Causes of deaths...in Literature.

Agony aunt for writers

May We Escape This Fate: Awful Library Books

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Hmmm...that's making me think of all the way's people have died in my novels (so far):

-falling from great height
-evisceration
-blunt force trauma
-more evisceration
-gunshots
-hatchet in the back
-removal of limbs

Seems like death in my novels are due to extensive violence rather than existential crises.
 
Hmmm...that's making me think of all the way's people have died in my novels (so far):

-falling from great height
-evisceration
-blunt force trauma
-more evisceration
-gunshots
-hatchet in the back
-removal of limbs

Seems like death in my novels are due to extensive violence rather than existential crises.

You're just so violent, Chase :) Death in my repertoire so far; drownings, in the Severn and a UK tsunami, and a falling off a roof upon being spooked by an un-dead cat. Plus one or two quiet, natural ones.
 
You're just so violent, Chase :) Death in my repertoire so far; drownings, in the Severn and a UK tsunami, and a falling off a roof upon being spooked by an un-dead cat. Plus one or two quiet, natural ones.

I have a little bit of an excuse since I'm writing murder mysteries, space operas, and now cyberpunk thrillers. I promise I'll calm down after the thriller is done. :p
 
*remembers I'm a thriller writer* Well crap. Do I just count major characters or do minors count as well?

- bludgeoned to death with a crowbar
- set on fire
- shot by a sniper
- shot point-blank (one is shot in the head, two are shot in the gut)
- just plain shot
- (coming up in book 4) strangled by a serial killer
- (coming up in book 4) stabbed by a serial killer

... Those are just the named ones. My poor characters.
 
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One mysterious and obnoxious death is missing from the list of how males have died in literature—from a surfeit of lampreys!

This was how King Henry I was supposed to have died, after eating too many of these eel-like creatures. Ngaio Marsh, the crime novelist, used it as a title for her tenth story about her gentleman detective Roderick Alleyn.

Your surfeit awaits you...

eel2.jpg
 
One mysterious and obnoxious death is missing from the list of how males have died in literature—from a surfeit of lampreys!

This was how King Henry I was supposed to have died, after eating too many of these eel-like creatures. Ngaio Marsh, the crime novelist, used it as a title for her tenth story about her gentleman detective Roderick Alleyn.

Your surfeit awaits you...

eel2.jpg
That's my specific moral turpitude, right there. Am I safe now?
 
Okay, so I have death by:

Science gone awry in the form of lab-reproduced alien virus
Sniper rifle
Feral human cannibals
A pack of wild dogs
Explosive shotgun slugs
Headshots from handguns
A collapsing (gasp!) underground corridor
Rage-fueled beating
Science gone awry in the form of lab-reproduced alien virus mutating into a sentient colony lifeform parasite
Old-fashioned exchanges of gunfire
Science gone awry in the form of a pack of chupacabras (genetically engineered oversized coyote/hyena hybrids)

Yet it's not an overly violent book...o_O
 
Okay, so I have death by:

Science gone awry in the form of lab-reproduced alien virus
Sniper rifle
Feral human cannibals
A pack of wild dogs
Explosive shotgun slugs
Headshots from handguns
A collapsing (gasp!) underground corridor
Rage-fueled beating
Science gone awry in the form of lab-reproduced alien virus mutating into a sentient colony lifeform parasite
Old-fashioned exchanges of gunfire
Science gone awry in the form of a pack of chupacabras (genetically engineered oversized coyote/hyena hybrids)

Yet it's not an overly violent book...o_O
That's all in one book??? Mine are over three!
 
That's my specific moral turpitude, right there. Am I safe now?

You could be safe, though whenever anyone asks me if something is safe I think of the torture scene in the movie adaptation of William Goldman's Marathon Man, where Lawrence Olivier, playing wanted Nazi war criminal Dr Christian Szell, performs dentistry on Dustin Hoffman's Babe character—asking him "Is it safe?"



Lampreys are definitely creepy, as shown by the always daring Jeremy Wade in his River Monsters series; this has to be one of the nuttiest things I've seen him do:

 
The universe I have been creating for my new MS is full of religious fanatics, so human sacrifice- beheadings, hearts being ripped out from chests etc. I didn't get there yet, but I'm planning to have someone torn to pieces by forest beasts controlled by a crazy shaman. Also, there is a monster-cannibal running around, so some of them will get eaten. But one of the main characters simply dies from a bullet.
 
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Agony aunt for writers

May We Escape This Fate: Awful Library Books

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