person won't kill a story, logic will. We have willing suspensions of disbelief--the muses granted that to us, but within reason.

Shadow_Ferret · May 2, 2006

Thanks. I was being lazy. I originally wrote the story first person and the MC lived, but his lover died. The whole story came off as rather cliche. And I've had it sitting while I thought about it. The twist where the MC dies made it a much more interesting story.

However, now I have to go through and change POV. Not fun.

rich · May 2, 2006

Worse thing you can do when you write is be lazy. You can never send something off with a 'what the hell.'

Never.

jchines · May 2, 2006

Shadow_Ferret said:
So is it not kosher to end the story with the MC dying a slow, agonizing death?

I think it can be done, but it would be harder...

MC could be a ghost at the end, telling the tale of his demise
MC could be recounting the story as he dies

I vaguely recall hearing about a story that consisted entirely of one man's thoughts from the time the lever on the gallows was pulled to the moment his neck snapped.

Overall, it's probably going to be easier to just switch to 3rd person, though.

Julie Worth · May 2, 2006

Shadow_Ferret said:
...or cheating to write a story in the 1st person and then in the end the MC dies?

I had heard, a long time ago, maybe high school, that the reader believes the character will survive because how else could they be telling the story?

So is it not kosher to end the story with the MC dying a slow, agonizing death?

Where’s the problem? In Lovely Bones, the MC is dead to begin with.

Shadow_Ferret · May 2, 2006

Is he/she a zombie, vampire, or ghost? Mine just dies.

Oh, and a word of caution to everyone. Don't willy-nilly do a global replace for "I" with the character's name. You end up with sentences like:

Oh, and a word of cautJohnon to everyone. Don't wJohnlly-nJohnlly do a global replace for "John" wJohnth the character's name.

Julie Worth · May 2, 2006

Shadow_Ferret said:
Is he/she a zombie, vampire, or ghost? Mine just dies.

Oh, and a word of caution to everyone. Don't willy-nilly do a global replace for "I" with the character's name. You end up with sentences like:

Oh, and a word of cautJohnon to everyone. Don't wJohnlly-nJohnlly do a global replace for "John" wJohnth the character's name.

And when you change from first person to third, isolate your dialogue first, and then you can global replace without touching it.

veinglory · May 2, 2006

In the lovely Bones death is not the end--she is telling the story as an extant ghost.

Shadow_Ferret · May 2, 2006

That sounds interesting. Must put it on my "to read" list.

That's not what I'm going for here, though. Thanks.

Maryn · May 2, 2006

When you're doing that replace, search for I-space rather than plain old I, and make it case-sensitive if you can figure out how. (I can't remember, if I ever knew.)

Maryn, full of advice but lacking carry-through

CaroGirl · May 2, 2006

If you do a find/replace with space-i-space you don't have to worry about making it case sensitive. There's only one way you'll ever have an i all by itself and it's I.

Julie Worth · May 2, 2006

CaroGirl said:
If you do a find/replace with space-i-space you don't have to worry about making it case sensitive. There's only one way you'll ever have an i all by itself and it's I.

I don't think so, not all of them--like the one at the beginning of this sentence.

Shadow_Ferret · May 2, 2006

In Word you can choose "whole words" and then it only looks for "I" all by it's lonesome. Unfortunately, I abandoned that because it also changed the "I"s in dialog to John.

I needed to reread it anyway, so I did the replacing manually.

Julie Worth · May 2, 2006

Shadow_Ferret said:
In Word you can choose "whole words" and then it only looks for "I" all by it's lonesome. Unfortunately, I abandoned that because it also changed the "I"s in dialog to John.

Not if you first isolate your dialogue. This is from my posting in the tech section, and it assumes that you’ve used smart quotes:

Put “?@” in the find box, and put nothing in the replace box. Select a font color of red for the replace box. Make sure the “use wildcards” box is selected, then replace all. Your dialogue will turn red.

Now you can search for strings in black, and nothing red will change.

(If you didn't use smart quotes, you can make them smart. See here.)

Shadow_Ferret · May 2, 2006

I don't use smart quotes. I don't find them very smart at all.

But thanks for the suggestion.

Alien Enigma · May 5, 2006

Listen to the "Long Black Veil" by Johnny Cash. A ghost is telling the story in first person.

Jeff

www.freewebs.com/jefferysmiller

A. J. Luxton · May 5, 2006

People do this all the time. It's kind of a cliche at this point, but that's only a real problem, IMO, if the death is the "punchline" and there's not any other point to the story. (Or, alternately, if you're doing it for no reason at all: rocks fall, everyone dies.)

You CAN change from past to present tense at the end of the story, thuslike:

And then I ate my beans and then I went home.

