What do your characters see when they die?

[nuxvomica]

A post about deathbed visions in the Astrology, Spirituality & Alternative Healing Group made me think of this. In my novel, there are two main character deaths and both are violent but both scenes are written from the POV of the person dying so I needed to decide whether to continue that POV and describe what the character sees at the point of death, or just end the scene. Because I had grown fond of both characters and wanted to make their deaths significant in some way I plowed ahead and wrote a brief description of what they saw. The dying visions wound up revealing something important about each character, something I hadn't realized myself till I wrote them.
The first character is tortured to death and has a vision from his childhood, when he was bullied and someone offered him comfort. The second character is killed by a very strange sci-fi plot device. Her vision is more mysterious but it involves a meeting with an ancestor.
While I was initially reluctant to cross that barrier, in retrospect, those were probably the most satisfying scenes in the novel because they served to counterbalance the violence that preceded them with a placid moment and because they added another dimension to the reader's understanding of the character.
So when an important character dies, do you tend to write about their experience of death or just leave it be?

[jotsy]

1. A young Christopher Walken played opposite Natalie Wood in her last film

Brainstorm, 1983. I mention it because there's a scene at the end that might provide one take on that moment. The end of American Beauty may also steer you to an answer as well.

Unless another character is empathic in some way to act as a conduit to the dying, what you're attempting to illustrate may stretch the concept of temporary suspension of disbelief to the point where it may cost you more than you gain. Hard to be helpful without a couple more details, like is this set in a future where maybe we know more about the brain, and are these deaths occurring in the middle or the end of what sounds like a fascinating story.

[nuxvomica]

2. Here's the first death scene to give you an idea of what I mean

This is the end of a scene about the interrogation of a servant, Olmak, who accidentally harmed a child of the ruling class. I included enough text so that you can see how I made the transition to "deathbed vision".

Atavis pulled Donyon aside at this moment and whispered to him. “It is not just to call this man a sand-eater, brother,” said Atavis. “We are required by our office, and our faith, to abandon such name-calling.”
“Aye,” said Donyon, his rage cooled somewhat by the sanction. “That was an error I made. But I am so astounded at times by the conceit of these dusky, unfaithful people. I have been to the farm town and, you know, they treat us like miscreants there. They walk with the posture of a king among us and their children snicker and point to us when they are out of reach of the bludgeon. They are such cowardly fools.”
“Aye, brother,” replied Atavis. “It is hard work for us but we are above them and must always practice to be that way.”
The two turned to their prisoner again. “I find no truth in your story,” said Atavis officiously. “I suspect you had a foul motive for attacking the child. I am a faithful man,” he continued, leaning close to Olmak’s bruised face. “So I have no ken for the foul motives of the unfaithful. You will have to confess your reasons anon. All that is unknown is how much you will suffer before speaking the truth.”
“But I swear, sir,” pleaded Olmak. At that, Atavis walked around behind the brickwoven chair and adjusted a small iron rod that prodtruded from the back of it. The seat pulled tighter against Olmak’s thighs, the arm-rests prevented even the spreading of his fingers much less the movement of his hands from its otherwise slippery, well-glazed surface, and his back was held so fiercely that he felt his belly might be pulled completely inward. Pain again flared in his abdomen and as the all-binding tugged inexorably at his lungs, he became alarmed at the shortness of his breathing. He felt as though he were drowning but this alarm was trumped by a pain like a strong hand grasping his heart and clenching it unmercifully. Moments passed and the clenching did not relax and if it had been an actual hand, it surely would have been a hand of stone or iron.
Soon the cold, blue-lit chamber fell away and Olmak was sure he was in the desert again. The guards were gone and he was lying face down, feeling the warmth of the desert sun on his back, hurting from some trivial bruise. How good he felt, though. Something wet and warm was touching his hand. He turned to look and there was a small grey goat, a kid with no horns, staring at him with bright eyes. It had been licking his hand and now, with Olmak showing a sign of life, the creature made an exultant “Baaaah!”
“Ashpot,” he said without emotion, if only to convince himself that this long departed companion was real and this was not a dream. The goatling, he remembered, had grown old and had died many years earlier. “Baaaah!” it said to him again, as though to assure him that this moment was indeed real and all that he had thought he remembered was a fevered dream.
He turned his head to the other side and saw two small, dark feet in sandals. Looking up he saw a young girl, which reminded him of the issue at hand though his mind was wont to let that slip away. Compared to the Thujwani girl, she was darker skinned and wore a more brightly colored robe. She extended a slender hand to him and spoke.
“Cousin, you are crying,” she said. “There is no need for that. You are better than those boys. You are the son of a prince.”
She smiled at him and extended her hand.
“Little Bird?” he said, as she grasped his hand and helped him to his feet. And then this gentler grasp released, and the desert was gone, and all was darkness, and there was nothing.

