Kill them like a Joss: Musings on when and why to shiv a main character

[Paynesgrey]

This is me.  This is me rambling waiting for some reads to get back so I can polish my novella and fire that rascal off.

This is me with too damn much time on my hands, but not enough brain-mojo to do anything really creative.  So I'm just thinking and rambling some on when and how to kill off main characters, and maybe some stuff about reader expectations. 

So don't take this as advice from a "writer," because I'm by no stretch of the imagination an expert on that.  This is more reactions from a reader.

I replaced my mobile phone and was re-downloading my ebooks when I stumbed across one I didn't quite remember.  I started reading it, and was delighting in the gorgeous prose and utterly engaging protagonist.  Then I got this nasty, unpleasant sensation, flipped ahead, and remembered I had read this one...  and deleted it in a fit of rage.

Now, what follows will be SPOILERS for "The Reapers are also Angels."

THAT'S RIGHT, SPOILERS!

The author kills the amazing, engaging, delightfully emotionally rich protagonist, and then spends the last chapter or two focused on her murderer, as if to impart something Profound and Statementey, with no small bit of apologist poetical horseshit. 

Now, why did this piss me off so bad I'll never crack another book by this guy?  I'm not quite a Care Bear, after all... I wouldn't be devouring Zombie books if I wanted the Rainbow Unicorn to come and make every story happy with his Gumdrop Magic.

And I've never even briefly Ragequit Joss Whedon, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Spooks, or Supernatural over killing off a character I liked.  Well, I did stop watching one episode of Supernatural when they killed a dog just to make sure everyone knew how much of a dick the villain was.

So why? 

Why is this talented writer on my "Please die in a fire before writing anything else list"?  He's a pretty damn skilled author, despite the Present Tense, No Quotation Marks, Just To Prove How Very Clever I Am And To Prove It's Serious Literature Even Though It Has Zombies.  The guy wrote a pretty good book until he sneezed and let Uwe Boll steal his soul.  Great worldbuilding, excellent characters...

Why couldn't I give this guy the pass I did John Carpenter?  I'd love to have a beer with R.J. MacCready, but I didn't feel "cheated" with how that book ended.

So I puzzled on that this afternoon, trying to figure out the reason for the disparity in my reactions to Main Character Termination.

Part of it's a matter of pure taste.  I grew up watching the ponderously nihilistic themes in 60's and 70's cinema, reading horror books which could be summed up "he dies, she dies, everybody dies."  So it's not just a genre or theme I'm into.  If I need to be reminded how shitty and unfair the world is, I'll watch the news.

But that doesn't account for the strength of my reaction.

Why does Joss Whedon get away with it?  He kills fuckers off like there's no tomorrow. 

Figured that part out:  Because for every beloved and engaging character he kills, he usually has three or for more to carry the story forward.  He kills people off to drive the story, to drive character development, and sometimes just to maintain a sense of peril, not so much in an effort to be "Profound." 

But The Book Which Irritated Me Unreasonably, the protagonist's death didn't make the rest of the story Profound. 

It made it pointless. 

Why would I even want to stick around while the piece of trash waxed poetical?  Keep reading a book now absent the only character I was interested in? 

Now, remember, I'm talking about my personal tastes here, not making a professional, moral, or ethical judgement.  People reading for some "Greater Statement" or "Profound Commentary" can still enjoy it just fine... but for me, that event was like watching someone create a beautiful painting, then, right at the end, set the canvas on the floor and squat their business all over it, just to mix things up some, just to say "Aha!  See what I did there?"

Now, I've no idea if that was the writer's intention, rather that's the impression the book created in me, due to my own weird mix of tastes and experiences and all that stuff.

Mainly because when reading, I'm character driven.

So when none of the remaining characters are ones I care about, respect, or like, why bother reading more?  It's the same reason I'm not into the whole  Game Of Thrones thingee... I know that most anyone I like will die, or turn into an asshole because the author wants people to focus on story rather than characters. 

So I've been able to gel one potential lesson from this:  If you're writing a character driven story, don't kill the character unless your other characters are engaging enough to keep people around.  I quit watching "Friends" when the monkey left the show.

