Should I describe a character deeply before killing it?
So, I have this little story I would like to tell.
It's about a girl and how she's forced to take a journey with the man who has just killed her father.
I'll skip the details. The point is I'm not interested in the figure of her father; for what I would like to tell this is not important. So I've considered starting exactly from the moment when the poor man is killed. Or even after that, when the two are forced to "join" for a while.
My fear is that the reader won't feel invested about the situation, and I would like to create a tension between this two, and most importantly a sense of hate. But why should I hate someone that has killed a stranger?
Should I have some scene where the protagonist interacts with this father before he's killed?
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You don't need to describe the character of the father before hand. You could do that, but that would be irrelevant. In fact the conflict is between the daughter and the killer.
In fact, you have several possible conflicts between these two characters that involve the figure of the father:
the desire of the girl to remember her parent and the desire of the killer to let it slip in the past. You can present the figure of the father from the memories of the girl, and challenge it with dismissive comments from the killer.
the girl contrasting the way the father was treating her and the way the killer treats her. This does not necessarily need to depict the father in a positive light. In fact, he could have been an authoritarian father, and the girl now mocks the killer for his/her lack of authority on her.
the girl may not know that the father has been killed. The killer insists that he abandoned her. She insists in trying to find him. You can uncover the father's life through her attempts at finding him in the places she would expect him to be.
As you see in the examples above the conflict does not need the father to be introduced. He does not need to be described to the reader beyond what the two characters need to say. For all we know, he could have been completely different from what they remember. In a sense the father is a prop around which you build tension thanks to the divergent opinions and desires of the two characters. It could have been a puppy (see John Wick), or a piece of lost jewellery, or even an idea.
The strength of the conflict comes from how deeply you can extend the divergence from normality built on the "absence of father". This divergence generates two opposite forces, one which desires a return to normality (girl missing a loving father, or regretful killer) and one which prefers extending it further (girl thankful that the father has disappeared, or unregretting killer).
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There is a somewhat related character dynamic in the Shattered Earth trilogy, in that a little girl character travels with her father who has recently killed her younger brother: she is, through exigencies, trapped with him for survival, and struggles with loving him and what the both entails and engenders - might be worth your scanning over for beats and nuances.
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Obviously the little girl is doing the hating, and her father is not a stranger. You want HER to hate the killer. You can show that, being little she can even tell him so, there can be a dialogue exchange between them. Her actions, her fear, her speech can all convey her hatred, fear and dislike.
You want the reader to empathize with the GIRL, you want them to vicariously feel what she feels, that she's been kidnapped by an evil and violent man. That she loved her father. That this man cannot be forgiven, that she has to escape.
Nor should you start with a killing. There is nothing wrong with starting after the killing, but a killing is likely too big a deal to be the opening.
There are two routes I see, and both of them demand a telling of the killing.
I think you are probably trying to jump too fast to the drama. The best option is probably to start in the little girl's normal world with her father, show their relationship; then introduce this man, then escalate whatever confrontation is going on, THEN show the killing and the aftermath for the little girl.
The second option is to start with them together, show her hatred and distrust and fear of this man, without exactly telling the reader why. Leave that a mystery, it is just how this girl behaves. Then back-fill, and have the little girl relate, in a conversation to a third character, basically the same story about how her father got killed by the man she is with. This then becomes a "reveal" (for the reader) that explains all of her actions until now, along with how she came to be with this man in the first place.
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The superficial problem is whether the readers will care about this character, but the deeper problem is YOU don't care about him. You even describe him as "it" --there's no emotional investment here.
It's fine to start telling your story at the point where the father is killed, but you need to have done the mental work of imagining his back story, and his life with his daughter --all the tender and the tough moments.
Otherwise, their relationship will seem thin, insubstantial and emotionally uncompelling. Your mistake here --a very common one --is to assume that just because you aren't putting it on the page, you don't need to think about it.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46898. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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