Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-9041013-20181011202229/@comment-9041013-20181011213755

DrBobSmith wrote: Bloody Spaghetti,

As soon as you hacked the guy's arm off, I know he's dying. The details of the fight in between aren't bad but ... it's not adding to creepy or horror. This guy isn't surviving, not with their medicine and that kind of battlefield.

Is the big reveal that he doesn't get a beautiful blonde with wings snatching him away? OK. Most people who almost die don't see anything from the other side. It's actually perhaps one person in six. I did flatline some years ago and did have the whole near death experience so I know that the people who told me about theirs weren't lying when they describe a NDE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Historical_reports,_incidence_and_prevalence

While human reactions to their dying are individual, according to Norse mythology your protagonist is jumping the gun. He's dying but not dead. He has a 50% chance of going to Valhalla and a 50% chance of going to Fólkvangr. He has no knowledge of going to Valhalla. At the point where he is going to be blacking out from shock and loss of blood, the decision of who gets his soul isn't made. As the guy didn't follow his superior's plan and let himself get cut off from his unit, I can see Odin rejecting him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie

Dr. Bob Wait so you're one of the "lucky" few to have experienced an NDE and you find it weird that a random, statistically viable character in a story would have one? Ugh, this is confusing.

Also, as far as Norse mythology goes, Odin sought out to know the destiny of his universe and ended up finding out he is going to die, along with the order of the world which he helped set. Yet still followed along, I don't think military brilliance is what he sought for in his Ragnarok troops. He knew it's all in vain, he just wanted to enact his own predestined fate.

Also, wasn't the notion that you've to die on the battlefield to go to Valhalla? That and going through the Blood Eagle without letting out a sound.