Now I'm lying here dying of food poisoning. Gawd, this is awful. Tell my children not to eat the beans. Tell my children...

Treat it like a scene or viewpoint transition.

jchines · May 5, 2006

If you're trying to do a global search/replace, remember you'll also need to look for:

I'll
I'd
I've
I'm

and other forms of the word.

If it's a short story, I'd be tempted to just rewrite from page one rather than fighting with find/replace. You should catch most of the changes, and you'll also find yourself cleaning up the writing as you go.

Shadow_Ferret · May 5, 2006

A. J. Luxton said:
People do this all the time. It's kind of a cliche at this point, but that's only a real problem, IMO, if the death is the "punchline" and there's not any other point to the story. (Or, alternately, if you're doing it for no reason at all: rocks fall, everyone dies.)

Doh!

Me and my blasted O'Henry endings!

Summonere · May 10, 2006

...either it works or it doesn't...

Shadow_Ferret:

No, it’s not cheating, nor is it bad form, if the narrator of a first-person story dies. If it’s a good story. If such an ending is well done.

The trick is making sure that such a thing makes for a satisfying ending as opposed to a merely odd one.

Consider, for instance, the Oscar winning movie, American Beauty. The main character, the guy giving us all that voice-over narration throughout the entire thing, dies at the end. One of my college writing professors would hiss and gnash her teeth and shout about such a thing, “Well, who’s telling the story, then? Who’s telling the story?”

Well, in this case, it didn’t matter. American Beauty entertained a lot of people, made a lot of money, even won a little statue for its writer. Good show.

As I recall, too, H.P. Lovecraft wrote several stories in which the narrator died at the end -- though these were usually presented in the form of diaries, journals, or letters.

In still other instances I’ve seen stories in which first-person narrators died at the end because the worlds in which they existed were ones in which ghosts existed -- whereby we might imagine the narrator joins them -- and in still other stories I’ve seen other kinds of justification for such ends.

The point is that if such an ending makes sense within the logic of the story, you’ve succeeded.

Cheerio--

Gillhoughly · May 11, 2006

Here's something from Mark Twain's essay "James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses:"

The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

And I got this one from a highly experienced editor who's been in the business forever:

A story will NOT work if its only point is to “surprise” the reader, at the very end, that someone in it is a vampire, a ghost, a new-born baby; or has just noticed that he died several pages ago.

The MC dying at the end can be telling his story to witnesses. This device was used in the noir film "DOA" with Edmund O'Brien. Of course, at the end of the movie he really did die. That was quite a surprise to the audience, despite the title.

A similar use of a character spilling the beans was in "Double Indemnity" though at the end Fred McMurray was wounded and had a chance to survive.

Speaking as an editor, I'd have to see one heck of a good story with a lot of fantastic writing in it to accept it for publication. A dead MC at the end is something of a cliche, especially if the character being dead is the big O. Henry twist.

Readers today are very demanding!

Crosshatcher · May 12, 2006

Your question brought to mind an old film I saw many years ago that was remade a few years back. The title of the Film was D.O.A. It's about a man who was poisoned and tracks down his killer before he dies. It was told in flashback as he sat giving his story to a police detective. When he was finished his tale he fell off the chair and died. If a story is written, made into a movie then remade years later you tell me if it's a good idea to have the MC die at the end?

Jamesaritchie · May 12, 2006

Crosshatcher said:
Your question brought to mind an old film I saw many years ago that was remade a few years back. The title of the Film was D.O.A. It's about a man who was poisoned and tracks down his killer before he dies. It was told in flashback as he sat giving his story to a police detective. When he was finished his tale he fell off the chair and died. If a story is written, made into a movie then remade years later you tell me if it's a good idea to have the MC die at the end?

The question is, can you do it in first person? D.O.A. is not written in first person, even though it has a narrator. When you see him fall off his chair and die, you are seeing it happen from the dramatic viewpoint, not from first person. You can't see first person happen from the outside.

It's perfectly fine to have the protagonist die at the end of a story, if the story is told from a viewpoint that allows it. Having the protagonist die when teh story is told in first person, however, is a much tougher act, and nearly always requires some sort of gimmick.

You have to ask "Who is telling this story?" If it's told from first person, and if the POV character dies at the end, then you're saying the story is being told by a dead man, and this is clearly impossible without some sort of gimmick, such as the POV character being a ghost.

Gimmicks work, but they do not work over and over. If you really want the protagonist to die at the end, the smart thing to do is switch to third person, to omniscient, or use the stage and movie techniqoe or wrtiign from the dramatic viewpoint.

Is it considered bad form...

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