Killing Characters
Normally, I don’t repeat announcements here if I’ve mentioned them on Twitter or Facebook. This one deserves an exception. Seanan McGuire was kind enough to e-mail me last night, and — after the prerequisite taunting — informs me that The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] is #1 on the Locus Bestseller list! It’s Snoopy-dance time!
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So lately, I’ve been thinking about killing characters. Not the redshirts who die to remind us how dangerous the story is. Not the villains who meet their just deserts in the final chapter. I’m talking the central heroes.
I’ve read and watched many a story that killed off the good guys. I’ve seen it done well, and I’ve seen it done badly. Boromir’s death in Lord of the Rings is marvelous. He dies protecting the hobbits and earning redemption. Well done, Tolkien.
Contrast this to Harry Potter. I felt some of the deaths in the series worked, but after a while it felt like a publicity stunt. “Book six comes out soon. Let’s start the betting pool on who she’s going to kill off this time!” “Whoops, we’ve ‘accidentally’ leaked rumors that Snufflepuff the Privy Elf is going to off Snape!”
Joss Whedon is another one who’s known for killing off characters. Sometimes, he does it to great effect. Other times, it feels like he offs a character not because the story necessarily required it, but to show the audience that he’s willing to do it. (The second death in Serenity struck me that way.)
So … when do you kill off a beloved character? How do you do it well? The easy answer is that you do what’s right for the story, but what does that mean?
Among other things, it meant I couldn’t kill Jig off in the goblin series. (I’m assuming that’s not much of a spoiler.) The goblin books were light fantasy, on the fun, feel-good side. I cheated a few times, and I killed off secondary characters, but to kill Jig would have been wrong for the kind of story I was trying to tell.
But what about more serious stories? I’ve been struggling with this for a few weeks now, and here are some of the considerations I’ve come up with.
- Is it realistic for all of the heroes to survive this adventure? (I.e., would not killing someone destroy the suspension of disbelief?)
- Choices and actions in a story have consequences. Is death the appropriate consequence for the character’s actions in this story?
- Am I wimping out if I don’t kill someone? (Am I letting them all live because I like them too much to do what’s necessary?)
- Will this death make the story better?
That last one is hard. Does better mean more emotionally powerful? More memorable? More engaging? More marketable (losing readers who want the fluffier stories, but gaining readers who appreciate the gritty)?
And when is it effective to cheat? Theoretically speaking, imagine an author who killed off a character at the end of a trilogy, but deliberately planted hints that the character might not truly be dead after all. A better ending, or a cowardly cheat?
I don’t have answers for this stuff, which is why I wanted to open it up for discussion. What deaths in books and films have worked for you, and why? What didn’t work? When, as an author or a reader, does it feel right?
Obviously, there may be some spoilers in the comments.
RKCharron
January 7, 2010 @ 9:59 am
George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire & Ice series does it incredibly well. Like you stated in your post, the consequences and actions and story line made it believable even if shocking. Can’t think of who did it bad in a book, although I know I read one or two. Probably blotted them from my mind after a loud “What the Hell?!”.
🙂
Thanks for the discussion post Jim.
David Forbes
January 7, 2010 @ 10:05 am
Interesting article, Jim. I don’t have a lot of problems killing “primary set” characters (for want of a better term). In my first novel I killed a pretty big character and deliberately telegraphed it, but I also had the main character pondering an option that would lead to a different outcome. My goal was to generate tension from the reader wondering, “Is he really going to kill this character or find another way?” I’m not sure it *worked* that way, but that was the goal.
I think the more serious the story, the higher the death count. Otherwise it’s a victory without meaning. I know they’re huge and popular, etc., etc., but the late Robert Jordan went through something like *9,000 pages* of his World of Time series without killing off a single character from the “primary set” (and that set was damn big!).
I don’t think there are hard and fast rules, other than the one I mentioned above, which is more of a guideline (the more serious the story, the higher the death count).
I liked Boromir’s death in the film better than the book, actually. I was incredibly moved by it. As for Serenity, Whedon says he offed the second character (which SHOCKED me when I first saw it) so you would wonder if *any* of them would survive the final battle. And it worked, because after that I did worry and wondered if he was just going to kill everyone and be done with it.
