sholio | Killing characters

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Killing characters

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.

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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?

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.

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!

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!

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.

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! :)

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

Huh. I think, for me, fannish investment actually makes me less attached to characters, because I think of their portrayal in any given work as only one of the thousands of possible portrayals. If I don't like them dying there, it should be easy enough to find an AU where they don't die--or at least imagine one.

I don't know. Up way past my bedtime, so I'm sorry if I'm not making sense :-).

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.

If I don't like them dying there, it should be easy enough to find an AU where they don't die--or at least imagine one.

Sometimes imagining is not enough, though. For me at least - I want to actually read those stories! And most books have no fanfic at all.

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).

.
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.
.

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.)

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).

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.

*g* Yay for women.

(No, I have nothing more useful to add at the moment. :) Except, good luck!)

>"And in fact, the entire feel of the series -- the cyclical, everything-changes feeling of it -- would have been different if she'd lived"

Oh, yes. Had HL been like most other shows and avoided major character death, it would never have fulfilled its thematic potential.

>"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"

That interests me; my experience was different. I was watching HL in broadcast time, 22 episodes from fall through spring, with weeks of reruns in the winter middle when HL moved from Seacouver to Paris every year, plus other rerun interludes... while I believe you were watching on DVDs? That might account for part of the difference in perception.

Joe and Charlie both were introduced, separately, several episodes before Tessa's death. I never perceived them as a "new" group of characters, or as replacing her (although outside the story in the hands of the person routing the paychecks, of course they were indeed replacing her, Randi, Powell and Darius). I saw the huge dislocations following "The Darkness" as natural responses to the trauma of Tessa's death.

:-) And, of course, I never really "got over Tessa's death." :-) I trust Duncan and Richie didn't, either. :-) That's the core theme of HL to me, from Heather in the first movie to Little Deer in the TV series premiere, to Tessa, and then Charlie, and then Richie, and all the lesser characters between, past and present. The people you love will die, and you must go on living without them, somehow, because that is what life is.

Our dominant culture doesn't do much to teach us that death is inevitable, or how to face death, with others or by ourselves. Besides the potential for powerful storytelling, that is one of the reasons that I personally think our popular fiction could perhaps use a little more character death, a little more bereavement...

Jean Gray was never so great a character as when Marvel kept her dead for six years in the '80s, and the characters who survived her kept remembering her, and coping with her loss, absence and legacy. Bringing her back in the '90s, in my opinion, was a mistake... flashbacks! flashbacks are the answer for dead characters! ;-)

Anyway. Thank you for listening.

Joe and Charlie both were introduced, separately, several episodes before Tessa's death. I never perceived them as a "new" group of characters, or as replacing her (although outside the story in the hands of the person routing the paychecks, of course they were indeed replacing her, Randi, Powell and Darius). I saw the huge dislocations following "The Darkness" as natural responses to the trauma of Tessa's death.

I think what happened to me is that I'd been very invested in the triad of Duncan-Tessa-Richie; their little "family" was what had drawn me into the show and what really hooked me into it, on more than a casual-viewing basis.

Backing up a bit: there are really two main things that keep me coming back to a TV show episode after episode. One is clever, twisty, thoughtful writing that keeps me guessing, or teaches me something new about being human, or has gorgeous worldbuilding or is simply so entertaining that I can't not watch. The other thing that'll draw me in and keep me hooked is a character relationship (or more than one) that makes my heart sing. A show has to have at least one of the two, preferably both. Highlander was more the latter for me than the former, at least in the first season or two. The show did impress me quite a lot with how much better written it was than I was expecting, and overall I think that it makes some big-picture emotional points that are almost never seen on TV -- basically I think that Highlander over the six seasons, on a macroscopic level, is actually quite brilliant, but Highlander on an episode-by-episode basis is rather uneven. At the very least, the aspects of the show that I think are brilliant are only evident over time (the way that it handles loss, for example, or love). Especially in the first season, I was more in it for the heart-clutch of Duncan-Tessa-Richie than because the show itself was really pushing my buttons all that hard. (This is not to say that I think the later seasons were better written, exactly, so much as the show had started to have enough episodes under its belt to make the big-picture points about being alive that it did so well.)

My friend

xparrot refers to this dichotomy in terms of "type A" and "type B" fandoms: "type A" fandoms, for her, are the ones where the writing is so tight and skillful that there's not really much for a fanwriter to do (no holes to fill, nothing to fix), where the writing itself is the big draw. "Type B" fandoms are the shows where the main reason to watch is the characters and the warm feelings they engender, while the writing itself is fairly uneven and leaves a lot of holes or inconsistencies that fanfic writers are compelled to fill.

It's not quite so cut and dried for me, but Highlander is definitely more of a "type B" sort of fandom for me, where the thing that draws me to it is the characters -- or, rather, because I am the way that I am, the character relationships. (I am not a person who enjoys individual characters in isolation, so much as their relationships with each other -- I mean, I like the characters also, but what gives me the warm fuzzies is usually the symbiosis between two characters, not the character on their own, if that makes any sense.)

