Character death.

I'm with you; I'd rather not kill off a character if I don't have to. If I feel that the seriousness of an even is just not going to be hammered home if I don't, I may kill off a character, but I do try not to.

As a side topic, killing off red shirts vs. main characters vs. characters we have a chance to get attached to that aren't main characters?

~Lyn

Note, this was a discussion on twitter between Jolantru, Lyn Thorne Alder and a couple of others and I wanted to get into it and so suggested we talk here. (It's my fault, MeiLin! We need somewhere where we can talk about just plain writing stuff... )

I tweeted a truism or two: "@jolantru @LynThorneAlder Any harsh world or setting, you have to kill off chrs... Obvious but people sometimes forget... or don't want to... but the deaths point up the tragedy." And I also wanted to say that liking a character is not a reason to not kill them off if there is unavoidable cause for their death... but this is the woman who altered the ending of her dead-tree published novels so as not to kill off the main character, in part because of how much I like him, talking. Then I wrote a whole book about that character's stance with respect to his own death. So... well, let's just say, character death is beyond an interesting question for me, a hot-button issue, really.

When I think about it, the whole trick of character death is how you as a writer manage the meaning of it. Another truism, I guess, but I have plenty to say about it. More later as I have to complete today's chapter, in which one character kills another, by midnight, with a meeting of my local town council to cover in the meantime...

Well, my response is going to be somewhat slanted, in that my current genre is that of murder mystery. Character death can and often does serve a purpose, especially if conveyed realistically. I dislike when a character dies, people mourn for a few chapters, then forget all about them. Real life doesn't go that way - often, we mourn those we were close to for weeks, months, years. I try to portray the sense of loss to the remaining characters realistically, as well as the horror that something like this could have happened to someone they knew so well.

I am the sappy type that gets very attached to my characters. In fact, I've reworked at least one of the planned deaths in this story, due to the fact I got too attached to the victim.

Shirley and I work together, of course, and there are two fairly major characters who she talked me into not killing off because they are cool. In fact we were thinking of saving a third, but I drew the line as I felt we were going to lose realism (this was in a war context.) On the other hand, I know I can be too harsh, a tendency I've mostly outgrown but still crops up, about killing off characters as well as other things. It comes from the basic dysfunctional-family I learned starting before I can remember ("The world sucks") and which I have done much work to recover from.

Perhaps another truism: authors writing about war will treat its natural death-toll very differently depending on where on the "war-is-hell/war-is-cool" continuum their work is themed.

I dislike the sometimes gratuitous way Joss Whedon kills off characters (Wash, anyone?), but sometimes it's necessary. I have character deaths plotted out in the History that are necessary and that are going to piss off my readers. No way around it.

Someone wrote or quoth on Twitter that unlike real life, fiction has to make sense. In this case a character death that is as random and gratuitous as real life pissed people off because it pissed people off in real life. In our fiction people want things to make sense. To not be able to kill off any characters flaws the story but to randomly hack and slash your way through them turns readers off too, even in 'slasher' horror. To keep people reading either the 'right' characters have to die or their deaths have to be explained and dealt with.

It's a delicate balance.

I'm off to kill a rather major character in tomorrow's post so I'm facing this, today. Of course blame will be laid and pain suffered. It hurts me to kill off a character and on some levels I have to grieve them.

@Shirley I thought people read slasher horror for that. (Not my cup of tea so I'm unfamiliar with the psychology...)

@MeiLin, I agree: death is part of life and if you are going to do a story that is realistic enough for readers to relate to and thus care about, you have to include the major and universal aspects of life, and death is one of them. I bet those readers who are pissed off will keep reading anyway.

On the other hand, killing a character is sometimes a method of reader satisfaction. In Eclipse Court, Shirley is fleshing out a character, originally created by me, who is such an a-hole that her readers are howling for his blood. In fact reader, reviewer, Rose & Bay founder and all around awesome person Ysabet, who is admirably business-minded, had a great idea in a comment:

It occurs to me that you could probably make good money by letting donors devise plausible mishaps for 2nd Amitzas and the other Mahid.

Of course as soon as I read this I envisioned the price schedule.

$1 - Amitzas gets nasty miserable cold.
$5 - Amitzas gets extremely painful case of chronic hemorrhoids.
$10 per broken limb.
$250 - Amitzas dies violently; $100 per day his death is prolonged.

Because reader interaction is what weblit is all about. (Note: this is not a real price schedule, just me riffing. All inquiries should be directed to Shirley.)

