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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Quantus on May 05, 2011, 03:53:43 PM
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This is something that has been nagging me for a while now. I don't really understand his need I seeing that readers seem to have for random character death. Its a complaint I keep seeing about the Codex Alera, and in other places. People seem to be pissed off that more of the named characters didn't get killed off by the end. I argue that plenty did, or that more would have been needless, or that when the guy they thought was dead didn't stay dead it had good logical and thematic justification, but they don't seem satisfied unless they get slapped in the face by the death. Normally I would just dismiss it as just stylistic differences and a person who is expecting more horror genre survival rates than what you normally find in sword and steed fantasy. But I keep seeing the same thing pop up, and I just cant figure out its source. Usually I am able to understand someones point of view, even if I don't share it, but I can't seem to get my brain around this one.
I understand killing a character for plot progression, for the death itself or the lack of that character, and how it affects the remaining characters/story. I understand killing a character to raise the tension and a sense of uncertainty and mortality. I understand the value of slapping the reader with a sudden death for the shock value of it after they have become invested. I think a properly crafted (self)sacrifice can be a truly beautiful thing. But I don't really like it when a named character, one Ive spent time on, gets whacked simply because the opportunity was there, or because they were no longer vital to the shape of the story or whatever. And just because the world has faced a war that killed off a large majority of the population does not mean my knot of heroes has to receive the same mortality rate. If they are going to end in death I want there to be some sort of purpose to it, be it plot, reading experience, or otherwise. Maybe its not purely realistic if the whole party survives, but then again its all really just a statistical argument; somebody has to live through it, and usually the named characters are more formidable than average, and so have a better chance.
So I ask you, from a writers point of view, what do you think of character death? When and how do you do it, and most importantly why?
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I'm not really in a position to help you, at least not at this time, becase I basically share your predicament.
I'm building a cast of chracters that yes, will turn ino "the Hero's party" so obviously, I can't kill any of them off just yet.
And, depite the oft quoted advce to "kill your darlings" I'm going to need these folks to be around for quite some time ... through several books, if things go as planned.
But, folks have to die, somewhere along the way, right? Otherwise, the evil isn't evil enough, the bad isn't bad enough, etc.
So, for now, I'm casting about for some minor characters that I can add, just so I can kill them. :D
I've already killed a few nameless townsfolk, a few evil minions, and of course some critters, but before too long I'll need some more folks to kill ...
So, as an addendum to the previous question, who do you kill?
PS. esp. if you're doing long form fiction *coughneurovorecough*
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I think the complaint with CA is in comparison to other contemporary novels, like SoIaF, where it's grittier and based more in realism. I'd say you could probably compare CA to the Star Wars novels in that you pretty much expect all the major characters to survive and get through, no matter what happens, and I think some people dislike this because it takes away tension from the story. I've seen people say this about some of the episodes of Castle, since the show got renewed for another season--you expect Castle to survive no matter the situation. The other side is GRRMartin, where you get attached to a character, and you have no idea what his fate is going to be. But at least with Martin, you know that the decisions are plot/story based, and they aren't trivial.
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I don't like killing off my lead characters but if I must then it will be for a good reason not just because
I can or I think I should.
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But I don't really like it when a named character, one Ive spent time on, gets whacked simply because the opportunity was there, or because they were no longer vital to the shape of the story or whatever.
Every character in a narrative has, almost by definition spent time on himself, caring for himself, no? The reader's sympathy losspainhurt is only a reflection, a shadow, a ghost, of the in-narrative losspainhurt the characters themselves undergo.
Let's say that reader losspainhurt is in some proportion to in-narrative character losspainhurt.
And just because the world has faced a war that killed off a large majority of the population does not mean my knot of heroes has to receive the same mortality rate. If they are going to end in death I want there to be some sort of purpose to it, be it plot, reading experience, or otherwise. Maybe its not purely realistic if the whole party survives, but then again its all really just a statistical argument; somebody has to live through it, and usually the named characters are more formidable than average, and so have a better chance.
