Nailing the victim...

 A long-delayed announcement: Melinda O, you are the winner of BOURDAIN: The Definitive Oral Biography! Please contact Celia at wakefieldpro at gmail!

HALLIE EPHRON: Earlier this week we talked about villains – is a good villain anything like law-breakers in real life? Which got me thinking about VICTIMS. What makes a “good” victim in a crime story?

I ask this because just the other day I was watching a TV mystery episode and realized, with a sinking heart, which character was about to be killed off. I had to turn the thing off. Seriously. I liked that character SO much and it just, well, did not seem fair.

I did not want to keep hanging out in that world, even though I know full well it's ficton.

I know, ridiculous thing to get upset about, but there you are.

Which got me wondering: Have you ever realized that you have the WRONG VICTIM? That you thought you needed to kill them off but, in fact, it was a bad idea and you needed to rework your plot?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes! Precisely. I was writing TRUTH BE TOLD, and even though I am a devout pantser, I knew I had to kill a certain person, I knew it, it was absolutely necessary. The whole story revolved around that death. Turned out, um, it didn’t. More I cannot say.

(But like you, Hallie, this is one of the hilarities of our household. We will be watching something, and I’ll point to the screen and say: DEAD. Jonathan is always somewhere between amused and annoyed. I am so sorry, though, I cannot help it.)

RHYS BOWEN: I found out pretty early on that I can’t kill a child. When I was writing Evan’s Gate ( that actually got an Edgar nomination to my surprise) I had planned for two little girls to die the same way. I couldn’t do it. One died by accident and the other stayed alive.

I always know who is going to be killed as the WHY is at the center of the story.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I wrote about the death of a child - not by murder! - and was actually sobbing the whole time. So I agree with Rhys; no kids and no dogs or cats as victims!

Because I like writing about social issues and communities, I usually prefer victims whose loss will have a strong impact on the other characters.

One thing that drives me absolutely BONKERS when watching movies/series is when a victim’s whole existence and death serves to motivate the enraged and grief-stricken detective. 99 times out of 100, the decedent is a woman and the detective is a guy.

C’mon, screenwriters, there are ways for your male characters to access their emotions without fridging their girlfriends.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m thinking back on the last four or five books and seeing a pattern–I don’t necessarily like the victim. Which really is a little lame when you think of it–what kind of mystery is that? But it’s hard for me to let the good guys go…

Hank, that’s so funny. I’m usually completely clueless because I get caught up in the story, rather than figuring out whodunit.

JENN McKINLAY: Victims can be so sensitive! I once had a victim who refused to die and I had to rewrite the entire book and then he became a recurring character in the series. I’m glad he didn’t die because he really made the series so much better but at the time, I was like “Dude, you have to die! Cooperate!”

He didn’t.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've never thought I had the wrong victim, but there have been some that I really really really did NOT want to kill. But if had I changed the victim, I would have had no plot, so I just had to cry my way through it.

HALLIE: So how about you? Can you sense when a character you've gotten attached to is about to get bumped off? Does it make you keep reading (or watching), or is it your signal to bail?