On killing characters

How do you feel about it? Are there any characters you have on the chopping block that you feel awful about killing? Because I sure do:

One is Candelaria, who performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save an innocent town from being slaughtered, and one is Dee, who suffers through a traumatic slavery only to eventually be freed, find herself a girlfriend, and get happy...before being killed off by the villain in a Kick the Dog moment aimed at hurting said girlfriend. I'm dreading both of those death scenes- Dee especially, to the point where my friend and I have a little meme about her miraculous survival, which will never happen because the plot sort of requires her to die.

Killing characters can be one of the most dramatic moments of a work and real turning points in how the story plays out.

I found a way to make my screenplay Tale of a Fox more dramatic was to have it so that instead of being already bound to have her soul sucked into a totem to force the villain's soul back into his body, my character Liz Takes the Bullet for the protagonist, Autumn, so that her soul doesn't have to be stored in that totem. And to do that, I changed the way the totem works so that it is more of a chant-activated gun instead of some strange undefined magical artifact. This not only would make it more visually entertaining but also increase the stakes because as long as one can read the Alfeme inscription they are pretty much all-powerful.

I do think it will be hard to write Liz's death since she is a trans character and the unrequited love interest of the protagonist. It would also make relationships more complicated, as the act may be seen as something romantic rather than a platonic interaction... but perhaps this True Companionship could be reinforced, to ensure that these can be platonic reactions. And plus, I'm wondering whether she should have some Famous Last Words as her soul is sucked out or not.

Though she will be revived later on when another soul is sucked into the totem, so whether it would raise or lower the stakes is debatable.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Dec 18th 2020 at 10:15:10 AM

Well, it presents a moral option for the protagonists to have to destroy someone else's soul to get their friend back. There's definitely stakes in that.

Honestly, I'm the sort of person who can kill off villains like nobody's business, but my protagonists are my babies and it's really hard to part with them.

Really, I think this situation is going to be more of the secondary villain taking this into her own hands. When her boyfriend—the main villain—is revived due to the sacrifice, he ends up leaving her behind on the ship. Then, she gathers the totem and yells at him about how the plan didn't go as it was intended, and she wasn't ever willing to kill anyone to revive him. So she readies the totem on the villain—but he, having taken a couple of bites from her shattered crystal leg, telekinetically moves her hands to point the totem at herself at the last second. This kills her, but Liz is revived due to her soul being forced out.

Agreed; having to sacrifice someone else to bring back their friend is an interesting moral dilemma.

Famous Last Words are always important, even if the character doesn’t stay dead. It makes the death scene much more impactful.

I was thinking about some sort of monologue a la "Tears in Rain," but I would honestly want the speech to reflect Liz's speech patterns and ideals in some way. Perhaps it could be something about how she's moved on or something along those lines, but that she still accepts Autumn as a friend. I'd already written something about it that was placed earlier, but it could be definitely moved to her death scene to greaten the impact since she's not always one to talk about her feelings.

But enough about my death scene; how would you imagine yours playing out? Not just you, Jay, but anyone else's?

Famous Last Words don’t need to be a whole speech—they can be as small as one sentence. But you do you.

If I would have any death scenes, period, they would be at or near the end. My Villain Protagonist could willingly use enough energy to kill himself to escape arrest and die a martyr to his supporters, but I’m worried that still might be too bleak. The other option would be to pull a Richard III and have karma catch up to him.

I personally hate killing characters, even the main antagonists.

If I kill them, I can no longer use them. However, resurrecting them cheapens the impact, so I try not to do that more than twice per setting. I find it hard to connect with characters in settings where lots of characters are introduced only to be killed off.

If I do kill off a character, then it is just a minor one scene character that I intended to kill off from the start.

Edited by Count_Spatula on Dec 20th 2020 at 5:25:07 AM

Yes, Sacrificial Lambs are always a good idea for establishing stakes. They don't even have to be human/sapient, just establish what's going to go wrong for them. For example, in my screenplay, the first thing killed by the soul jar is a bird going along its merry way. Also, a spider-snake is killed by the root and bark of a carnivorous tree, and a predatory organism is disturbed and thus flies away.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Dec 20th 2020 at 6:07:15 AM

I agree with Count_Spatula that I dislike killing my characters. It's similar to why I have no "least favorite" characters, just varying degrees of fondness. I created all of them after all and whether they are noble and good or twisted and depraved, I tend to care about their lives and feelings. So it stands to reason that ending them makes me genuinely sad. I will still do it however if I feel that the story calls for it, like their death will impact the world in a great way, or force the development of other characters.