But it's still chance, meaning there's a chance your most formidable character is going to be the only one of the group to die, or there is a chance that none of the knot of heroes will survive (they, after all, encounter more danger than the less formidable characters unless they are formidable evaders and are we really interested in reading about those?)
Going back to the reader sympathy losspainhurt vs. the in-narrative losspainhurt, what you're really asking for is that the author should artificially lower the proportion of what the reader feels for what an average INC feels.
Then, I ask you, why bother setting up a major losspainhurt narrative scenario in the first place? Why write about a societal cataclysm and then insulate the reader from it? When writing about a mere upheaval and keeping the proportion of losspainhurt accurate can create just as much emotion in the reader?
IMO, setting up major losspainhurt narratives and then emotionally insulating the reader is just indirect MarySueing of the knot of heroes.
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What I hate is when a character is set up just to be killed and it's very obvious.
A sacrificial lamb.
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I have mixed feelings on the killing off of characters. I will try to list my arguments for both sides.
The Pros of killing off characters:
It gives the readers genuine worry about the fate of the characters they love. If they know that none of the major characters is ever going to die, it can lessen the dramatic
tension in times of danger.
It shows that there are real consequences to poor choices. This is the classic approach where in a trajedy, the main characters must die else their actions would be seen to have
no consequence.
It's more realistic. Especially in stories where there are massive battles many feel that to allow the main characters to survive over and over again paints an unrealistically rosy
picture of the horrors of war or mass violence.
It avoids the trope of the hero who survives everything.
The Cons of killing off characters:
You may anger or disappoint readers who are emotionally attached to the character that is killed. This may lead to them no longer being emotionally invested in the story.
It does not allow for hope. Redemptive themes which allow a character to overcome the poor choices of thier past can make very powerful stories.
It is not unrealistic to have the heroes of your story survive if their survival is part of the reason you chose them to tell the story. If they didn't survive, they wouldn't
have been able to accomplish their goal and there would have been no story. Sometimes some people do survive amssive battles or there would be no victor.
IMHO the anti trope has become the greatest trope of all in much modern writing and theater.
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I plan on killing several of my character's, some of them will be slaughtered senselessly to motivate the main character and demonize the antagonist. There is another that i plan on killing in a truly heroic fashion. However there are other characters who have the potential for death but whether or not they will die depends on how the story will progress.
The main reason i think so many people want more characters to die because it makes the story more realistic. I was rather annoyed with CA because the main characters kept getting into unwinable situations and most got out of them without even a scratch let alone horrible death. It seemed like an over abundant use of luck.
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I will admit that I tire of stories where the characters suvive time and time again because of blind luck. I don't have a problem, however, when the characters for the most part "make their own luck" because of their surperior skills, intelligence, or friends. I thought CA fell into the latter category.
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Depends why the character is killed off. If the death serves some kind of narrative purpose, I'm all for it. Killing a character simply for shock value or because you, the author, tires of him/her, is not a valid narrative purpose, IMO.
@ Gruud: I think the "kill your darlings" quote actually refers to ruthless editing and revision, rather than literal character death; at least Stephen King seemed to use it that way in On Writing.
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It's a tricky balance. If there's no sense of loss, then the reader may feel that the characters have gotten through the story without any real risk. But if you kill off too many, or hurt the characters too often and too hard, then it will desensitize the audience, kind of like how everyone expects Joss Whedon to kill off the characters people like the most now.
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But if you kill off too many, or hurt the characters too often and too hard, then it will desensitize the audience, kind of like how everyone expects Joss Whedon to kill off the characters people like the most now.
But it does sharpen and whet the per-episode sense of risk, doesn't it? :)
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Only if they enjoy seeing characters suffer and watch eager to see who'll die next. If not, they can lose empathy with the characters and setting if they think there's no point because the characters are likely to die.
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Only if they enjoy seeing characters suffer and watch eager to see who'll die next.
If not, they can lose empathy with the characters and setting if they think there's no point because the characters are likely to die.