Lindsay E
January 7, 2010 @ 10:34 am
Scott Lynch, in Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Skies over Red Seas, has completely astonished me with the number of characters he’s willing to kill to make a point… because the books, with all their swash and buckle, are very much about pushing the two main characters to their breaking points, physical and mental–and about what the value of winning is, if your world is empty once you’ve won. (The main characters themselves regularly cheat death, to the point of incredulity, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I suspect that one or the other will die by the end of the series, but I honestly don’t know which one, and I’ve got the spot on the wall that I’m going to throw the book at when it happens all picked out.)
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, death in Steven Erickson’s Malazan books is just kind of a speed bump. I’m not very far in, and I’m told that characters do actually die and stay dead, but so far I’ve seen no evidence that supports this. Which I find intensely irritating, but then I’ve found them intensely irritating in many other ways, so this isn’t surprising.
Elaine Corvidae
January 7, 2010 @ 11:39 am
I thought the second death in Serenity was brilliantly done, because it showed just how high the stakes were. The first character had already left the crew, so it wasn’t so high-stakes that he might be offed. But after the second death…well, I spent the rest of the battle scenes chewing my nails in terror of who else might die, because it had become a real possibility that they *could*. As a result, the whole scene is permanently ingrained into my brain; I flash back to it as soon as someone starts talking about truly effective fight scenes. I just can’t believe it would have had that level of impact otherwise.
Steve Buchheit
January 7, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
Well, then there’s Shadow in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.” When that happened, at the beginning, I nearly threw the book across the room. Only my accepting that Neil’s stories are typically pretty good kept me going, and I certainly loved what he did with it.
And the second death in Serenity, to me, was the “cost of magic.” That to get through what they just did required some payment. And the way it happened advanced the story, IMHO.
One of the suggestions I was given for my novel was to have one of the “good guys” get bumped off. That this would give the reader a more emotional connection to the story in wanting the “bad guys” to get their comeuppance. And at first I resisted that idea, but then found my favorite character bitting the big one (and most of the main characters are pretty battered by the end). I think it worked. It certainly added a great emotional subplot (on if completing his quest, the main character would feel better about losing his friend – spoiler, it doesn’t work). And it also added a good reason for how I wanted to the “bad guy” to get his (other than the “I should have seen that coming a mile away” twist).
Steve Buchheit
January 7, 2010 @ 1:11 pm
I should add that my wife feels my reasoning for the second death in Serenity is “complete and utter bullshit” and would probably pummel Joss into pulp if we should ever meet him.
Jim C. Hines
January 7, 2010 @ 1:51 pm
I am ashamed to admit that I’ve not yet read Martin’s work. I knew as soon as I wrote the post that he would be one of the first authors mentioned, and I do intend to remedy this defecit in my reading.
Jim C. Hines
January 7, 2010 @ 1:53 pm
I definitely agree that the second death in Serenity was effective. It felt blatantly manipulative to me, but it did put me into that state of wondering who, if anyone, was going to survive this thing. So it worked, but … I guess I believe it could have worked differently, or better, if that makes sense?
Jim C. Hines
January 7, 2010 @ 2:54 pm
I think that’s another factor to consider, from the author perspective. What point are you trying to make with the story? I think it can be dangerous to think too much about it, because you risk turning a story into a Message. But it is something to keep in mind.
“I’ve got the spot on the wall that I’m going to throw the book at when it happens all picked out.”
This made me smile 🙂
Jim C. Hines
January 7, 2010 @ 2:55 pm
I agree with you that the scene worked. Like you, I was sitting there going, “Is anyone going to survive this mess???” So in that respect it was effective.
But it still felt forced to me. Even as it was working, I could see Joss Whedon pulling my strings, and I don’t like that.
Jim C. Hines
January 7, 2010 @ 2:57 pm
One thing I’m noticing in all of the discussion here and elsewhere is that this sort of death seems a high-stakes move on the author’s part. There’s a high risk of readers throwing the book across the room if it’s done wrong (or probably even if it’s done well but the reader doesn’t want to accept it).
KatG
January 7, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
I usually don’t care if they kill a main character off or not. If it’s a character I like and they kill the person off, then it’s saddening, but if the author reasoned the story needed to go that way, then that’s the story. In t.v./film, it gets a bit more capricious, as new people come in to run a show and decide to shake things up by killing the former creator’s characters off. But I didn’t think that Wash’s death in Serenity was gratuitous, but instead deeply moving, all the more because he was most people’s, including mine, favorite character. I thought it made sense given what he’d just attempted with the ship and with the reputation of the Reavers that Whedon had so far created. I was actually more surprised about how they did the first one, off stage.