Oh, but the *right* people have to die. The hero, the good, the moral... all have to survive. The problem with slasher fiction is that anyone sexually active deserves to die and I disagree with that one.

@Meilin--It's funny, because I feel like I learned a lot about how and when to kill of a character from Joss. That being said, I felt like the death of Paul in the finale of Dollhouse was ridiculous and that Joss's killing of major characters in the eleventh hour is now starting to feel like a parody of itself and losing its original effect.

But back to the topic. I'm in the minority, it seems, since I kind of LOVE killing off characters. I used to write solely horror, however, so I guess that's why I started doing it. All my stories seem to end in bloodbaths.

My characters definitely aren't like "real people" to me. They don't "talk" to me and all that jazz. For me, storytelling is about taking a perfectly nice person and utterly destroying her life. I mean, that's what's interesting about a story. I'm so cruel to my characters even if I don't kill them that I couldn't afford to get attached to them because I'd be constantly flooded with guilt.

I read this blog post of Laurell K. Hamilton's once where she said that sometimes she's out shopping and picks up gifts for her characters and then realizes while she's in line to buy the gifts that the person she bought it for isn't actually real. I realized right at that moment why her books had all started to suck. When you're buying gifts for characters, you're not creating meaningful conflicts for them that screw up their lives. You're being too nice. And without conflict, there's no story. There's been very little meaningful conflict in Hamilton's books since they started coming out in hardcover.

Anyway, so that's my answer. I kill someone off if it creates meaningful conflict and makes the story more interesting.

I might be the only video game nerd in this crowd, but does anyone else remember how overwhelmingly effective Aeris's murder in Final Fantasy VII was? Aeris was more than someone you read about and like. Because of the video game format the player has had an active role in her development. The standard in games is that the playable characters don't die. When one did, it was so unusual and so heartbreaking. This was years and years ago, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks it might be the first time a video game really *moved* a player emotionally.

And to keep this post from being totally off topic these are the reasons I have killed a character:
- To demonstrate the gravity and danger of a situation,
- to move the plot forward,
- to affect the other characters,
- and hopefully always to evoke an emotional response from the reader.

Some people have said that they kill off characters to highlight the gravity of the situation. This seems backwards to me. Characters should die as a natural consequence of the situation's gravity. If you are intentionally saying "Oh, this is Serious Shit, yo. To prove how Serious Shit this shit is, X has to bite it" I won't buy it, as a reader.

The writing itself has to prove the stakes are high. If you haven't put the gravitas and danger into the narrative you can slaughter the whole cast, and it simply won't matter.

[Pardon me if I sound incoherent - blood loss/TMI stuff: I am still alert though...]

Seth is right. Characters should die as a natural consequence of the situation's gravity. Be it serious injury, illness, nefarious plot twists etc. Character death is part of the writing flow, if you get my gist.

I don't believe in slaughtering the whole cast to prove that it is Serious Shit though. That's I do not like slasher horror fiction.

As writers, I believe we do have ownership/connection of/to our characters. That's why some of us feel bonded to them, which I think is a natural thing.

Jolantru

@Seth, @jolantru Of course, you're right. I think I worded it wrong, because what I meant was not "listen up, this is a big deal", but that things are bad, the character is hurt badly/very sick/in grave danger and because of the situation it would have been ridiculous for me to miraculously heal/protect them.

[Character Overattachment Syndrome Support Group comes to order.]

Laurell (shyly): "My name is Laurell."

Everybody else: "Hi Laurell."

Laurell: "...and I am an author with character overattachment syndrome. But I want to tell you all that... I managed to go a whole month without buying a gift for any of my characters."

Everybody else: "YAY!!!!" (clap clap clap)

[Note to Laurell, if you ever actually read this, I mean it in the nicest way.]

So anyway, it's all in the meaning, and it goes along with the perceived value of characters, which is symbolic of the perceived value of people. If you portray death with a "who cares" tone, you are contending that people lack innate worth, which I feel is morally wrong, and which I suspect the vast majority of readers would not like.

Disagree 100% with Shirley that heroes should live and villains should die, because to me that wanders too far away from real life, even for fantasy, to be believable. Heroes sometimes die while villains sometimes live to a happy old age, continuing to happily torment all around them. This reminds me of a little conventional wisdom of the dead-tree publishing world I learned a while back. It's this: Americans like happy endings. The rest of the English-speaking world is okay with bittersweet or even tragic. What is not known is why, and I'd love to know that.