I see both schadenfreude and loss of empathy as being completely independent of the readers' evaluation of in-narrative risk.
It is possible to have a quite accurate assessment of risk even if one doesn't care about the character surviving, no?
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I have mixed feelings on the killing off of characters. I will try to list my arguments for both sides.
The Pros of killing off characters: ...It shows that there are real consequences to poor choices. This is the classic approach where in a tragedy, the main characters must die else their actions would be seen to have no consequence.
... IMHO the anti trope has become the greatest trope of all in much modern writing and theater.
Applauding this.
Having a death without literary reason seems pointless to me. Writing Survivor Island based on popularity seems pointless also. Killing sprees to whittle down too many plot lines seems pointless. In all these, hasn't the author lost control, and thus a sign of weakness?
I agree with Starbeam. We suspend belief when we pick up a book and enter the author's world. Just as we do, when we sit in a theater. We accept that these actors are real, when they are not.
It is crucial that an author never break their reader's contract. I suspect that someday Ebenezer is going to die and I will weep, because I love him. What I won't know is how he leaves the Dresden World, how it will impact Harry, what emotional loose ends that death leaves behind. And I have complete and absolute confidence in Jim to know that I will know those things as a result of the action.
Then there is the true blind sided death--but I'm not sure it should ever be truly blind sided. In particular, I think of Lord in Game of Thrones. That death was the hook and the logical, when you looked back, action for the series. It has tremendous meaning and motivation. I feel the same way about the wolf Lady. Some would say this is not a main character, but why do I hold out hope that Lady will reappear in some fashion--either as the first potent of a trend to come or as a spiritual affirmation of her mistress' maturity? See, it had it's logical place and reason, but as a reader I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one. Perhaps it did in the death of Lord anyway. I'm reading the 2nd book now, so don't blow me up without spoilers. :-)
We aren't supposed to know everything or we'd be bored, but we need to have complete confidence in the author. Otherwise, we'd just be reading horror movie kill zones, and those are not on my list to be read.
Quantus felt burned, badly burned, or he wouldn't have posted his concern. A sign that an author went without thought and against the contract the author had with Quantus specifically. Perhaps it was fine for most, but for Quantus (and any of us who find ourselves in that position) and fatal failure on the author's part. We invest in characters, because we are drawn to them. Death without logic is killing something inside the reader that was intimately tied to that character.
*Oops, off the soap box and back to work now.*
edited because I had an either without the or.... now back to work.
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I see both schadenfreude and loss of empathy as being completely independent of the readers' evaluation of in-narrative risk.
It is possible to have a quite accurate assessment of risk even if one doesn't care about the character surviving, no?
It is, but I find it difficult to stay interested in a book or movie if I don't care about the characters. As a writer, it's my goal to make the reader care about what happens because they're emotionally invested in the characters' fate.
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We aren't supposed to know everything or we'd be bored, but we need to have complete confidence in the author. Otherwise, we'd just be reading horror movie kill zones, and those are not on my list to be read.
Do it wrong and you get horror movie kill zones. Do it right and you get Antigone, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Glory, The Magnificent Seven...
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Quantus felt burned, badly burned, or he wouldn't have posted his concern. A sign that an author went without thought and against the contract the author had with Quantus specifically. Perhaps it was fine for most, but for Quantus (and any of us who find ourselves in that position) and fatal failure on the author's part. We invest in characters, because we are drawn to them. Death without logic is killing something inside the reader that was intimately tied to that character.
*Oops, off the soap box and back to work now.*
edited because I had an either without the or.... now back to work.
oh No, not at all. Thats just my point; I was very pleased with CA (which is what spawned the conversation). Characters we had known for several books of the series were killed, permanently maimed, etc, but in each case I thought it was done well, with proper literary justification (be it plot, theme, or even just a personal sacrifice for someone who arguably did not deserve it). What has me so baffled is the seemingly widespread comment that there should have been more death, and I just don't see any good ways to do that without it becoming just character death for its own sake. However Im far from an experienced writer and not much of a horror reader (which typically has a much higher death toll), so I wanted to see what you all thought of its use as a literary device.
