Heroes Insider Weekly

How to be a Psychopathic Writer - A Discussion on Death

How to be a Psychopathic Writer:

Part 3: A Discussion on Death by Hawkeye

Why hello there everybody, as you all know it’s Hawkeye here, aka @MattStuart coming to you with another edition of “How to be a Psychopathic Writer” for the Wattpad Avengers magazine.

So recapping on past weeks, in the first week we looked at removing the secret weapon. Bonus points if you can tell me what that was. Bonus points if you go back and read it again, leaving comments and votes. You win either way. Last week we looked at killing of main characters to improve progress and give your story that potentially much needed kick in the ass to get it moving.

This week in part three of my wonderful installment of How to be a Psychopathic Writer we are finally looking at some ways to kill characters! Yes that’s right; if you’re reading this I hope you’re not afraid of blood and gore. Well I’d assume you’re not because hopefully you’ve read the whole series. Anyway let’s get into it.

As an advisory note, I’ve always found you need to clear your internet history after trawling through the internet looking for old police reports on brutal murders, just like you need to clear it after looking up some saucy porn websites (only for research purposes of course. Not that I need any, anymore). For some reason these two topics that I tend to write a lot of are taboo.

Now as you’ve seen in the movies, read in the books etc, etc there are lots of numerous ways in which to kill off characters. If you go trawling through any number of books and the author is half decent, chances are you will find there is a particularly good death inside it. Watch out here comes another question. But what is it that sets apart a good murder / killing thing from a bad one?

Is it the detail the author puts into it? Possibly. Is it the way in which the character has been decimated and obliterated from the face of whatever earth they’re on? Also it is another possibility. I don’t have a clear answer to this that is a simple yes or no.

To me, while we (most of us) are now civilized creatures, there is always a part of human nature that is “turned on” by killing. Sure it might kick in under the most trying of circumstances, but during the times that you are reading, there is a small part of your brain that is still connected to it. Let’s get scientifically into it!

Death is a part of human life, much like sex. In novels there is so much room for both of these entities to roll. Depending on the type of person you are you may have mixed reactions to one or both of these subjects. I have found that somehow depending on what you are reading whether it is to do with sex or death, there are certain points in your head that get switched on by them. If a scene hits those spots inside your head and nails it that says to me is how you know it is great.

All of a sudden you’re all screaming at me! “Shit, Hawkeye! How do we hit these spots?” Again there is no simple answer as each person will have different sweet spots to target. I know for a fact that you’re not going to write a million different scenes so that everyone that reads your book gets one tailor made just for them. There is however a few simple things to do so that the majority of people like how you’re killing your characters.

Accuracy: I cannot stress to you how important this is. Out of all the things I have running around in my head on how to make my characters die, this is probably the most important thing. During my travels on Wattpad, I see far too many inexperienced authors writing total shit when they kill a character. Complete utter, unrealistic bull shit. I should know I’ve killed four people, I know some things about how to do it. I don’t even want to get into the bad novels because I’ll just gnash my teeth at you. Either way here’s some short little tips on how to improve accuracy.

·        Learn combat – If you’re writing a sword fight, shootout, whatever it is make sure you take the time to know something about it so it can work. Watch movies (probably not advisable), read books, do martial arts! Become an expert in that field.

·        What kills – Unless your character is a pretty much immortal half Vampire like Abner Toldar from the Toldar Trilogy by yours sincerely, please, please learn what is going to kill whatever character you’re writing the death for. Obviously if they are a god you’re going to have to make something up.

·        Everyone is different – People can sometimes be tougher, others weaker. Decide on your character and what it’s going to take to kill him. Keep it realistic!

·        Vary it up – If you have everyone in your story dying the same way, be it a sword through the heart or eye, that shit is going to get boring really fast. I understand that you might have a certain style that your characters are following. For example they might all be master swordsmen. That’s cool, but seriously guys, vary it up. The heart isn’t the only way to kill someone. Use different weapons like axes, knives, whatever.

·        Your writing style matters – Not everyone is cut out to write hard pace action or hardcore killing scenes. And that’s fair enough. To me my goal is to write one novel of every genre throughout my life, but that isn’t everyone. If you can’t write it and it doesn’t click you don’t need to write it. Get someone to help you or keep rewriting until something seems right.

Ok so that’s it for this week’s How to be a Psychopathic Writer by me, good old Matt Stuart. Hopefully these tips have given you some theoretical points in which to follow when you’re writing out some brutal scenes. To sum up I want you all to go back and read through it again just so it sinks in. And nothing is going too far when you’re killing characters. And I mean NOTHING. Brutalize them and make them wish they’d never been born.

That’s all from me this week folks. I shall catch you all next time. I’m thinking a topic about torture or something similar. We’ll see how we go. This is Hawkeye aka Matt Stuart signing off—and as always—have a nice day.