Writing a Death Scene

A major character's death is an important part of any historic saga, as it represents the end of one story line and the beginning of another.  In all three of my novels death led to a veer in plot development.  Each demise was handled differently according to personality and situation.  For some, the end was quick and unexpected, while others languished slowly.  How I presented each of these is the subject of this post.

Ikons

The death of Akulina and Massey's first born, Luka, was a pivotal point in Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker.  Luka was Massey and Akulina's first born and the first grandchild of Sergei and Boris.  The boy represented hope in the future.  I choose not elaborate on the cause of the child's death, but only on the final moment.  I wrote the scene from grandfather Sergei's point of view.  A devoutly religious man, after exhausting all known remedies Sergei's last resort was applying the sacraments and praying for a miracle.

* * *

"The servant of God, Luka Mataovich Pribish, is baptized into the Name of the Father, Amen.  And of the Son, Amen.  And of the Holy Spirit, Amen."  Sergei Pribish spoke the words of baptism softly, as three times he poured the blessed water over his grandson's forehead.  The child remained perfectly still as the trickle of water slid silently off his head and splashed into the basin.  The child’s eyes were half closed and showed no interest in the ceremony or those around him.  Earlier Luka's tongue had made a feeble attempt at reaching the water that had touched on his lips, but failed.  Now he lay still, him head turned, his tongue partially out of his mouth.

The villagers huddled closer to little Luka watching for the sign they now knew would not come.  They had employed all their knowledge of herbs and salves to ward off the sickness, but it had been in vain.  They prayed, lay on hands, and hoped for a miracle--a merciful act of God that would spare this child.  But miracles were rare in Hutawa these days.

Sergei gently placed his fingertips on the small eyelids and closed them.  He had been able to do little for his grandson in this life.  Perhaps these final acts would help him in the next.

* * *

The Final Farewell

Luka's death shattered Massey's American dream and forced his return to Hutava.  This led to his dramatic escape from the secret police and his final voyage to America.

Banners

Banners: For God, Tsar and Russia  takes place during World War One and the Russian Revolution.  As a result the death toll in this novel is extremely high.  I fashioned the death of Ribba Kunatz to represent all the soldiers lost in conflicts while doing their "duty."

* * *

"From the corner of his eye, Ribba caught sight of Moohah pitching forward, his papacha flying from his head, and his arms reaching out for his rifle.  Ribba turned toward the fallen Moohah and looked down the line of his regiment.  Men were falling, twisting and turning, being thrown back by the invisible force of machine gun bullets that steadily worked their way down his line.  Ribba could see it coming, cold and irresistible.  Did the wheat feel the cut of the farmers sickle?"

* * *

The Universal Soldier

The final scene in this chapter highlighted the futility of war and equality of death.  I did not identify the dead man or even indicate his side.  In this chapter crosses were the unifying theme.  As one soldier remarked prior to the attack, "After this battle there will be crosses.  Either on our chests or on our grave."

* * *

The dead soldier lay on his back, his mouth open, his empty eyes searching a sky that lay forever beyond the reach of outstretched frozen arms.  Both his hands were clinched and from the right dangled the little gold chain that had been calling to the old woman all morning.  Quickly she knelt next to the body, grasped the chain and tugged.  The death grip would not yield.  Next she tried to pry the fist open, but the frozen fingers would not surrender.  The old woman persisted.  She knew what lay clutched at the end of such a lovely chain.  During the last three days she had seen many crosses, both Austrian and Russian.  God did not take sides.

* * *

Major Sergei Pribish was at heart a soldier and envisioned an historic death on a battlefield.  He saw himself leading a desperate charge against hopeless odds in defense of a lost cause.  I wrote his death in Banners as anything but heroic. Like the majority of casualties in the Great War, Sergei was killed by an artillery shell fired by nameless, faceless mechanics.  The gun that killed him on the eve of his last offensive was a German howitzer nickname "Big Bertha."