There is actually a unique example where I killed off a character I was quite fond of as my version of a Mercy Kill. He was undergoing a great deal of psychological suffering due to questioning his over a century long career of murder for the first time in his life and his actions only weeks prior were the last straw in triggering an apocalyptic event. So his Heroic Sacrifice was his way of committing suicide and my way of freeing him from his torment. I made it clear through his dialogue with his partner and student of over forty years who begs him not to go that he is ready for the end. His last words before his actual death as he goes down fighting to give his allies time to flee and being reunited with the grandfather who raised him just moments after death show that he has come to peace and is free from his internal conflict.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Dec 20th 2020 at 7:45:08 AM

Oh, you must be just the biggest fan of The Walking Dead, then. Oh, wait, would this joke be funnier if I used Game of Thrones instead? Eh, whatever. I'll still give it to TWD on account of the man, the hero, the legend: T-Dog.

All kidding aside, I'm inclined to agree with one key point you brought up. Characters are tools a story has to create opportunities; give one (or more) an up close and personal tour of a guillotine, and you give yourself less tools. Injections of levity, gone. Action sequences, gone. Character development, gone. I'm not opposed to killing off anyone in my stable, but it's something that has to be done very carefully. With the right timing, when I've gotten pretty much everything I can out of them.

Typing that out makes me sound pretty heartless, I know (and know well enough to give myself the stink-eye next time I look in a mirror). But as a would-be writing hero — as are we all — it's pretty much impossible to not have a bond with characters, even if the only reason is the sheer investment of time, energy, and space in the ol' noggin given to them. So I guess there's a balance struck here. The cold truth and knowledge that characters are ours to use as needed, including murdering the crap out of them. And, simultaneously, the warm ideal that those we create — however unreal, however unrealistic — are worthy of building long-lasting bonds.

That's my theory, at least. I don't know, it's been a bit since I last killed anyone. Except for that one guy...but don't worry about that for now.

Edited by Voltech44 on Dec 20th 2020 at 8:15:57 AM

If you do kill a lead, don't waste it. Make sure your reader really cares about them. Make sure they are a rounded individual, with flaws as well as good bits. Weave them in tightly, make them indispensable.

Then drop the biggest ^*&%@^# bridge you can find on them. Make sure they can't stand up again. Show how this smacks all their friends down.

I made a big part of my Leading Man character development his friendship with a complete opposite 'popular kid'. Then 60 pages in I killed the friend off 8 years before the first chapter, the effect on the friend's wife and daughter, on the lead's marriage, and on how he makes poor choices because of it.

Have you ever decided to kill off a character, then decided to retract it for some purpose of simplification?

Yes. I'm writing a high school drama with a bit of an Anyone Can Die policy. Originally, I was going to kill off my main character Cass's older brother (who is also married to main character Lennie's older sister). I decided against it because that created a whole new plotline with Cass which we didn't really need, and also because my co-writer hated it.

Not for simplification, but just because I realized "Oh, I don't want him to die, he has to much importance to the story and so much more to do". Specifically, I was intending to kill off my character Savage in the climax of book 1. However, I grew way too attached to him and I realized that I don't want to stop writing him- he's a good character with a lot to add to the story if I keep him around.

There's other characters we were planning to kill too, but Savage is the one who always comes to mind.

I have a character I had planned to kill off since the beginning, but he keeps finding ways to be useful and so he keeps belaying his execution for yet another book! lol Next time, buddy....next time! Until you convince me to keep you around yet another book! lol

Yeah. Sometimes I think about one of the characters I used to have, Katie. She was literally going to be "the one who dies who also happened to be Liz's ex-girlfriend." Then I realized the story would be so much better if Liz died and was Autumn's ex-girlfriend, then realized that maybe Liz shouldn't completely die.

I take a pretty strong "I Just Write the Thing" approach, so for me there's little real question of doing it or not doing it: if the character dies in the story, then they die.

It can still be rather affecting, however.

I don't mind killing characters, though as I think on it I think a few of my deaths could be considered Fridging in some form or another. I at least try to make their deaths meaningful (unless the character's a Hate Sink) and those that survive still hold dearly to the time they spent together.