As I’m working on my proposed urban fantasy serial fiction project it occurs to me that I need to make a few decisions on the content that aren’t directly story-related. Sort of a plan for the meta concepts about the writing.
The most important topic, I think, is character death and how I’m going to handle it in the series. I’m going to have an ‘ensemble cast’, with a number of different characters across multiple storylines. If I had just one main character then killing them off would pretty much end the series. So, obviously, that character is going to survive anything. With multiple characters I could go either way. If none of them will ever get killed off then that doesn’t add any tension or conflict. The reader will always know those characters will get by. Think of a show like Gilligan’s Island. None of the characters will ever die. Of course, being a comedy just killing off a character seems to go against the whole point of the comedy.
On the other hand, you’ve got The Walking Dead, or Game Of Thrones. Characters die off in those programs by the handful. It adds tension to the story – will my favorite character get axed? At the moment, I don’t forsee killing off handfuls, or even a single character, from my stories. But I don’t want to say ‘never’ at this point. I may come up with a legitimate reason for killing off one of my characters. If I come up with a good way to serve the story by killing off one of my characters, I want the option open to do so. I hope I have a better reason than I’m just sick of the character, should I decide to kill somebody off.
Side Note: Rumor has it that J. Michael Straczynski killed off Ambassador Kosh in the show Babylon 5 because the character kept arguing with him as he tried to write the stories.
The other meta concept I am wrestling with is what level of ‘adult themes’ to put in my writing. I suspect that since the stories are urban fantasy about the Things That Go Bump In The Night, there are going to be some non-kid-friendly stuff in there. At the very least, some characters may swear like a sailor. Given the comments above, there are likely to be acts of violence and death. There is going to be some sex.
As I recall, Buffy and Angel were mostly PG, or possibly a little PG-13. The sex was kept off-screen, and I don’t recall a lot of curse words. I’m sure they popped up every now and again but I don’t remember them. They certainly never reached Quentin Tarantino levels of swearing.
I don’t plan on putting graphic descriptions of blood and gore in my stories. Or writing intense erotica storylines describing body parts rubbing against other body parts. But sex happens between characters, they curse each other (in urban fantasy, perhaps literally!), and they attack each other with great violence. Always going for ‘fade to black’ at these moments feels like I wouldn’t be authentic to the type of stories I’ll be writing. There is such a thing as ‘reader expetations’. As the author, you want to give your audience what they want. Not doing so will drive them away. So, as the author I have to find that fine line between giving just enough detail and not falling into the grotesque.
I’m probably going to make my stories mostly PG-13, There will be curse words, the sex will be kept (mostly) off-screen, and there will only be some blood and very little gore in the violent parts. Additional amounts of any of these will hopefully be to enhance the story, rather than just being thrown in gratuitously.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum