How Authors Bid Their Characters Adieu
Knowing that memorable characters linger in readers’ minds well beyond the last page of a novel, The Divining Wand wondered about the authors’ experience in letting them go. After creating and living through them for months, years….the question was asked: How do you say “goodbye?”
Here are several responses:
~Katie Alender (Bad Girls Don’t Die YA):
“I don’t think I do say good-bye to characters. Because they’re mine, I get to carry them around in my head and watch them live out their lives. It’s very different from being a reader and finishing a book and feeling that sense of loss–I feel that a lot when I finish my favorite books. Thankfully, as a writer, I am the Supreme Authority over my characters, where they go, what they do, and all that. I’m pleased to report that they all lived happily ever after!”
~Robin Antalek (The Summer We Fell Apart):
“I haven’t yet said goodbye to the characters in THE SUMMER WE FELL APART—book groups – (I just visited my 53rd) have kept these characters alive for me much longer than I ever dreamed. Even though in my writing world I have moved on to another set of characters – readers have allowed me to keep tabs on the Haas siblings – and I love that.”
~Julie Buxbaum (After You, The Opposite of Love):
“I don’t. When I finish a book, I always keep open the possibility that I’ll get to revisit with them at some point. Since I really and truly love all my characters–I feel like they are my friends–and at the same time, also spend somewhere around three hundred pages torturing them in the name of that annoying thing called “‘plot’”, I sometimes feel like it’s merciful when I leave them alone for a while.”
~ Beth Hoffman (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt releasing in Trade Paperback October 26, 2010):
“I can’t say goodbye, I still think of them and will most likely bring them back in future works in cameo appearances.”
~Kristy Kiernan (Between Friends, Matters of Faith, and Catching Genius):
“You mean if I don’t kill them? I let them go gently. I try to give them new emotional tools–empathy, or fortitude, or simply hope–and then place them gently into their new surroundings…without me.”
~Leah Stewart (Husband and Wife, The Myth of You and Me, Body of a Girl):
“I think of the last lines of my books as their goodbye, and my goodbye to them. If I can get the last line right I feel I’ve given them a fitting send-off.”
Announcement: The winners of Julie Buxbaum’s “signed” copies of After You are Jenny and Colleen Turner. Congratulations!
Please email diviningwand (at) gmail (dot) com with your mailing address and Julie will send out your book as soon as possible.
Ditto what Julie and Beth said, hehehe. But also what Leah said. I think in some cases, you know it’s goodbye. In other cases, it’s just see you later.
1How interesting! I think there are some characters who will always be with me (ha!) and others I’ll forget simply because they were only vehicles.
2I love Kristy’s response…..
3