(Writing Talk is a type of short-for article centered around conversations about various aspects of writing/authorship. These aren’t usually long reads, but I think it’s fun to jot down some of my thoughts about the writing process as someone who loves the art of it all.)
There’s a lot of ways to wring emotion an audience in a story. For that matter, there’s a lot of different degrees of sadness to begin with, like happy-sad or soul-crushing depression, and so on and so forth. But this article isn’t going to talk about sadness derived from the satisfying conclusion of a long-running story, or an emotional character beat, or a heartbreaking break-up of two favorite characters, or anything like that.
Today, we’re going to be talking about character death (and yes, I avoided using the word ‘Kill‘ in the title of this article because I have no idea how sensitive the content filter for titles is on WordPress, and I didn’t want to press my luck).
Death is a part of life. An inescapable part. And perhaps as a reflection of that, death also features heavily in storytelling. Like crazy pilot Russell flying into the alien mothership and sacrificing himself at the end of Independence Day. Or Obi-Wan letting Darth Vader strike him down in the Death Star during the end of Act Two in Star Wars. Or every single Disney character having a backstory involving the tragic death of at least one parent, if not both.
Character deaths can often be some of the most impactful, memorable, heartbreaking, and tear-jerking moments in storytelling. With the exception of shenanigans usually not found outside of anime and JRPGs, there’s nothing quite as final as death. It’s not something you can just come back from. It’s a deliberate choice on the writer’s part to end a character’s journey with their death, and it’s usually not a decision made lightly specifically because of the massive ramifications it brings with it.
Last time we did one of these, I asked you to try and think about stories you’d read with twists and twist villains. This time, I’d like you to think back on stories you’ve read, movies and shows you’ve seen, and games you’ve played, and try to recall the amount of times a character has died. Probably a lot, right? And you probably have a lot of moments of getting depressed over a character death, feeling empathetic towards a character who lost a loved one, or angry at the unjust demise of a favorite hero (or even a villain).
Death is everywhere in storytelling…but is it always the right course of action to take as an author?
Well, for starters, let’s look at circumstances wherein you shouldn’t kill your characters.
The first big no-no is in regards to shock value, and the pursuit of shock value with no other consideration in mind.
We’ve covered this topic before, as it goes hand-in-hand with the dangers of ‘subverting expectations‘ that a lot of modern media seems to have issues with. When you decide to do something specifically for shock value at the cost of everything else, you cheapen everything from your story, to your characters, to your themes. Shock doesn’t last forever, and once the novelty of an unexpected surprise wears off, your audience is going to recognize how they’ve been played, and how much your story has suffered because of it.
Let’s look at The Last Jedi as a prime example. I’m not going to pretend that my jaw wasn’t down on the floor when big-bad Supreme Leader Snoke was killed mid-speech at the climax of the movie. It was a dramatic decision and one of the most memorable moments of the movie, and I was fascinated at where the story would go from there. The issue is that it went nowhere. Kylo didn’t have the chops to carry the main villain mantle given the complex issues the movie had handled up until then (as in, he simply wasn’t evil or committed enough to make his threat stick), and then the next movie came along and continued to do nothing with it.
Because of this, it became clear that Snoke’s death was simply a ploy. A way to illicit excited cheers in the movie theater and spur discourse on social media. Once the dust settled, it became obvious how little this death mattered for any of the characters present, and it also became apparent that no plan was in place to do anything story-wise with this development. This, as you can imagine, isn’t good. Don’t kill characters just for shock value.
The second big no-no is with regards to Fridging, which is a term used to describe the killing off of a character (usually female) for the exclusive reasoning of providing character development for another character (usually male).
