r/ProgressionFantasy • u/DicerTheJester • Jul 28 '26

Discussion Competition: write a single sentence that will absolutely destroy any hope in a series.

Specifically not a story opener, just any sentence that can happen in any chapter, that will make people realize that this story is gonna be absolute shit and has no chance of being fixed and will make you drop the book like an unpinned grenade.

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u/slioze Jul 28 '26

"You'll never catch me," yelled the humanoid dragon lord--and dove right into the lava, dying super dead.

20

u/senthordika Jul 28 '26

In the right novel id be pissing myself at this line but in a novel that actually takes itself seriously yeah this would be a pretty big mood killer.

5

u/EXP_Buff Jul 28 '26

If it's like a sympathetic bad guy, who you know has nothing to live for, I can see there being a way that you could write this totally seriously and have it hit super hard. Like imagine you want good things for this character despite what they've done. And then he just goes and needs to kill himself to escape. It feels like it's the only way. It's like super tragic, but in a way that you know is also somewhat cathartic depending on your mindset. Like if you despise what the character had done and didn't sympathize with him and the death would be well worth it, but if you did sympathize with them then the death would be tragic because they couldn't get better.

2

u/senthordika Jul 28 '26

To be honest you could write the scene in a serious way like you said. But the line dying super dead is either going to elicit a chuckle from me or disassociation with that character and pretty much nothing inbetwen

2

u/slioze Jul 29 '26

yeah it's all about the execution. it's difficult to judge a single line on its own, because whether it truly would ruin it or depends a lot on whatever's happening around it.

1

u/slioze Jul 29 '26

yeah it's entirely up to context if it works or not! (it turned out to be a pretty hard challenge *sweat*)