[jotsy]

4. Residual consciousness finding a comfortable place and familiars to accept the passing.

Any liberties I see as taken here are well within the confines of the craft. Unless you're going to bring him back at a later time, I don't see a problem, and perhaps even then. Someone's conscience might conjure his image or dialog to get through a difficult moment, which your audience might see simply as a ghost.

I might have more to say if you're looking for a more in depth evaluation, but have tried to stick with and stop at what you asked for. I feel like you've thrown yourself out there some and that it wouldn't be fair of me to go further without my doing likewise.

[nuxvomica]

7. Any criticism is welcome

:)

[SheilaT]

3. speaking as a reader, not a writer,

and given my own personal spiritual beliefs, I find it a little odd when a character dies and there's absolutely no hint of a hereafter. Even when told from the dying characters POV, all too often there's simply blackness. I don't know if it's because the writers themselves have no belief in an afterlife, or if they're afraid to go out on a limb and show something, anything.

I really, really would much rather read something that hints of what's coming, even though the rest of the story/novel/whatever takes place here on planet Earth.

Just my two cents.

[Ozymanithrax]

6. If the afterlife is not important to the story, then writer's don't write about it.

In most novels, once a character dies he dies. In Ghost with Patrick Swayze the afterlife is the story. Michael J. Fox did a movie where he spoke to dead people and help them get to the after life. But most stories, either books or movies, once dead character development is no longer an issue and is not necessary to the story.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. I have had characters, most of them

die and that's it. This is simple, there is no need for further character development.

I toyed with an idea where a character does have a trascendent experience. In fact, you could argue he became a small deity. In that case it was important.

Oh and I don't believe there is an after life. I can even tell you when exactly I lost my religion. But this story, which I will have to dig out and go back to, been long enough for a rewrite, involves quantum mechanics. QM can be weird, can be spiritual, and can ask what happens after death.

And since in this case it matters... well... then it matters.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. If an afterlife is critical to the story or plot. I will go beyond.

If it isn't important to the story, well dead is dead.

In Harry Potter, there is an afterlife. Ghosts refuse to continue on for some reason, and they have no idea what the afterlife is like. Those that go on, except in the last novel, are beyond reach of the living. Only one very potent magical item allows this to happen, an item that is irretrievably tied into the story line.

There is a book, "The Lovely Bones" in which the main character is murdered and the story is about how that character learns to deal with death and move on, and how the living deal with death and move on.

So before you write a dying vision, you have to know that the vision is important to the story. Only if it is important do you worry about it. If it doesn't mean anything to the story, then let the characters die.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. A few shorts from Stephen King involve exactly that

One of them involves a bunch of passengers who died a long time ago in a train wreck and now that the decrepit building is about to be torn down... they have to decide what to do.

Interesting story... and the best part, you learn they are dead well in the last paragraph. It was done in a masterful way.

[Ozymanithrax]

10. In "It" there is a lot of killing, and you never doubt the existance of...

an after life, but when the central characters die, they die. What happens afterward isn't important to the story.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. In most stories it does not matter really

sadly it matters in Horror, (I mean all them undead are well undead)... and in a few other things.

After that... no it don't matter.

:hi:

[nuxvomica]

12. I'm talking more about the experience of death than an afterlife

It seems abrupt to me to just end the narrative at the point of death but, of course, there is a danger that a deathbed vision might be misconstrued as an assertion of an afterlife for the character.

[Ozymanithrax]

13. The question remains, is it important to the story...

Is it necessary to build that character?
Will it make some point of plot or character more clear?

If it doesn't, then don't write it.
If it does then you must write it.

[DavidDvorkin]

14. The face of God: me.

When my characters die -- and I've killed off a lot of them -- they cease to be and their POV disappears. I'm an atheist, and that's how I see death: as the complete end of the individual.