Killing characters

[sholio]

I'm fiddling with the plot of the sequel to the original novel I recently finished (this'll be book 2 in the series), and one thing I'm struggling with is the whole question of killing off characters. There's a part where I think it would be, for lack of a better way to phrase it, dramatically interesting to kill a particular (minor) character. It would underscore the dangerousness of their current activities, and slingshot the main character into the final dramatic confrontation. And the character who is (maybe) slated to die is someone who shares some significant qualities with another character, so killing her off would remove that redundancy. Basically, if anyone is going to die in this book -- and I really feel that someone should, because there are about fifty billion characters and they're doing something really dangerous, so having them all survive feels like a dramatic cop-out -- this character is the logical one to take one for the team.

But ... I don't actually want to kill her! I like her! I like her whole character concept, I think readers would resent having her killed off (she's an actual historical figure, given a fantasy twist, who is widely liked -- for that matter, I feel a bit weird about killing her for that reason if nothing else), and killing her would also torpedo her relationship with her best friend/partner, which is really cute and fun to write.

I keep struggling with the feeling that I'd be wimping out by deciding not to kill her off. My writing instincts keep saying "Kill her, it's best for that part of the story." And yet, I really don't like character deaths all that much, and, as a reader, I absolutely hate it when the author kills a character I liked in order to add ~drama~ or to prove that things are serious ... which is kinda what I'm doing here.

So, er, thoughts? What do you think about killing off characters? Is it overdone and best avoided at all costs, or is it a necessary sacrifice that the author needs to suck up and deal with?

ETA: Actually, ha, I think I just came up with an entirely different solution to my dilemma that would work equally well! But the question stands ... it's an interesting one to ponder.

Comments

[malnpudl]

Hmmm... I've just rewatched all of the Harry Potter movies plus some of the DVD extras, so this has been very much on my mind. May I attempt to respond by example?

My two most beloved characters from the series are Severus Snape and Remus Lupin. I accept Snape's death; it was necessary to the story and emotionally satisfying (if that's the right word) to me as a reader.

However, even after hearing Rowling explain the reason that Lupin had to die -- it brought the allegory and the story structure full circle; war orphans children, and as the story began with Harry losing his parents to war, so it ended with Teddy Lupin losing his parents to the second war -- I will never forgive her for killing him. Those are intellectually satisfying reasons, but they are not emotionally satisfying. There was not sufficient emotional payoff for me, as a deeply invested reader, in Lupin's death for me to accept it and grieve naturally. Instead, I remain with a feeling of betrayal and resentment toward the author.

Does that help at all?

[sholio]

Actually, it helps a lot, because you've brought up a really good point here! And I agree with you, in general -- the character deaths that I've been able to accept as a reader are the ones that felt narratively necessary, the ones that came with enough weight to the character's death that it never felt like it was tossed in for random effect. And the ones that I've resented (which are actually the majority) are the ones that felt gratuitous or pointless or just completely unfair based on what had come before. I'll definitely be taking this into account as I work out my plot; thanks! :)

[winter_elf]

let me have a chance to read the 1st one! (which I plan to this weekend). Then I'll ask which character.

Honestly, I pretty much hate killing main characters (ones that the story focuses on). And its a HUGE reason I will not read or watch Game of Thrones. He's just making you like the characters and then killing them off. I HATE that, with a living passion. And yea, what malnpudl said above - I was pretty annoyed with Rowling too (Sirius was my 'WHY!WHY?') She was also one who took killing 'off stage' with no griveing time :( Like her, I do accept Snape's death. I also accepted MadEye's. I did NOT accept Lupin, Tonks or Sirius.

I don't mind super side characters dying - but I feel really betrayed when the main focus of the book is killed. I end up throwing it across the room and avoiding that author. There is one author, who this huge 500 page book, is all about the destiny and this character.... and he dies in the end. WHAT?! yea, I was pissed.

Now, I know you are saying it's a side character you are waffling about - but how would the emotional payout be - like Snape? (good) or just in the background Lupin (bad).

I think I'll also have to bring up LOTR (which everyone keeps comparing Martin to - and I'm like NOT even close!). Why I love the books so much - the main fellowship lives. Yes, its war, yes a lot of less important characters die, but only one of the fellowship - and it was one who's death I did accept - great emotional payout.

