This series is musings and ramblings more geared towards fellow writers, although I certainly welcome anyone to read through and to share your thoughts. We are all made up of stories.
I am tired of stories where the heroes only die.
I love a good superhero movie but lately I only watch the early stories, the beginnings, the “this is who I am” stories. It seems to me that the farther in the storyline you get, the worse it gets. There’s always a bigger, badder challenge, and someday our hero dies on the battlefield in a blaze of glory.
Is that the best way to tell the story?
We already know the hero is willing to give up his life to protect others. We have already seen her take a bullet meant for someone else – a teammate, a stranger, even an enemy.
“Greater love has no man than this, that he gives up his life for his friends.”
There are some stories where this needs to be the end, when the hero’s death gives the resolution to the story. Ironman dies, the once selfish man making the ultimate sacrifice to save those he loves and the world he finally sees. The Apostle Paul, too, dies in service to his Lord and faith.
Sometimes, when the hero enters the story clutching selfishness and greed, the way he finds redemption is by giving up everything he holds, including his life, for the sake of others.
Yet are our heroes willing to live for others, too?
Does our hero train up others to fill his role? Does she take a long step back and breathe? Does he address the systemic issues that contribute to the battles he fights? Does our hero recognize the scars and wounds, and does our hero learn to live with peace? Living with peace, learning to be comfortable with the silence in your head outside of an adrenaline rush, finding ways to put battle-earned skills to work in other areas – these are not easy tasks, nor glamorous ones, but they are so important.
I grew up with Tolkien, so I think about Frodo, who lived with the never-healing wounds from the Nazgul blade. He lived, you see. Never the same, but he lived to tell his story. Or consider Aragorn, who brought the hands of a healer to his new role as king. There’s Faramir, who found love in spite of everything.
And there is Eowyn – the warrior princess who did not know how to live outside of the battlefield, who had to learn to embrace the goodness she fought so hard to defend.
As writers, storytellers, we miss an opportunity when so many of our heroes die, even when they die nobly. We miss the chance to reach our readers about living. About healing. About embracing the world we’ve fought so hard to save.
We sort of let them off the hook. Our readers, I mean. We teach them to find something worth dying for and we never teach them to find something worth living for.
When our stories end in death, it can be hard to teach about life. Highlight the healers and gardeners and songwriters. Show the way the sunlight filters through the trees and dances over the raindrops on the grass and wildflowers.
If we only teach people to find something worth dying for, if we only show them heroes that fight every day until they die, do we give them the right kind of hope for tomorrow? Do we encourage them to put on their gloves and their good shoes and go do something to make the world better? Do we teach them that sometimes making the world better starts with making ourselves better first?
Do we show our readers the difference between a garden and a graveyard?
Do we encourage them to find something worth living for?
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I never thought about heroes dying. All my heroes live. I don’t read many books where the hero dies. Maybe I’m drawn to the books where life is more important than dying, where there is healing and forgiveness instead. Where the pain of living is great but healing is found in love and forgiveness. That is my story. The story I live each and every day. I’m the one who has to forgive so I can live right with God. But the people who cause the pain continue to do so at every chance they get. I could go on and on about the pain and the causes of pain, but I’ll spare you.
Great thoughts on writing!! ❤️💜❤️