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5) Make it seem like the sweetest, youngest, or most defenseless character has died, and then bring the character back to life.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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NOTHING BAD HAPPENS IN HARRY POTTER SIX. HARRY FINDS A SMALL SICKLY PUPPY AND NURSES IT BACK TO LIFE, AND THEN MARRIES HERMIONE AND HAS THIRTEEN CUTE FAT BABIES.
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Okay. Is it bad that in the very first chapter of my novel, each and every one of the first 4 occur?
Posts: 2689 | Registered: Apr 2000
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Princess Leah, I highly recommend that you delete that post or thoroughly mark it as a spoiler. There are people who still haven't read the book.
7) Bring the main character's dead mother back with some lame excuse that she had amnesia or something.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Make a little girl make a brash young man promise to do something utterly impossible. Then make the story about the young man vainly trying to fulfill the promise.
Posts: 250 | Registered: Aug 2005
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The steely, hard-hearted matron finally softens and expresses her love, just in time for the fatally-ill daughter to die (or better yet, just after she does).
Posts: 431 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Have your tragic young person contract a deadly disease that then goes into remission, only to come back soon after the poor young person falls deeply in love for the first time. With visions of children that will never be born, the beloved of the character bids his dear love goodbye and vows never to love again until in her gasping last breaths she insists that he must love again, for the sake of the world and all good things. Then she expires beautifully amongst weeping relatives and friends. Either that, or upon what he thinks is her last breath, he takes a dagger and plunges it into his heart. She doesn't die, though, until she sees what grief has done to her beloved. Then she takes the dagger and does herself in with the last strength in her body.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Have the villain kill the hero's girlfriend or wife, or threaten to steal a kiss from her. That way the hero will have a reasonable cause to track down and confront that villain, whose only other crime was killing dozens or millions of other people.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Have a feisty, hard as nails heroin get into a horrible fight with her estranged mother. Then as the two are stomping away in opposite directions, have the mother, looking over her shoulder in remorse and about to call out to her daughter, get hit by a mack truck driven by drug runners and thrown 50 feet in the air. Then cut to hospital bedside of said mother, still alive but in a coma, with hard ass daughter fighting not to weep while holding her hand ond vowing vengance against bad drug czar. Le' Sigh.... I'm good....
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Throw in a major secret that no one knew, or that at least one character knew.
Have the knowing character sworn to secrecy and then have the secret get out and the secret devistate someone or a set of people.
Posts: 113 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I have read the list that has been generated and no doubt each pulls for an emotional response, but I am wondering what constitutes emotionally manipulative for each of you. I associate a bad conotation with the word manipulative. I think of it as using emotions to coerce the reader or audience to accept a view or sympathize with a character that they would not normally be inclined to do. I guess another way to be emotionally manipulative is to try too hard to force the audience to feel an emotion, which I suppose the ideas in this list are arguably doing.
Posts: 264 | Registered: Nov 2005
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1. Have a hardened sixty year old meanie as the main character. Show flashbacks to him as a cute, impressionable young child and so forth showing all the heartbreaking things that turned him into a horrible person. Have him redeem himself and do something herioc for his cute impressionable young granddaughter or son (or both!) before passing away in their arms in the rain.
Have his last words be "I'm sorry." or "I love you."
2. Also, in a slightly different watered down version, have a corrupt character die heroically with a sudden turnaround of heart and a great last line. Then, in the next movies show what a great guy he was and it was none his fault so when everyone goes back to watch the first movie again they weep their eyes out while he gets tossed over a waterfall.
3. Kill the baby or the dog.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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