... heh, so that was a long-winded way of attempting to explain why losing Tessa, and hence the character triad that was the show's main appeal for me, temporarily shook up my enjoyment of the show. I still liked it, and obviously there was enough in the individual episodes to keep me coming back until I started to fall for other relationships in Duncan's life as deeply as I had for the Duncan/Tessa/Richie triad, but it dealt me quite a blow. Different shows I've reacted to differently -- "Lost", for example, was a show where I was mostly in it for the interesting writing and the ensemble cast as a whole, so I was able to weather a number of character deaths without being too upset by them.

:-) And, of course, I never really "got over Tessa's death." :-) I trust Duncan and Richie didn't, either. :-) That's the core theme of HL to me, from Heather in the first movie to Little Deer in the TV series premiere, to Tessa, and then Charlie, and then Richie, and all the lesser characters between, past and present. The people you love will die, and you must go on living without them, somehow, because that is what life is.

Yes, and this is one of the things that I love most about the series, and something that I've rarely seen television do quite as well as Highlander makes (and it's a point that you can only really make by killing off characters -- and by developing the theme over several seasons).

"Getting over" Tessa's death ... I would never say that about a person in real life, but in fiction, that sore-tooth ache of returning to a loved one's death -- the regret and sense of lost opportunity that never really goes away -- isn't something that I want to keep experiencing. It's possible that some people experience death differently from me, or have better coping mechanisms for handling it -- I have been fortunate enough not to have lost very many people close to me. But basically, hmm, the pain and regret of losing a loved one is something that's unpleasant enough to me in real life that I'd like to minimize experiencing those emotions in a fictional fantasyland. I do like watching the other characters dealing with it, but for myself as a viewer/reader, I handle the pain of losing a favorite fictional character by tamping down the part of me that used to care about the dead character. Grief exhausts me, and I don't have enough emotional energy to expend some of it on never-ending grief for a fictional character, if that makes any sense? I have enough energy to continue loving dead people -- I would hate to ever be so hard-hearted that I lost the ability to do so -- but not dead characters (not so much as living ones, anyway).

However, I agree about what a cheat it is to bring back a dead character to life (like Marvel did with Jean Gray ... and most of their dead characters, actually!). It cheapens the death, and cheapens the other characters' grief even more so. You can get away with pulling something like that a time or two, I think, if you set it up adequately beforehand. (I actually really love a well-done death fakeout!) But not often, certainly not as a regular ongoing thing.

Er ... in retrospect, I hope that my above comment doesn't come across as insulting or dismissive of your point of view. I got to thinking afterwards that if my phrasing was poor, it might come across hurtful or dismissive, and I really did not intend it that way, especially since we're talking about a very sensitive topic. I'm very sorry if I gave offense, and hope that I did not.

It's thoughtful of you to be concerned. I did suspect that we were perilously close to hurting feelings, in a conversation that might perhaps work best face to face, and so had decided to not reply, lest we fall off the edge. ~wry~ My apologies if silence caused what I hoped to prevent!

You wrote:
>"It's possible that some people experience death differently from me..."

May I suggest that it is exceedingly probable? :-) I propose that there may be as many ways of experiencing death as there are combinations of people.

It sounds like you and I carry our dead, both real and fictional, in different ways.

More relevantly to fandom, it sounds like we perceive different flavors as dominant in Highlander, and approach the show differently at its baseline. Among other things, to me, so immersed in the canon-wreck of swiss-cheese FK, HL looks, by comparison, to be among those series that can mostly take care of themselves, rather than, like FK, to be among those desperately in need their fans' mending and tending. :-) The vanity of small differences, perhaps! It sounds like you would categorize them together in Xparrot's "Type B," where I see a huge gulf.

I think that later HL got trapped in its own formula, and unraveled in unfortunate ways. One of the things I find exciting in rewatching first and second season is the absence, and then slow emergence, of that formula, as well as stories operating in a very mortal world (not a world where most everyone we meet is either an immortal or a Watcher).

In any case, thank you very much for your discussion and consideration on this subject! I appreciate it.

*hugs* Yes, I do think that pulling back from the discussion when it was in danger of going to a bad place was a good idea -- if only more people had that kind of restraint! The lack of response made me worry that I had hurt, upset or offended you. I'm glad that it doesn't seem to be the case (yet), but I think you're right that the discussion had gone about as far as it ought to.

May I suggest that it is exceedingly probable? :-) I propose that there may be as many ways of experiencing death as there are combinations of people.

Yes, that's a good point. You are very right! And my wording was very poor.

Anyway, thank you for discussing it with me.

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...)

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*

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!

*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

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Killing characters

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I <3 character death.

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

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

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

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

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