With Jasnah not being dead when we thought she was dead and Szeth coming back to life; how will you retain tension during future battles if the audience thinks that death might not be the end of someone?
I try hard to make sure things like this are well foreshadowed, but it’s always a concern as a writer. Basically every book you write, in an action/adventure world, will contain fake outs like this.
There’s certainly a balance. Gandalf coming back in LOTR worked, and Anakin turning out to be alive Empire Strikes back is a powerful moment–but I feel RJ, for example, may have brought people back too often.
Not sure where this balance is for me yet. I know the story I want to tell, though, and I try to leave clues when something like this is going to happen so that it feels less like a fake out and more like an “Aha. I knew it.”
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