[sholio]

It's not a character who's in the first novel -- actually, that's part of the problem here, because the second book has what feels like a cast of zillions (it's actually only about two dozen characters, but still, there are quite a lot of them), and the first novel's small cast was much more effective, I think. I keep wanting to kill characters off to get it under control again ...

Anyway, good advice :), and I'll be back with a longer response to the rest of your comment a little later!

[sholio]

Anyway, back for the longer comment, but I think I said most of what I was going to say here in my above comment to mainpudl. Basically I think that you guys make a really good point about making characters' deaths count -- if someone is going to die, it needs to have meaning, and feel dramatically necessary, and be treated as if it's a serious, important thing by the narrative. These are all very good things to keep in mind as I'm plotting my plot. :D

[ambyr]

I'm perfectly fine with characters being killed off--in fact, pretty much the more the better--and a little bemused to find myself in the minority here. I will listen closely and learn!

[sholio]

I think it really does depend on the reader! I struggle with it, but my husband isn't bothered by it at all (actually, he finds it very odd that I have as much trouble dealing with it as I do). I expect in a group of fan-type people, you'd find the group weighted more towards the "don't kill my babies!" end of things, because of our tendency to be heavily emotionally invested in things, but it may well be weighted the opposite direction in the general reading public.

[tessercat]

FWIW: My first reaction was general agreement to your first paragraph, and then you said "her", and I got twitchy. Which is a knee-jerk reaction to fiction in general, since I know nothing about your world/novel/characters, but nonetheless it was a reaction of "why can't you kill off a guy instead?" Becuase the world still seems weighted to kill off more women than men, and usually so that the (male)hero can have something to angst about.

[sholio]

Heh, well, in this book, nearly all the characters are women -- the main character, her best friend, her mentor, and about a half-dozen of her friends (including the one I'm thinking about killing). The cast isn't 100% female, but there are very few men among the major cast in this book, and none that she's attached to!

So, killing a guy wouldn't have the emotional impact that I wanted this death to have.

(And yet, ironically, one thing that made me dither hard about it is that I am killing off a girl, and one of the reasons why I wanted to kill this particular character in this particular way is that it'd make good setup for a similar scene in the third book, when she goes all around the bend because she couldn't save X but by golly she's gonna save Y this time -- except that Y is a guy in that situation, and she does save him, so ... yeah. I've thought about it.)

I <3 character death.

[brightknightie]

I enjoy character death.

That's a bald statement, and of course I can qualify it! I enjoy character death as a story element for the pay-off after the death among the survivors, rarely for the death scene itself. I enjoy it when it is well-written. When it has consequences that radiate out ever after. When it yields fruit in theme and plot. When it furthers or illustrates the underlying morality, resonance and relation to real life. I do not enjoy it when it is gratuitous or easily forgotten.

I'm not talking about pure Red Shirts or Stormtroopers, of course. I'm talking about a hero's mentor, friend, sibling, parent, beloved, child, comrade, nemesis...

When character death yields grief, growth, bereavement, survivor's guilt, memories... I love it. I have for so long, I can hardly... no, wait. Yes I can. When Jack the dog dies in the "Little House" books and I was five or six and reading them for the first time? I remember crying and crying; it was a grey afternoon, and I was on my bed by the window, and I was completely devastated... and I didn't resent it for a second. The story played me, as it should. Then came Black Beauty, you know, with Ginger going first. (Good golly, it's been decades since I've reread that! Should do...) Later, I accumulated experiences of bereavement in my own life that not everyone in our culture does at young ages, and my attachment to such themes in fiction grew and grew.

In Highlander, I enjoyed the episodes up through "The Darkness" very much, but it was the show's willingness to refer to Tessa after her death that flipped me head over heels in perpetuity. "Eye for an Eye" was a revelation. TV shows didn't do that in those days! That HL did won my heart.

Fictional deaths have a privilege that real ones do not. Fictional deaths may always be made to matter (including by illustrating the horror of not mattering).

Re: I <3 character death. (Highlander spoilers)

[sholio]

This makes sense to me! :) I really do like the emotional payoff from a character death, and the possibilities of story and character development that can only be unlocked that way. And yet, for me, it's balanced by the fact that I still have a lot of trouble dealing with the death itself. It needs a whole lot of emotional payoff to be worth it to me in the long run. In your above example, it took me about a season to get over Tessa's death and start being as invested in the new group of characters as I was in the old group ... but I agree that it opened up story possibilities that would only have been possible by having that happen. (And in fact, the entire feel of the series -- the cyclical, everything-changes feeling of it -- would have been different if she'd lived.)