The more I think about it, the more I think the root of that "more death" outcry may have just been that one particular "near-death experience" (Trying my best to avoid spoilers, so hopefully you know what Im talking about). As I said I personally don' t gravitate to heavy death stories or like writing lots of death without a particular need, but it does bug me when a character seems to die, with all the proper form and justification and whatnot, only to have a line at the very end to the affect of, "oh ya btw character X wasnt hurt as badly as we thought, he's going to pull through" despite the six bullet wounds, three stabbings, two story fall, and inspirational deathbed speech (in a pear tree). In those cases it seems like the writer needed a death but basically chickened out at the end, so they just put a mickey mouse band-aid on it at the end. I did not think this was the case in CA, but I was a big fan of that particular character and so maybe I was just paying more attention to the motives/explanation/justification...?
But even that can be done well at times. Ill take a film example because I dont mind spoiling it: In the old flick SWAT (not great but entertaining) one character of the team gets shot, and we get the casual "looks like he is going to pull through" line at the end. But in that case it had purpose: it showed that Sam Jackson's character didnt know he was going to survive, even though he just said same thing to the traitor in the team (who got said partner shot). The traitor asked how shot-guy was, just before blowing his own brains out. It showed that despite the treachery he cared about his team/regretted his choices; it also showed that despite the treachery Jackson's character cared enough to try and make him feel better.
Its all about getting the circumstances to support it; not just from a logical standpoint, but from a thematic, emotional, or storytelling stance. It made me start wondering what circumstances would compel you guys to reach for the CharacterDeath tool?
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What I hate is when a character is set up just to be killed and it's very obvious.
A sacrificial lamb.
aka Red Shirts?
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It is, but I find it difficult to stay interested in a book or movie if I don't care about the characters.
As a counterpart to this, I find it difficult to stay interested in a story if there is -no way- for the protagonist to lose, and lose big. More than just "temporary setback for the space of 20 minutes movie time".
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First off let me say I like the CA series. I really didn't notice that all of the Important Characters survived. But having thought about it I think I see where the complaints about ALL of them surviving come from:
People are human. Humans make mistakes. Normal mistakes are so common that most people don't even notice. Oops, dropped my pen, now I have to bend over and pick it up. 99% of the time when you buckle your seat belt you get it right the first time. But occasionally it takes a second, or third, or twelfth time, depending on how much you've had to drink (just kidding, don't drive drunk!) Ever bite your tongue while you're eating? And how many times have you chewed?
Adrenaline and high stress situations make mistakes more common, and costly. I'm an excellent shot. Put any gun in my hands and I can hit any target at any distance that the gun is capable of shooting. It's one of the few things I'm really, really good at, partially through training and partially through natural skill. During one of my initial training events (after boot camp and all of that) in the Marines we were using training rounds (basically modified paintballs made to fit an M-16) to clear a house. It was fun, exciting, and the adrenaline was pumping. There was 13 of us against 4 of them. A couple of mistakes led to the slow whittling down of the 13/4 to 1/1. We were about 6 feet away from each other, both firing, and both missing like crazy. It wasn't a lack of skill that was making us miss, or the weapons, it was the adrenaline. Had it been a real situation, me and my entire squad would be dead. Oops.
The people of CA are just that. People. Humans. They're capable of making mistakes. And yet they don't. At least not ones that lead to realistic consequences. They go through a series of high-stakes world altering events in which they're always outnumbered. Where any single mistake would lead not just to the death of that character, but possibly the death of their entire civilization. And despite all the chaos and pressure, they make the exact right decision that leads to the ideal result.