Now, this is a tricky one, because Fridging should never be confused for having a character die and their death impact someone else. Heck, that’s basically how life works. The loss of a good friend or a loved one can have a profound impact on you as a person. It isn’t wrong as an author to have a character die and have their death leave emotional ramifications for someone else, even if it is a female character dying for the sake of a male character. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
What it comes down to is intentionality. Why did our heroes girlfriend just die? Because of a legitimate storytelling reason (like the conclusion of a character arc, the development of a theme, the payoff for a twist, etc.), or was it because the Dead Girlfriend trope is a thing and you just wanted your male hero to brood for a while (again, these genders can be switched around however you’d like). Did the character die unceremoniously just to spur on someone else, without any consideration for their own arcs or the story as a whole. Even worse, was the character created in the first place just to be a flatly developed nobody who dies? Please, fellow authors, don’t do this.
With that in mind, when should you kill off your characters? Well, I’m going to apologize in advance friends, because the answer is that I have no answer. Only you know what’s best for your characters, and what path their stories should take.
Obviously, in a vacuum, there are all sorts of legitimate reasons for wanting to kill a character. Emotional beats are the primary reason. A parent dies and that spurs the hero on to leave the home and explore the world. A treasured ally falls at the hands of an enemy and now our protagonist seeks revenge. Or, to establish the threat and vileness of a villain, they kill off a beloved character. Maybe someone succumbs to a sickness, or dies sacrificing themselves for others.
I have a novel in the works right now (and by works I mean early outlining phases, and it’ll never see the light of day for years) wherein a character I hope my audience enjoys ends up dying near the end. The temptation to keep them alive because of my enjoyment of the character was there, but I realized how solidly it would tie-off their arc if they died how they end up dying. Conversely, I’d planned to kill another character, but after evaluating my reasoning for doing so (or actually my lack of defensible reasoning, as it turned out), I reneged on that idea and spared them.
What really matters is if you’ve taken the story into context when you decide to kill a character. Both at the micro level (how the death affects their own character arc), and also at the macro level (how it affects other characters and the story’s overall theme). If you keep that in mind, you’re essentially golden…
…or are you?
See, there’s another important consideration to take into account, and that has to do with your story’s genre and your story’s audience. Not every genre of story needs to have characters die, and not every type of audience wants to or needs to see characters die to be satisfied in the storytelling.
Lets look at a few genres. Obviously, children’s narrative entertainment is a big thing. Outside of the aforementioned Dead Parents Trope, or a mustache-twirling villain falling to them doom (i.e. Gaston), there’s not much death in children’s entertainment. And why would there be? What do children possibly gain from seeing the deaths of characters they care about in books and shows? How is the messaging of this genre enhanced by that? Well, of course, it isn’t, and that’s what it doesn’t really happen.
The Romance genre is similar. Outside of a potential death in the backstory of a character, there’s not a lot of dying going on, because why would there be? Romance is typically a light-hearted feel-good genre. And then you have mysteries, where people die all the time. It’d be pretty silly to try and tell a murder mystery without someone dying, right? Sometimes the genre itself demands the death of a character or two!
Fairy Tail is one of my favorite anime of all time, and it frequently gets flack for not killing off its characters. While I can (and have) complained in the past about the prevalence of death fakeouts, the act of sparing characters itself is not inherently wrong. By and large, Fairy Tail is a happy comfort show with emphasis on action and fun over in-depth worldbuilding or dramatic tension. It’s not a show that would benefit much from rampant character killing, really. On the flipside, Akame Ga Kill wouldn’t be anywhere near as impactful as it is if it had showed restraint in its many, many deaths. The themes of the show wouldn’t land as hard, and it would feel like a cop-out given the tense, mature tone and style.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t become so focused on the positives of character death (shock value, emotional beats, memorable scenes) that you try to put in character death where there really shouldn’t be any, or conversely don’t become so focused on potential negatives that you’re avoiding killing off a character when you probably should. As I said at the top of the article, death is a part of life, and that inevitability extends to storytelling sometimes.
So the next time you’re writing a story, think twice before killing off that character. Should you do it? Is now the right time? Are you doing it for the right reasons? Or should it be that other character instead? It can be a little overwhelming to think about, but your story will only benefit from it.
Keep on writing, friends!
The Contrarian Corner 