And I agree that following through on the character's death and its impact is important -- the character deaths I've most deeply resented have been the ones that weren't properly followed through, that simply happened in the background and then the characters moved on to other things and left me thinking, "But wait, what about that person who died, didn't they matter?"

Anyway, I'm glad that more than one viewpoint is represented here (and there is someone above you who weighed in on the "pro character death" side, as well).

[starwatcher]

.
Yes, killing a character may be realistic, but so many of us read for escape from reality... and you can't know who might have glommed onto that minor character as their favorite.

If it's possible, maybe an injury so severe that the others have to leave minor character behind, in hospital care, or relative world-equivalent -- old witch in the woods, or whatever. Then you have the angst of other characters worrying about the left-behind, but maybe after the adventure is done, they can go back and discover their friend healed.
.

[sholio]

Something I once read in an interview that really stuck with me was a comic-book writer (I don't even remember which one) talking about treating all the characters respectfully because "every character is someone's favorite". Which is just as true of a book, as well!

I wouldn't rule out character death if I really need to ... but I don't want to be cavalier about it. If I'm going to kill someone, I want to make it count.

[aim2misbhave.livejournal.com]

I'd say, if the question still stood, not to kill her off, because for me the author doing really interesting things with a character adds a lot more to the story than the author just killing off the character to prove a point, and that goes double if there's good chemistry between them and another character.

(I don't know if you've seen the Warehouse 13 S3 finale, or care, or if your readers have, but I won't spoil it, I'll just say that's an example of what I'm talking about - I'm more upset about the potential that died than the actual character deaths. That is, presuming that they *died*-died, it's scifi after all...)

[sholio]

*nods* This all makes sense! I haven't seen Warehouse 13, but I agree with what you're saying about characters' deaths being dramatically uninteresting compared to keeping them around and doing something even more interesting with them. I can think of several times that I've felt very cheated by a writer or TV show killing off a character just to remove a dramatic complication, when it would be so much more interesting to go ahead and let the complication play out.

So yes, this is useful; thank you! :D

SPOILERS FOR WH13

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I don't know if you've seen the Warehouse 13 S3 finale, or care, or if your readers have, but I won't spoil it, I'll just say that's an example of what I'm talking about - I'm more upset about the potential that died than the actual character deaths. That is, presuming that they *died*-died, it's scifi after all...
I watch, and I was very upset by that. I've always been on the fence about WH13; I'm always on the verge of giving it up. That death may push me off the fence. (Of course, I have to watch the next episode, because I suspect that character is really dead but is going to be reanimated by the device that character's friend secured in the season finale.)

[sheron]

I'm completely with you in feeling annoyed/frustrated/angry when authors kill off characters for drama. It just seems so pointless. Every once in a while I'll run into a story where I think, wow, not killing character X here would have made no sense -- even if I like them. But those stories are 0.000001% of most 'somebody dies' stories I've read. And this is one of the reasons I almost always check the ending of the book to see who is still alive so that I don't invest my time and energy into something only to have the author pull the rug out from under me and give me omgdrama. No thanks.

So from that perspective in my opinion it's not a good idea to kill characters for drama. But that doesn't mean there aren't valid reasons to do it.

Yes I'm completely unhelpful. *g*

[winter-elf.livejournal.com]

hahaha, I'm not the only one who reads the end of the book in the store to make sure on who lives! Learned that lesson let me tell you!

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I have twice contemplated killing off a character. The first time, I solved it myself (without killing him because, dammit, I WANTED A HAPPY ENDING), and the second time it happened laura_josephsen said to me (after army crawling across the floor in the dark at 3AM after I casually mentioned it during our chat):

"Kate. Other people kill off characters for dramatic impact. You write happy endings. WRITE HAPPY ENDINGS. Also, if you kill this character I will never watch Doctor Who, but if he lives, I will watch it exactly the way you tell me to."

So he lived too. ;)

It really comes down to personal choice. I pretty much never kill them off. My books have ridiculously oversweet happy endings, and I am okay with that, because that is what I want to write. I want to be "That person who writes happy endings."

