Discussion – MY ARMOUR IS IMPENETRABLE

I went to see an author sometime last autumn. His name was Brent Weeks and is most famously known for his Night Angel Trilogy. At the time, he was signing his newest book, The Blinding Knife, the second in his Lightbringer series.

Mr. Weeks (who is a lovely man) stated that he did not wish to read an excerpt from his new book (and ruin something for people who haven’t read it) or even read something from his older book (boring for fans of the series), so he read something from his third book in the series. Bear in mind that he had just published the second in the series. We were going to get an excerpt from a book that none of us had even read.

I won’t stretch it out as much as Mr. Weeks did, but, suffice to say, in this excerpt, two of the main characters were killed. Bing bong boom.

While we sat in shock, Mr. Weeks went on to state that he had been given negativity all his life – you can’t have a fat kid as a main character; you can’t write for a living; you can’t read a fake excerpt in front of a crowd and pretend it’s real. Yes, the excerpt was fake and the characters were not dead.

The fucking arse.

He went on to explain why he did that: he cited a study that had two groups who were given the exact same stories. One group had been given stories with a preface chapter that gave away the ending. It turns out that those spoiled stories were actually enjoyed more than those that were unspoiled.

He went on to explain that DVD box sets were the worst spoilers, often showing the entire cast of a TV show on the front, meaning you can easily find out who is dead or not, with some characters surviving the entire run of a show. He stated that this “star power” is often matched by something called character armour. I had not heard this term before.

Character armour protects characters from the elements. Bombs will go off, shootouts will ensue but character armour will protect everyone. He said that often sidekicks have no armour at all. He stated that even big authors who love to murder people have some character armour around their creations.

In my writing, I tend to have character armour too, but this made me reconsider it. Death is a way of life, after all.