Big Bertha

* * *

On the morning of October 11, 1917, man-made lightening lit the sky outside Riga as Bertha hurled her first of many massive shells eight miles into the sky.  With a roar likened to a runaway streetcar on very bad tracks, a deluge of death fell onto the Russian lines.  Bertha’s shells didn’t explode on impact, but rather burrowed deep into the earth like a surgeon’s fingers probing for nerve centers.  Only these fingers were probing for the nerve centers of an army.  One shell, fired from a distance of seven miles, landed directly atop the headquarters of the Russian general staff.  It tore through the protective upper layer, buried itself twenty feet deep beneath the floor and exploded in a brilliant flash.  Tons of earth, rock, and timber shot skyward, hesitated, and then cascaded back into the crater burying the human carnage.  Among those entombed in the rubble, still dressed in the whites of the Imperial Frontier Army was Colonel Sergei M. Pribish, soldier of the Tsar.

* * *

In order to instill realism in my historic fiction, I use the jargon of the era.  During most of the twentieth century, the name Big Bertha invoked images of  a World War One German cannon or the overly large girl in your junior high class.  The cannon is the image I was trying to convey when I wrote Banners. 

Big Bertha Driver

In 1991, Callaway introduced a technical breakthrough in powerful golf drivers and named their new line of clubs, "Big Bertha."  By time Banners was published in 2001, Big Bertha had become synonymous with the game of golf.  Several Beta readers wondered why the Germans named their cannon after a golf club.  So be advised: when writing historical fiction, realize the image a word conjures up may may not be the one you intended.

Writing Style

Surprisingly, Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker was well received by an audience I did not anticipate -- women.  Somehow they found it to be a romance novel.  I do not understand how this happened since I do not consider myself romantic at all.  All I wanted to do was tell the story of the people who risked everything, albeit they had little, to come to a totally different world to make a better life for their wives and children.  The story should be familiar to any decedent of immigrants who identifies with the foreign words, foods and places.  Everyone has ancestors who endured hardship, insult, and heartbreak to bring us the lives we now lead.  We owe them enough to tell their story.

Sue Grafton of the The Antioch Writers Conference and members of my writing groups influenced my writing style.  Thanks to Ms Grafton, I always try to use strong verbs and nouns and shy away from adverbs unless absolutely necessary.  She and a gifted writer named Rik Newman, convinced me every action has an associated verb and there are dozens of way to describe walking, looking, standing, etc. without attaching an adverb.  I also learned to end each sentence with its main thought.  But these are just mechanics, how do you write a story someone will read.

My favorite historical-fiction writer is Leon Uris and I would like to do nothing better than emulate his prose.  I chose using the third person, omniscient and told my characters' story from multiple points of view, mostly Massey and Akulina's.  It's a relay race where each character carries the plot for a time before handing it off to the next.  Since Ikons is historical fiction, I added narration describing events outside the sphere of the principle characters.  In Banners and Slogans, I made use of newspaper articles and wire reports to fill in the reader about the era.  Because Ikons was never meant for a wide audience, I included anything I thought was interesting.  The result was more than I expected.

Ikons consists of 21 chapters.  When buying a book, I'll thumb through and check out the index or the chapter headings.  Usually, the they consist of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, ... Boring.  I thought I would give my book an edge by having alluring chapter titles.  I used quotes from within each chapter and hoped they captured the novel's content as well as the buyer's curiosity.

Examples of my chapter headings are:

. 4

Chapter 4: "Why Does the Hen Run From the Rooster?". 4

Chapter 6: “Everyone Has a Cousin in America". 4 
Chapter 8: "An Act of Moral Turpitude"

Chapter 9: "We Go Rock-a-dale" 
C. 4

. 4

Chapter 20: "Mama, Mama, Help Me". 4

Chapter 21: "I Saw Skulls"

Whether this helped or not, I really can't say, but I thought it was cool.  Now armed with a two hundred plus page Word document, I began my search for a publisher.

. 4