As readers/viewers we suspend our disbelief until the situation becomes unbelievable. And when it becomes unbelievable it Violently Ejects you from the world that you've pleasantly immersed yourself in. That's the biggest complaint I've heard about the CA series. Tavi was raised as a freak, and has had to think quickly his entire life. In a very real way he's been trained to make something out of nothing. It's a logical extension that his ability to think quickly might translate into a combat environment, making his survival believable. But what about the others? They're supposed to be just normal, average people. Lot's of normal, average people are dying, why do these guys get to survive? Is it because they're Important Characters? That's a good enough reason I suppose, but it's not very realistic.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think you should be running around all willy-nilly lopping the heads off of Important Characters just because. That would be, as someone pointed out earlier, too Whedonesque. There should be a reason for their death. To not have a reason can lead to the Violent Ejection as well. At the same time, you can't run around all willy-nilly having all your Important Characters survive for no good reason, else, Violent Ejection.
So to me, that's what it all boils down to. People are human. Humans make mistakes. Even, especially, when it counts. Those mistakes in high pressure situations can result in death, even to loved Important Characters. To take away those mistakes takes away a portion of their humanity, which makes them harder to identify with.
And if anyone actually read all of that, here's a cookie <cookie>
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Do it wrong and you get horror movie kill zones. Do it right and you get Antigone, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Glory, The Magnificent Seven...
Hamlet---is it possible? I'm working on a YA of Hamlet. Sure it can be done, but by me? Well, I'll find out.
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Hamlet---is it possible? I'm working on a YA of Hamlet. Sure it can be done, but by me? Well, I'll find out.
;D
Eh we're more of the love,
blood and rhetoric school.
Well, we can do you blood
and love without the rhetoric
or blood and rhetoric
without the love...
and we can do you all three
concurrent or consecutive.
But we can't do you love
and rhetoric without the blood.
Blood is compulsory.
They're all blood, you see.
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But it does sharpen and whet the per-episode sense of risk, doesn't it?
No. There is no sense of risk when I have quit watching.
I don't know if I was clear in my earlier post but I am on the fence when it comes to killing off characters. I am in agreement with the several posters who talked of death that pushes the plot. I think meaningful death is a good thing in a story. King Lear is still my favorite of Shakespeare's plays and there is no shortage of death in that play. David Drake is one of my favorite authors and he is not afraid to kill characters. Other than the Bard who is outside the rules, I don't like bad endings. I know some consider them more realistic but if I want bad, realistic endings, I will pick up a newspaper. I want stories that lift me out of the ordinary not smother me in it.
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No. There is no sense of risk when I have quit watching.
Nor is there any if we do not start watching because we know beforehand who wins without risk.
I don't know if I was clear in my earlier post but I am on the fence when it comes to killing off characters.
If this is directed to me, I am confused, thus: I don't think I could have given you an impression that you weren't clear? You quote a response I made to Wordmaker? ???
Other than the Bard who is outside the rules, I don't like bad endings. I know some consider them more realistic but if I want bad, realistic endings, I will pick up a newspaper. I want stories that lift me out of the ordinary not smother me in it.
The customer is always right... only which one? ;)
I can rewrite my my point above, phrasing it as: I think A Tale of Another Day At The Office for SuperHeroMan _is_ a tale of the ordinary.
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^I agree with everything Beefstew said. :D
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aka Red Shirts?
LOL - Aka RED SHIRTS you got that right Mary Sue.
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If this is directed to me, I am confused, thus: I don't think I could have given you an impression that you weren't clear? You quote a response I made to Wordmaker?
Only the first line was directed at you. The rest was was not directed at anyone in particular.
The customer is always right... only which one?
Whoever buys the book. I am not trying to establish right or wrong as far as character death or things that make me become disconnected from a story are concerned. I am only stating my personal likes and dislikes. If unlikable (to me) characters caused books not to sell or be enjoyed, Michael Crichton and John Grisham would not have sold millions of books. ( I don't mean this as an insult to either author or their works. Again these are just my personal likes and dislikes.) If dismal and depressing endings weren't enjoyed by many, many readers Dennis Lehane would not be having so many of his books made into movies, many of the horror stories would not sell, and there would be little or no market for 'true crime'.