If you only have one character people care about, think real hard before you gank them, make sure it's worth what you'll lose.  "Well, Harry's dead, but Thomas Covenant's now telling the tale..."  If your work relies on it's characters, be sure that you leave something your readers will still enjoy.

Now, if you're writing for readers who aren't driven by their emotional attachment to your characters or because they're intrigued by that character's development, have at, tally ho, and all that. 

But keep in mind that unless you balance things, there's always a trade-off.  In fact, balancing things is, itself a trade-off against really punching up this or that.  If you sacrifice depth for cheese-whiz feel-good, or character engagement for Profoundity, or worldbuilding for any of the above, you're pruning off a portion of your readers.

I'm not saying "Don't choose this or choose that,"  just that you should keep that sort of thing in mind.  Cost/benefit analysis, based on why you're writing, and who you think you're writing for.



Another bit I've taken from this, and it doesn't apply directly to Reapers/Angels, just something that came up during my musings:  Know what your core audience likes about your work, don't make them feel cheated. 


If your changing your game, hang a lantern on that.  "This new series is going to darker places, about crimes against pandas.  It's nothing like my smartass, wisecracking plumber's adventures amongst the gigglebunnies..."  (I'm talking in terms of emotional, gut reactions.)  Now, if you're an unpublished author, it's not like people have expectations.  But if you've established a reader base, don't sucker them into buying your book about a girl who drank a glass of water and was sad, then got her life together to be hit by a train, if your earlier, popular work is about a boy who, I don't know, does nice things in a funny way or something.   

If you've established a reader base, they expect some things from you.  Magnum PI coming back as a ghost isn't what they're paying to see.  There was a recent show that pretended to be Torchwood, but really wasn't except for some of the cast members... Don't be Not-Torchwood. 

Don't be Spinal Tap Mark II. 

Don't be Zardoz, or Highlander II.

Be aware of why people like your stuff.  Don't be afraid to push your boundries, change your focus, but make sure your readers know what they're getting into.

[LizW65]

I haven't read the book in question, but it sounds as though this could be an unfortunately executed example of the Decoy Protagonist:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DecoyProtagonist
This generally works better if the character dies a bit earlier on (such as Marion Crane in Psycho) and there is an equally interesting character or characters to take over the story.

[Paynesgrey]

I haven't read the book in question, but it sounds as though this could be an unfortunately executed example of the Decoy Protagonist:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DecoyProtagonist
This generally works better if the character dies a bit earlier on (such as Marion Crane in Psycho) and there is an equally interesting character or characters to take over the story.

That had occurred to me, but she lasted until the last chapter... Plus, it's hard to hero-ize her killer, the whole reason he hunted her was that he wants to "put things right," as the kid killed his brother when he was trying to rape her.  Yeah, in his mind he's doing "what's right", but so was his rapist brother... 

I've read/watched some things which had a decoy protagonist who was a set-up for Repentant Villain Seeking Redemption riff, but this one just didn't go there.  This was "Lone, scrappy girl struggles to survive, and survives, and then dies anyway, but her killer dug her a nice grave to be courteous, look, it's Art!"

Yeah, I know every villain is the hero in his own story, but making this guy a protagonist is too much of a stretch... it requires one to have not just an open mind, but a mind so open birds are picking at it.  And it also requires accepting him as a credible apologist for a guy who tried to rape a 15 year old.

Combine those things, and the fact that I think the writer was just too damn skilled to make this a technical/story timing error, leads me to think it was a flashback to those movies I watched as a kid where the protagonists would be killed off meaninglessly in the end simply because that was the studio vogue at the time.  (Michael Caine in 1969's play dirty, for example.)  Or one of those cases where a writer does something like that to "outsmart" the reader, or prove that he's somehow more sophisticated than the reader. 

(Of course, I have a problem with artists and writers who try to be Profound or make Profound Statements.  Mainly because I usually see them as coming off as posturing, ham-handed or self-important.  For my money, one is more likely to have a great impact by making a simple statement rather than a ponderous one.  Those are the sort of things which seem to me to be more likely to wind up being actually, really and truly double-dog profound.  It's like the difference between Ghandi and Lady Gaga.)

Anyway, back to the When/Why of killing the Beloved Protagonist.  The writer was either aiming at readers looking for Profound Statement, or who found the killer to be equally engaging. 

