Apologies for Murder

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 7:34 AM

Okay, now I feel incredibly guilty! Burton Wyatt (Old Habits - Part IX) was meant to be a character with a single purpose, to make Mal so angry, the kind of anger he displayed in Serenity, after Book was killed. The kind when he spoke to Inara and said that, if he went to war, he guaranteed she’d see something new. Mal has to have that anger for the rest of this story (and the BIG story) to unfold the way it does.

Then I wrote Wyatt, and he managed to take on a life of his own. Maybe because he was so easy to write, and because Kaylee and River and all the others liked the Road Runner and her crew, we did too. They trusted him, so we did. We don’t even see the others - Yuki and Terry and Brogan and the rest. We don’t need to. They had a life before this tale, because Serenity’s family knew it. Yuki cooks noodle stew, Brogan is a medic, Terry is like Jayne - because we can see it through their eyes.

And I killed them off. All of them. One fell swoop, one burst of light and Road Runner is no more.

In a way, I’m proud of the reactions I’ve got from my readers. It’s what I was aiming at. You had to like Wyatt, so that what came next was a shock. Mal and Zoe et al are shocked, and you have to be too. I did my job. But I still feel guilty about it. I liked Wyatt. If I’d known how I was going to feel, maybe I would have made him less of a person, but then that’s the point. He might only be words on a screen, but in a single chapter (which had to be virtually entirely getting to know Wyatt, as there wasn’t going to be a second chance) I brought him to life.

Is this how Joss Whedon felt when he wrote Wash, knowing that he was going to kill him off at some point? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is, I feel closer to that man than I have ever done before.

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