I think the answer to that assumption is a bit beyond what Weblit.us is capable of A couple advanced degrees in national culture sociology, anthropology, Western history, etc. would probably be required to get a research-testable answer.

Or I could go the simplistic route and say "woot American optimism & the American dream for all (even fictional people!)!"

Y'know, whichever.

I gotta admit, part of the reason I enjoy stories with a romantic element is because of the happy ending factor. Although, I've read enough now that I become annoyed when the happy ending is contrived rather than a natural outgrowth of the choices of the characters (just read a short story by an author I usually enjoy where it felt very much the bit of romance was tossed in at the last minute just to mark it off the check-list - blargh).

I don't think I could kill off any of my protagonists because most of them at least start off as some refraction of a part of myself or a situation I've been in, and I'm not particularly suicidal *wry*. The rest of the cast doesn't usually have such a personal beginning, so that makes their deaths viable for me.

I do worry that as an inexperienced author, I'm going to have an even harder time writing a character convincingly if I know from the get go that they're gonna be offed. I'm in agreement with y'all who say that a meaningless death is a waste of character. I'd rather not create any characters that are obvious "red shirts".

How about this approach to the topic: in your opinion, which characters are unkillable? Cap named one kind -- her protagonists, because they are too much part of her. With Laurell K Hamilton, clearly, it would be "characters I almost buy gifts for." (I just can't stop giggling over that one.) The hard-headed businessperson in me can think of one other type, immediately: characters whose deaths would drive away readers in droves.

I originally killed off Chevenga at the end of what is now The Philosopher in Arms. I was, in a sense, going with the ancient trope of "the inescapable prophecy." But I had already written in the story's internal solution to pre-destination ("foreknowledge can be countered by other foreknowledge") and, years later, came up with the psychological solution as well, all of which is asa kraiya. Now I'm so attached to him, I'd have a very hard time killing him off, but thinking of him as unkillable goes hugely against the grain, a kind of violation of what he is.

Certainly no one else is unkillable. But the death has to be... well, I guess it has to be the same three things I ask of characters, which I just realized are what I ask of plot events and indeed stories in general, whether they are mine or anyone else's: 1) plausible, 2) consistent and 3) interesting.

Which characters are unkillable? Easy: none. If you know they're unkillable, so will the readers. Granted, this is totally a moot point if you're writing a story that doesn't involveddeath but other trauma instead.

Or as my friend, and GM, says: 'Silly PCs, death is too good for you.'

I definitely have killed a character that would potentially drive readers away in droves, and right in Chapter 2, too. I've killed one other significant character since, though his death really needs to be made bigger and more dramatic. Or that's what I was expecting & then the muse said 'No, this shows more'.

That said, it's unlikely I'd kill my main characters, partially because I'm attached to them, partially because without them it would be hard to drive the story, and partially because there aren't a lot of them. In a story with more main/ big secondary characters I might.

As for what a death needs to be, I'd say it depends on the story. Interesting, hopefully, though that may be more about the character doing the killing or affected by the death than the one that actually dies.

I think I'm going to revisit my statement that my characters aren't "real people" to me. Over the summer, I was writing a scene in which one of my main characters was betrayed by pretty much the last person she trusted and faced with the reality she might have to kill him. When I was writing that scene, I started sobbing.

I guess what I meant was that I try to serve the story first and the characters second. If I know that I have to get a character ready for a plot element and the only way she'll be able to face it is if she has completely no support system in place, then I'll kill off anyone who she might turn to for support, because the story demands it. If it's painful, so much the better, because deep emotion like that creates a bond between characters and readers. Someone told me once that she liked my stories because they are so realistic, and my stories are anything but realistic, what with magic flying around and secret societies and teenagers who are trying to save the world. I think what she meant was that they were emotionally realistic. And I think, especially in genre fiction, that's important, because it anchors the story in something human and familiar, even if everything else is completely out there.

My point is that you wouldn't kill off a character for no reason, unless you were a sadistic bastard. But I do think that painful deaths of beloved characters, like Dumbledore or Tara (in BTVS), serve important roles in the stories being told and, if left out, would make the stories more hollow and less emotionally textured. Overall, sometimes, if characters don't die, the stories are just bad.

I'd have to agree with April that no characters are unkillable, but I do think that killing off a protagonist had better serve a really, really good purpose in the story. Like Karen, I wouldn't want to kill off a character that drove readers off in droves.