And I'm in no way saying that's "Bad Writing!"  Nope, it's a case where what I look for in terms of style and theme simply didn't intersect with what he produced.

Which is what set me to analyzing why this particular story alienated me as a potential reader of future works... but I didn't feel aliened by John Carpenter, Joss Whedon, or any of the other Protagonist Killing Shows I still love. 

All I could think of was that I just like the protagonist too much to accept her killer as a character I wanted to read about, or felt like I'd been caught with a bait-and-switch. 

Which suggests that when we do something to a character with the specific intention of creating emotional impact, we need to evaluate carefully what impact we want to create, because an intense reaction can go either way.  (I mean, if I come up to someone on the street and slap a dirty diaper into their face, I'll damn well make an emotional impact.  But is it the one I intended, and if so, was it worth it in terms of whatever I gain for the subsequent beating and jail time?)

Kill a character off right, and people will laud you.  "You made me laugh, you made me cry, you magnificent bastard." 

Do it wrong, and the reaction is just "Huh.  Didn't know you were such a dick, wish I hadn't bothered."   (That's NOT a reference to this writer, just to how some character-kills have had unintended receptions.)

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Again with the unfortunate pandas, eh ?

I think for me it's a consistency thing, really, both with previous plot and with the tone of the world..  If I'm reading Winnie the Pooh, I don't expect anyone to pull out a chainsaw and start taking other character's heads off.  If I'm reading Steven Erikson, killing main characters is something I expect to happen fairly frequently, though as magic-heavy epic fantasy goes, death is more than usually a revolving door in those books.  And pretty much anything can be irritating if it's done solely to be a profound statement, be it killing a character at the end of a book to make a point about striving being pointless, or having a weight of accumulated consequence and plot momentum that should by all logic to that point have a serious cost be averted into warm fuzzies through the Unstoppable Power of True Love or Motherhood or the like.

It would totally change the tone of the DF in a way that's almost impossible to see working to gank Harry and give the story to Thomas Covenant, but rather a lot of readers seem to find Thomas Covenant to work as a character in his own world and setting.  (To my mind, such strengths as that series has, that keep me reading, are in depicting a compelling and appealing world and how that affects an initially extremely unsympathetic character for the better.  But then again, I am becoming increasingly convinced that I haven't the first clue what makes characters sympathetic to most people who aren't me.  I look for characters I find interesting, and Harry Dresden would be a prime example of a character I find interesting enough to read about at length while generally well out of sympathy with him.  Judge Dredd would be another.)

[Paynesgrey]

Again with the unfortunate pandas, eh ?

I think for me it's a consistency thing, really, both with previous plot and with the tone of the world..  If I'm reading Winnie the Pooh, I don't expect anyone to pull out a chainsaw and start taking other character's heads off.  If I'm reading Steven Erikson, killing main characters is something I expect to happen fairly frequently, though as magic-heavy epic fantasy goes, death is more than usually a revolving door in those books.  And pretty much anything can be irritating if it's done solely to be a profound statement, be it killing a character at the end of a book to make a point about striving being pointless, or having a weight of accumulated consequence and plot momentum that should by all logic to that point have a serious cost be averted into warm fuzzies through the Unstoppable Power of True Love or Motherhood or the like.

I hear ya there.  Gotta be able to switch things up enough not to be predictable, surprise the reader, without making them feel cheated.  I think that's one of the things that caused such a disproportionate response in me regarding that book... the blurbs tell me it's about a girl wandering the wasteland and trying to escape a killer, don't sell me book that, oh, I'm so clever, is actually about a guy hunting a girl through the wasteland, then waxing all poetical when he kills her.  A lot of readers loved that switch-up, but for me it was kind of like getting a snuff-film when I thought I was buying a new Doctor Who special. 

(Again... just to be clear... I'm not calling "bad writing,"  just saying I personally wasn't keen on the way it went.  I'm not trying to dish on the writer, just using my reaction as a way to maybe learn something.  I mean, I'm going to be doing some awful, awful things to some adorable characters...)

So I guess that's a marketing blurb-lesson:  Don't bait and switch.  Throw in the unexpected, but don't make the contents too different from what the label promises.  Make it more, but not toooooo different. 