I do feel however that many critics have become enamored with gloom, doom, and death and think it is more valid or better written than stories with less pain. This I strongly reject. Each has its merits but the superiority of one over the other is only a matter of personal preference.
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I think it's some kind of human condition. For whatever reason, society generally expects that sad endings are more high brow than happy ones. You can even trace this back to Shakespeare, where aside from his histories, he wrote two kinds of plays. The happy-ending comedies, and the far more serious and highly-regarded tragedies, with their sad endings. This has been a common format for theatre even going back to ancient Greece.
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I think it's some kind of human condition. For whatever reason, society generally expects that sad endings are more high brow than happy ones. You can even trace this back to Shakespeare, where aside from his histories, he wrote two kinds of plays. The happy-ending comedies, and the far more serious and highly-regarded tragedies, with their sad endings. This has been a common format for theatre even going back to ancient Greece.
This makes a good point - sad, meandering films by Swedish directors or Woody Allen are considered sophisticated and important while films more easily accessible (comedies, etc.) are considered light weight. Iirc, this switch occurred in the Oscars around 1977 when Saturday Night Fever received only one nomination - not that SNF is high art, but before then the Oscars went to popular movies, not movies very few had heard of. It's somewhat of a cultural shift, and I am sure cultural anthropologists have done many studies on it.
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The question is: Does the character's death serve a purpose?
In murder mysteries, the death of a character is the main plot. The death of a villian? sastifying the need for the hero to win. Death of supporting character? a major or minor plot point.
In the stories I'm currently working on, death is part of the background (A universe where war is common) WHile I've written stories in which no one dies, most of my stories had a dead character. Purposes I've had when killing a character have included:
* To show how ruthless a character can be.
* To deepen the sorrow of the main character.
* To push a character into doing something.
I hate the mass killing of "Slasher films" (AKA, dead teenager films). It that case, its more style than substance. A character dying must have some purpose to the story beyond being a dead body.
Craig
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The question is: Does the character's death serve a purpose?
Sometimes when your an atuhor, you just stop and think,"absolutely everybody has to die"
Its kinda weird that people are mad about people not dying, normally people are mad because people die
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I'm kind of struggling with the concept of character death in my plot right now...so here's how far I've gotten in my own thought process:
*presumably if you're using death as a “plot device”, such as to show the ruthlessness of the evil guy, or to make the hero do deeds he would otherwise not do, it is better to kill off an important side character (aka Dumbledore) rather than a main character (aka Ron). I know some of the people who have commented above have talked about the possiblity of alienating readers by killing off a loved character, but I can't really think of anyone who went, okay, that's it, no more Harry Potter for me, Dumbledore's dead.
*this is really unprofessional, but I'm torn by the thought of killing my characters *wail*
*but yet it feels like in a huge huge war that takes out half the world, SOME of the characters should at least be maimed. I mean, no matter how good they are, you can't be alert and lucky and all that FOREVER. Of course, there is plenty of internal strife to be found, but death does give more ”shock” when making the point :D
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@arianne, imo making the internal strife stronger to the point of making the reader face palm or scream at the side character or even outright hate them (see: Susan threads) is just as emotionally turbulent as "Bones dies" and far better than "red-shirt death".
Especially if you can put the main characters emotional reaction to the side character in opposition to that of the reader without the characters seeming trivially stupid or trivially soap opera ignorant.
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also, make sure that you have established a believable way for the character to die if it is one of your chief characters. Everyone has to accept that a dwarf that continually storms out in front of everyone else is eventually going to bite it.
That's extreme, but I do think that the author should always leave an opening in their writing that vaguely hints this person might not be around, or establishes that fatal flaw in gentle ways through out.
Yet, the unexplained death itself can be the impetus for the plot to go forward--in which case, you have to let it happen and make sure you deal with the fall out to the other characters (and thus your readers) and don't just continue the story without them.
There was a famous daytime drama where they loaded everyone on a bus and had it crash. Next day--all new cast dealing with the deaths. Gotta admit, that makes actors nervous near contract signing time.