[sholio]

♥ ♥ ♥

I think this is really an excellent point! There is no "right" or "wrong" way to do it; the important thing is to write the books that are right for YOU! And in my case, for me.

All the "pro" writing advice talks a lot about being willing to be brutal with your characters and yourself, that you're somehow doing a disservice to your story by pulling back. But there's no point in writing a book catering to what other people want. It would be a dishonest book, because it wouldn't be what you want.

When I look back on the books I've loved the most, the ones that I keep returning to, it's not because they were awesomely well written or unflinching portrayals of humanity. I loved them because they were fun, and engaging, and made me love the characters, and made me happy. And yes, most of them had happy endings.

So basically - yes!

[trobadora]

There's a part where I think it would be, for lack of a better way to phrase it, dramatically interesting to kill a particular (minor) character.

Hm. I think that all in all, I tend towards not killing characters unless it's more than that. If it resonates thematically, or if having them survive would undermine the story (by trivialising the danger, for example), or have unfortunate implications - then go for it. But not for anything less than that. Never just to add ~drama~. As a reader, I find random character death rarely makes me do anything other than disengage from the book because I lose trust in the writer.

(I have one story in which I had to kill off a character I really liked, because a lot of people died in the background during the big finale, and I was really not willing to let all the redshirts die and all the main characters live. But most of the time, it's not like that.)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I think that all in all, I tend towards not killing characters unless it's more than that.
I agree with this point: "dramatically interesting" seems to me insufficient reason to kill a character.

I get really invested in characters, and the better they're written, the more invested I become. Even a minor character's death can really hurt and overshadow any dramatic payoff.

[skinscript.livejournal.com]

I think you need to do what the story wants you to.

And, honestly, I think it does help add to the dramatic tension later because you've shown that not everyone is safe.

That being said, I managed to talk myself out of killing characters a couple of times, usually by killing other ones instead. :(

[sholio]

That being said, I managed to talk myself out of killing characters a couple of times, usually by killing other ones instead. :(

*laughs* Isn't that just the way it goes, a lot of the time ...

Anyway, thanks - yeah, I want to do what is right for the story, I just need to figure out what that is ...

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

I absolutely think character death can work, but I'm having trouble thinking of any stories in which I thought the death actually did worth. Maybe LOTR.

There are types of death that do annoy me:
- Killing off a redshirt or five in the background to prove the threat is serious business, but with no real danger to the lives of the main characters. (Ref. SGA's "Echoes"; contrast SGA's "Hot Zone".)
- Killing off a primary character either entirely randomly (ref. Whedon's ... well, everything) or due to OOC stupidity (ref. "Children of Earth"), just to prove THIS IS SRS BZNS, GUYZ.
- As an obvious plot contrivance. (Ref. Sirius, just to maintain the status quo — as soon as Harry started thinking about how great life with his godfather would be, you knew the man was doomed.) This is most egregious when the character clearly has no other role in the story but to die in order to keep the plot going. (Ref. fridging in general.)

The problem is walking the line between those. For some reason, "Hot Zone" really works for me in this case; the early deaths are brutal and clearly shake the characters, and even when the main character proves safe from the threat, other primaries and numerous secondaries (Radek, Aiden, Teyla) are still in danger. In "Echoes", on the other hand, we get an offhand, "Yeah, a couple of people have already died," but there's no sense whatsoever that those people actually matter in the slightest. Dumais at least got a little respect and appreciation.

But I could easily see arguments that "Hot Zone" was just as cheap as "Echoes" for some people. And there's a problem, too; what satisfies one reader emotionally likely won't another.

One of your other commenters pointed out the option of serious injury instead. I'd like to see that used more often, actually; often plots are "die or survive", with no risks between, or with any time spent recovering occurring in a convenient lull. If someone is removed from the plot because of coma, or because of the year of physical therapy needed to adjust to a prosthetic, or to a TBI that sidelines them while everyone else has to keep going ... hell, I don't want to cheapen injury/disability, either, but omitting those possibilities entirely can be just as dismissive.

Obviously there's no easy answer for your plot. But if your primary arguments are that it's unrealistic for all the main characters not to die or that killing someone significant to the plot would be "dramatically interesting", I'd say those aren't really good reasons to kill off someone who still has other dramatic possibilities.