Now, in terms of internal surprises that don't violate the theme one markets their book as... that does demonstrate the importance of foreshadowing blended with an appropriate amount Ye Olde Red Herring Sauce.  It's just occurred to me that the reader can appreciate the sucker play without feeling the author just whipped out a really cheap Deus Ex Fuchinya.  Maybe if it's clear the bad buy had to earn his win.  Something to consider, I suppose, as I cook up wins for the baddies or failures for my good guys... 

It would totally change the tone of the DF in a way that's almost impossible to see working to gank Harry and give the story to Thomas Covenant, but rather a lot of readers seem to find Thomas Covenant to work as a character in his own world and setting.  (To my mind, such strengths as that series has, that keep me reading, are in depicting a compelling and appealing world and how that affects an initially extremely unsympathetic character for the better.  But then again, I am becoming increasingly convinced that I haven't the first clue what makes characters sympathetic to most people who aren't me.  I look for characters I find interesting, and Harry Dresden would be a prime example of a character I find interesting enough to read about at length while generally well out of sympathy with him.  Judge Dredd would be another.)

Now I've got the urge to re-watch Dredd again.  Loved that movie.  Anyway, you've got some good points there... A lovable character who's not interesting is just fluff, a spot of giggle candy.  Mary Sue.  And it takes skill to create an unsympathetic character who's interesting enough to engage readers.  I suppose that it one has to find a way to balance things... making the character unsympathetic without pushing into something that too many readers will simply decide that he's too reprehensible for people to stick around and watch his development.

[gatordave96]

Note to self:  Do not kill the pandas in story.

There goes the big idea for the story climax.

[Paynesgrey]

Note to self:  Do not kill the pandas in story.

There goes the big idea for the story climax.

I never, ever kill pandas in the story.

Just in real life, when I get a rejection letter. 

I'm not a monster, after all.

[The Deposed King]

I never, ever kill pandas in the story.

Just in real life, when I get a rejection letter. 

I'm not a monster, after all.

I had to take my main character out of play for about a third of the book involving most of the main battle and I also kill off a couple of pivitol secondaries due to the fall out.  I'm having fun writing it, and I think I'm writing some interesting stuff but am not entirely sure how the reader is going to feel.  The book is taking longer than I thought also.  So I'm just not sure how its going to play, with an extended absence of the main POV up until this point.

I'm definitely not looking to turn anyone off but the parts of the books taking place without him are turning out bigger than I originally thought.


The Deposed King

[LizW65]

I guess what much of this boils down to is "internal consistency". If you're reading a straight-up murder mystery set in the real world, it would feel like a cheat to have a wizard introduced at the eleventh hour who solves the murder through necromancy. And a light and fluffy romantic comedy that ends with a pile of slaughtered bodies on the floor will likely have the reader going, "WTF?" (I understand that the Dexter novels, a straight mystery/serial killer series, introduced a fantasy element in one book that left many readers scratching their heads, and the author backtracked rather quckly.)

Also, some books are just victims of bad marketing and end up disappointing when they turn out to be something other than what was represented.

[arianne]

I think it's just that when someone we like dies in a book, we want it to mean something, and not just be pointless ("Oh, by the way, the guy you like just died. Deal with it. Haha."). Trying to give a death meaning by being "profound" or "moralizing" just makes it worse in a way.

I'm worried that a lot of fantasy sagas with the "someone important will DIE in the last book!!!!!" plotlines are making some writers think that they somehow HAVE to kill someone at the end of the book to prove something, and then they're left wondering what to do with the rest of the book, so they might as well add some profound bits to round it all off....

[The Deposed King]

Well one is planning to run the exploding football all the way to the sacrificial finish line.  Should be a meaningful enough ending there.

The other went on a royal rumble and tried to save the day.  When it all went to pot he stood fast and held the tail end of the retreat.  Sadly he fell holding the line and despite his protests his boys rushed him out of there... sadly he didn't make it.

A number of named characters get shiv in this book.  Not all of them recover... right now its running somewhere around 50/50.  Even the miracle that is a healing tank can't perform the impossible.



