Avoiding Death as Shock Value

I have this female character who plays a pretty major role in the 'first act' of my story. She's one of the main characters and happens to be a well rounded Action Girl to boot. However, at the end of the first act she is killed suddenly and her death is a catylist for many of the events afterwards. She is mentioned a couple times afterwards, (but not so little as to be a Forgotten Fallen Friend) and isn't downgraded to a "THIS IS FOR blank" type idea.

• Her death is intended to be shocking for the audience, not because she's a woman or it's done particuarly brutally, but to show that the laws of physics in their world has gone horribly wrong. Any tips for acheivng this?

Write the death as if it were for a male, then change it. That's what I would do, anyhow.

Write the scene exactly as if you intended her to survive, right up until she doesnt.

It sounds to me like your real problem is fear of "women in refrigerators" syndrome, not death as shock value per se.

The title and the bullet imply you're asking different questions... are you asking for advice on avoiding fridging her or on how to make her death shocking?

If it's the former, you seem more afraid of the symptoms than the disease, really. Or at least you're only focusing on the symptoms. There's probably all sorts of stuff you can find explaining why fridging women is bad, and it's that you should take into consideration. The broad strokes are that it kills or harms a female character, entirely for its effects on another (usually male) character, so it's not treating her with respect or as a person in her own right. (And in aggregate the implications are... well, you know the rest.) So, you know, aim to... not do that.

The main way to do it is to treat her as important before her death and after it, to make sure she's not forgotten, to have her remembered for her actions or character rather than how she died (though her death can be memorable separately), etc. Depending on her relationship with the other characters and how they feel towards her, plus how often the other characters lose those they care about, you'd expect someone dying in a shocking way to still affect later on. And if you're concerned about being "accidentally sexist" you'd also include other women who are important and significant and heroes of their own stories.

If it's the latter... that's not really answerable without knowing the actual circumstances. You can probably cheat a little by apparently raising death flags for someone else who ends up surviving, which will distract the readers from expecting her death. Set up a character arc that is suddenly aborted (a risky tactic). But it sounds like it's the manner of death rather than the person who dies that should be shocking? In that case you'd drop hints that something magical is going on, but no one actually expects the laws of physics to change so they keep acting as though magic isn't fucking everything up. And then they're wrong and someone dies. You'd probably also do that if someone wasn't going to die during the reveal, mind.

Yeah, fridging her is the thing I'm most worried about

edited 30th Sep '13 2:17:51 PM by TheMuse

Well, that's good, because death will pretty much always have shock value if you write it well.

Well yeah, it's supposed to be shocking, it's a serious Wham Moment. I just don't want to fall prey to stuffing a strong female character into a fridge or being accused of killing someone off just for shock value.