[sholio]

I like the distinction you make between "Hot Zone" and "Echoes". Actually, one thing I really liked about SGA in the first season or two (which basically reversed itself in subsequent seasons) is that they did a really good job of humanizing the redshirts, bit players and other victims -- and the other characters seemed genuinely affected by their deaths. (As opposed to later seasons when people seemed to drop dead all the time and no one cared. I guess you could say that they'd gotten inured to it by all the tragedy they'd gone through, but it was more like the writers stopped caring. *g*)

- As an obvious plot contrivance. (Ref. Sirius, just to maintain the status quo — as soon as Harry started thinking about how great life with his godfather would be, you knew the man was doomed.) This is most egregious when the character clearly has no other role in the story but to die in order to keep the plot going. (Ref. fridging in general.)

Oh man, I absolutely hate this one. The contrived return to the status quo, with extra bonus character death! (See also, several episodes of SGA, like the one with the replicated doppelgangers of the team.)

So, yes, food for thought! Thank you!

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Heh, oh, man, I struggle with this a lot. I'm so... not kill happy - even the most minor or minor characters survive - and it bothers me, sometimes, because the situations I put the characters in are so dangerous that you kind of expect some death. Right? Right!

Dramatic affect is horribly tempting but for me it mostly comes down to a mix of logic and the plot's direction. Original story one, for example, is starting to look like it may be death light (in fact, I'm thinking about tweeking the ending so that the bunch of extras I had die are, in fact, not dead but kidnapped, which would actually make a lot more sense according to the A plot).

Original story two, however, I'm wondering if I should kill a particular character off, not for drama but because that, too, would make sense (ironically the character isn't in the story yet because they haven't been built, yet). But right now it's a matter of "we shall see."

I would say go with your gut, but I'm basing that on personal experience. The times I didn't listen to my gut the story gave me all kinds of grief. You could also play around with the concept, write scenes/snippets/outlines with the character dead and scenes/snippets/outlines with the character alive and see which you prefer.

I'm also a big advocate (if it's possible) of not-gone-after all al la Full Metal Alchemist. Not only do you have the emotional punch of a character dying but the emotional punch of them being brought back in some awesome way.

But, in the end, it all comes down to what's best for the plot. I think that as long as the death is more than just a moment of drama, then it will work and work well.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Oh! I forgot to say, this makes me think of something a writing teacher told us - you want good fiction, then you need to be willing to kill off some babies. I was a little annoyed by this at first until I realized I did just that in my first novel. They weren't babies, but there were quite a few character deaths within the first few chapters (and the crap I put my main character through - oi :/ I actually still feel guilty about it to this day).

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

What is it they always say about writing? Kill your babies?

There was an age where I could not abide any characters being killed (Phillip Pullman, I'm looking at you). Now, it entirely depends on how it's handled and on my expectations about the genre.

[sholio]

I think "kill your babies" is actually referring to word choice, not characters per se -- that is, not getting so attached to a clever metaphor or a nice turn of dialogue that you can't cut it out of the story. Though I suppose it can also refer to characters and plot twists, as well as the more fine-grained details of word-level and sentence-level editing ...

Anyway, yeah, I generally am not fond of character death (as a reader or a writer) but I do think it's necessary sometimes. It's just a matter of figuring out when those times are ...

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

This may not be helpful but if I were you I would set it aside for a day or two and then return to the issue and see how you feel

[sholio]

I think this is good advice; thank you! :) Actually that's kinda what I'm doing right now (I'm working on a different part of the project and letting my brain mull it over in the background).

[sgafan.livejournal.com]

Well, for me, killing characters, red shirts or otherwise, isn't common practice. That being said, I once destroyed an entire society that I didn't want to destroy, including OC's that I REALLY liked, because the story needed it. Primarily, I needed something that brutal to push the main character "over the edge" so to speak. It was done specifically for the character's journey and the storyline. In that situation, nothing else would've worked, but it was VERY hard for me to write for a lot of reasons.

I don't think there is anything wrong with killing characters, if it makes sense to the plot and does something to further the story or a character's journey in the story. In the end, you have to go with your instincts and do what you think is right for the story.

[sholio]

*nods* I think you've summed up my feelings pretty well - that it shouldn't be done lightly, but it should be a tool in the writer's arsenal, because sometimes nothing but a character death will do.