The Deposed King

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I think it's just that when someone we like dies in a book, we want it to mean something, and not just be pointless ("Oh, by the way, the guy you like just died. Deal with it. Haha."). Trying to give a death meaning by being "profound" or "moralizing" just makes it worse in a way.
I'm worried that a lot of fantasy sagas with the "someone important will DIE in the last book!!!!!" plotlines are making some writers think that they somehow HAVE to kill someone at the end of the book to prove something, and then they're left wondering what to do with the rest of the book, so they might as well add some profound bits to round it all off....

The thing is, though, if what you are writing is Epic Fantasy, of the All that is Good And Worthwhile is Under Threat by Terrible Evil variety, and you're depicting people who are supposed to be in great and terrible danger,  it's not so easy to make it convincing if nothing bad ever happens to anyone important to the reader.  Star Wars is a pretty light and family-friendly example, and even in Star Wars Obi-Wan dies and Luke loses a hand and gets pretty dark.

Personally, I appreciate it when a writer who is doing "these people are under serious threat" has the nerve to have a random chance of war take out a character who is of some significance and who had ongoing story stuff yet to resolve; it really ups the tension level about how everything else is going to work out.

[Galvatron]

The thing is, though, if what you are writing is Epic Fantasy, of the All that is Good And Worthwhile is Under Threat by Terrible Evil variety, and you're depicting people who are supposed to be in great and terrible danger,  it's not so easy to make it convincing if nothing bad ever happens to anyone important to the reader.  Star Wars is a pretty light and family-friendly example, and even in Star Wars Obi-Wan dies and Luke loses a hand and gets pretty dark.

Personally, I appreciate it when a writer who is doing "these people are under serious threat" has the nerve to have a random chance of war take out a character who is of some significance and who had ongoing story stuff yet to resolve; it really ups the tension level about how everything else is going to work out.

I agree with this, its hard for me as a reader to feel a sense of danger or really appreciate a threat, if nothing bad ever happens. 

Now I dont mean someone gets beat up, heals, life goes on, I mean bad like dead/maimed.

I have no issues seeing characters die, I think its exciting knowing and author might off one of my favorite characters at any given momnet, I do think you can over due it of course (GRRM) but everyone likes different things I guess

[The Deposed King]

I agree with this, its hard for me as a reader to feel a sense of danger or really appreciate a threat, if nothing bad ever happens. 

Now I dont mean someone gets beat up, heals, life goes on, I mean bad like dead/maimed.

I have no issues seeing characters die, I think its exciting knowing and author might off one of my favorite characters at any given momnet, I do think you can over due it of course (GRRM) but everyone likes different things I guess

After a certain point somebody gets hurt they head up, oh the fear, oh the terror, oh the humanity, but no one ever dies?  The readers are going, yeah right.  Unless of course you're writing the kind of dark stuff that I don't care to read and have little interest in writing, with rape and torture, slavery and bondage, i.e. fates that can be portrayed as worse than death.  Where is the tension, where is the risk?

For the victories of your characters to have meaning there have to be losses and real sacrifices along the way.  Both prospective and actual.  Then when they say, we did this, look at what we've accomplished, we're nodding our head and agreeing that they had a long hard slog.



The Deposed King

[Paynesgrey]

After a certain point somebody gets hurt they head up, oh the fear, oh the terror, oh the humanity, but no one ever dies?  The readers are going, yeah right.  Unless of course you're writing the kind of dark stuff that I don't care to read and have little interest in writing, with rape and torture, slavery and bondage, i.e. fates that can be portrayed as worse than death.  Where is the tension, where is the risk?

For the victories of your characters to have meaning there have to be losses and real sacrifices along the way.  Both prospective and actual.  Then when they say, we did this, look at what we've accomplished, we're nodding our head and agreeing that they had a long hard slog.



The Deposed King

And also, for characters to be motivated to go to a certain level, to do certain things they wouldn't otherwise... somebody they care for has to have died.  That loss can feed a wrathful vendetta or a cold, sober determination, but in either case, it's motivation for the character to grimly do what they need to do.  And to make that loss resonate with the reader, to make that surviving character's motivation feel real, we've got to make that character matter to the reader so they share the sense of loss or outrage... or at least understand it.