Capriox says that she worries about writing a character convincingly if she knows right away they're going to be offed. Maybe I'm just a disturbed person, but if I know a character is going to be killed, I spend lots of time making sure that the audience really likes them, so that I can up the emotional effect when it really happens. Of course, maybe I just read too much Stephen King. Maybe Stephen King is a disturbed person.

To answer Karen Wehrstein's question of what characters are unkillable? For me, currently with Black Mask & Pale Rider, it's the two main characters. The story is about them. However, there was a question one friend asked me...

"So, Ya'Row. The elven vampire. You killed her off?"
*evil grin*
"Oh you bastard. No you didn't."

For me it's an old adage. A hero is only as good as the villains that surround them. In my next series I'm upping the anti, with a hero that faces off against a maniacal psychopath. For me, heroes have to live, until their time has come for me. But villains have to live as well.

I've killed heroes off. I wrote a 500 page story (series of short stories) that contained on hero whom I had planned all along to kill off at the end. It grew really hard to do that, because the character had grown on me, but I kept true to course.

Maybe I'll serialize that one some day.

Valeriec80 wrote:

...deep emotion like that creates a bond between characters and readers. Someone told me once that she liked my stories because they are so realistic, and my stories are anything but realistic, what with magic flying around and secret societies and teenagers who are trying to save the world. I think what she meant was that they were emotionally realistic. And I think, especially in genre fiction, that's important, because it anchors the story in something human and familiar, even if everything else is completely out there.

Hear, hear. (Except that I think it's equally important in all fiction.)

I just wanted to point out that one of the things that makes GRR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series so incredibly heartbreakingly overwhelmingly good is that verybody can die. Nobody is safe. When the first main character is murdered it's such a shock because it doesn't follow the trope that protagonists can't die. But it made the work so realistic (despite the fantasy setting) that it pays off.

So I'd say never be afraid to kill a character, just make sure that the death serves the story.

//reader butting out now

I killed off Stef at the end of Mirrorfall, she did something stupid, didn't consider the implication (or hell, even the physics) of what she was doing, so she went splat. She caused her own death, and died alone, no long speeches, or last dying words. She had like half a second to think OSHI-, but that's it.

...but it's ok, she gets resurrected. 50k into the second book. >_>

It made sense for her to die, so she died. *shrug* Shouldn't that be how it works?

I want to second Janoda. I've been a huge reader of sci-fi and fantasy for years. And George RR Martin was really the first person to kill off a major character

I've tried to approach my own work that way. None of my characters is sacrosanct. I've killed off three so far (the first as the inciting incident, as they say in screenplay world), the second was a red-shirt and the third was a major character. More deaths will be coming.

But I'm writing a massive epic, centered around war. It would be incredibly unrealistic if people didn't die.

Obviously, you shouldn't kill people just for the sake of killing people. But if it serves the story, no one is unkillable.

ALLAN!
Edit that! I was trying to keep it SPOILER FREE! Because I know some of the Weblit Crew has just started reading it. I'm guessing you can't really anymore. So Maybe I should prod Meilin to edit the name out.

We need a spoiler thing!

We now have a spoiler tag. It's under "input formats."

Sorry! My bad.

A couple of things.

1) RAGE against the Dollhouse spoiler up-threat. We are so in a fight, Valeriec80 (Not really).

(But kind of yeah)

(But not really)

2) I killed a character somewhat early in Boat Story. She was nice, likable, as my friend put it "[one of the protagonist's] only friend." She did not deserve to die. Her death was senseless. But the whole story suddenly turns on her death. Everywhere the story is going is because she died (Well, mostly everywhere. Well, a good amount).

But her death also serves as a reminder (I hope) that these characters are mortal. I do like to beat my characters up, which may come from studying at the School of Joss (raise your hand if you've ever taken notes during a Joss commentary!), and I need my readers to think some of them can and will die (and they will, oh yes, they will) for the drama of their sweet, delicious pain to work.

*cough*

Going back up-thread, I agree that Jossing every character is a great way to get your readers to pack up and leave. It has to be the right ones. It has to be used just right.

I'm still pissed about Wash, though.

Oops... I suck. When I posted that it was days after the finale had aired. I thought everyone who cared already knew. Sorry. :(

Second the Joss commentary note-taking bit. Between Joss Whedon and Holly Lisle, I've probably learned everything good about writing that I know.