I never forgave Whedon for killing Buffy's mom, not because he did it, but the following episodes were so... boring!
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I never forgave Whedon for killing Buffy's mom, not because he did it, but the following episodes were so... boring!
An interesting perspective. Not that I share it, I don't; I believe Joyce's death allowed Buffy to go dark. SpikeSex would not have occurred with Joyce in the picture.
I truly believe my life was changed by the DoubleMeat Palace epidode(s), which Joss said were the only episodes to receive protests. No protests from the the anti-supernatural folks about the witches or demons or vampires, but from big fast food companies. If it's all about the values, I'm annoyed.
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That's extreme, but I do think that the author should always leave an opening in their writing that vaguely hints this person might not be around, or establishes that fatal flaw in gentle ways through out.
I don't know about that; seems to me it might be a bit too easy to fall into the trap where the author basically waves a big flag saying "She is going to die" at the reader ;D
I once read a book where the author obviously knew that one of characters was going to die, so he made her such a good character that I'm sure most readers went "oh, good, she's gone" when he finally dealt the blow.
Death is usually (especially in fantasy or sci-fi terms) somewhat unexpected and shocking, so I don't think that foreshadowing the death is really all that necessary. I mean, when there's a big baddie out there all set to destroy the world, will readers find it unbelievable that said baddie killed one of the characters?
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I agree with Arianne - foreshadowing that a character is gonna die just doesn't work for me.
You lose the element of surprise and shock - which is what the death of a character should give you.
That or - thank goodness that twit/villain/idiot is gone!
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I think the only time I'd enjoy a foretelling of a character's death would be if the story was primarily about the events that lead to the death.
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I agree with Arianne - foreshadowing that a character is gonna die just doesn't work for me.
You lose the element of surprise and shock - which is what the death of a character should give you.
That or - thank goodness that twit/villain/idiot is gone!
I dunno, The Book Thief handled it very well. Then again, that was The Book Thief.
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I think it depends on the story and on how subtle the foreshadowing is. I have read authors where certain characters might as well have been wearing red shirts. On the other hand, some authors are clever enough and subtle enough that after the death you realize that it was foreshadowed but not before. In some stories ( King Lear comes to mind again ) you know the character is doomed to die by their foolish actions but ( to use an old cliche ) it's the journey rather than the destination that makes the story.
The best way that I can think of to describe my feelings about the death of a major character (minor characters are a whole different story ) is that I don't like it if it feels frivolous. If you are going to kill off someone that I have grown to know, it better be for important plot or character development not just because someone thought that it would make the story more "realistic".
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it's the journey rather than the destination that makes the story.
My contention is that ^this^ is always the case, and that whether any character dies (or not) should be totally transparent to the reader so that they see the story and not the death (or lack thereof).
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I would agree on the importance of the journey but it is rare that the journey is so great that I don't care about the destination.
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The best way that I can think of to describe my feelings about the death of a major character (minor characters are a whole different story ) is that I don't like it if it feels frivolous. If you are going to kill off someone that I have grown to know, it better be for important plot or character development not just because someone thought that it would make the story more "realistic".
The only time I really considered this was when listening to Joss Whedon on the Serenity commentary talking about killing Wash. The only foreshadowing WAS no foreshadowing. I think it was done just to shake up the audience. While the loss of Wash allows new paths for Zoe and the crew, it was a downer for me.
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The only time I really considered this was when listening to Joss Whedon on the Serenity commentary talking about killing Wash. The only foreshadowing WAS no foreshadowing. I think it was done just to shake up the audience. While the loss of Wash allows new paths for Zoe and the crew, it was a downer for me.
I read in an interview that he says he did it for the "Heightening the suspense" reason. Unlike Book's death, which was to push Mal into character development, with Wash he said he wanted to set a tone that the entire cast might and likely would die during that final battle. Not sure how much I agree with that, but I do recall it working the first time I saw the movie, so I cant argue with the results I guess.