But one show where it did bother me was Torchwood, which isn’t a show I watch on a regular basis, especially not being in the UK, but sometimes catch. Torchwood has no problems with killing off major characters, and at one point, killed off two major ones heroically at the end of one of its seasons/mini-series. I didn’t have a problem with that. But when I caught part of the next season, which looked interesting, and then learned that they had killed off another major character who was involved in an interesting storyline, at the end, I wasn’t that interested in following the story. It seemed like they were just repeating themselves, and even though it made sense given the reported danger of what they were facing to have someone die, it didn’t work for me as a story I wanted to be engaged in. But that was more of a one-off, as I have seen many military or horror or other stories where you know someone is going to buy it, but you watch the whole unraveling anyway. So it probably depends on how engaged I am in story and characters when it comes to t.v. and film. If I’m a little engaged or very engaged, a death is unlikely to annoy me. If I’m kind of in the middle, I may feel less interested in proceeding or not get further into the story. If it’s written fiction, though, or maybe theater, I’ll probably strap in for the whole ride and not argue with the writer’s decisions.
Everyone Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die « Twenty Palaces
January 7, 2010 @ 6:17 pm
[…] in books, especially beloved characters and protagonists. You can see the discussion on his main website or follow a much larger conversation (by a factor of ten or more) on his […]
Max
January 7, 2010 @ 6:31 pm
Regarding George “Railroad” Martin, I was certainly surprised by every (named) death that occurred. Given the situations for each, they felt not wholly unrealistic. They were “done well” as you say.
But now I’m left with a story involving characters I don’t care about. The characters I liked are gone, dead now two or three books previous. Take away the marvelous characters and all I have left is page after page of.. well.. what people are wearing, what their coats of arms look like. What they’re eating, what they ate, what they wish they were eating instead. Honestly, I’ve started to skip whole paragraphs anytime anyone enters a scene because I don’t care what their wardrobe is today, nor what’s coming from the kitchen.
Considering what I have to wade through to get to the real story –and that it now surrounds not benchwarmer characters but characters that failed to make the team in the first place– it’s not really worth the effort of reading any further.
I stopped in the middle of.. I think it was book five, which is apparently only half a book to begin with, according to RailRoad. My vested interest in my favorite characters has simply not paid off –and cannot, with most dead and the remainder combined receiving less than 10% of an entire book’s attention.
So you are correct: It is high stakes, gambling current readership against potential readership. If it comes down to it, make sure you’re doing it for the right reason and that there simply is no other way to craft the emotional shock/loss that the story needs.
Elaine Corvidae
January 7, 2010 @ 7:44 pm
Yeah, I’ve basically come to the conclusion that sooner or later Torchwood is going to kill off everyone who isn’t Gwen or Captain Jack. As you said, it’s fallen into a bit of pattern, so the death in Children of Earth was too predictable–it didn’t carry the weight for me that it should have, because I was waiting for it to happen. I’d already written off the character mentally and emotionally (which was a shame, because he was one of my fav characters on the show). Also as a result, I’ll be less invested in any new characters they add to the show, because my reaction will be “more cannon fodder” rather than “oh, look, new and interesting characters to get to know.”
Kendris
January 7, 2010 @ 9:14 pm
If I’m not upset at the death of a character, the author hasn’t done their job. On the other hand, if you’re going to kill off a major character, you’d better have something to fill in the void.
Joel Rosenberg’s ‘Guardians of the Flame’ series held up for a couple of books after he killed off Karl Cullinane, but it’s been drifting in WTF-land for a while now as a series with a strong central focus has devolved into character studies of assorted major and minor players that has completely lost the feel of the early books.
Liz
January 7, 2010 @ 9:58 pm
Imo:
The Redemption and The Mentor deaths are good fallbacks, but you should avoid these clichés, or at least put a new spin on them. They can still work, and work well. For example Ingtar in The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan was both mentor and redemption. It was amazing, ask any WoT fan. They will go on, at length, at how awesome it really was.
In Star Trek: Enterprise, Trip’s death moved me, and I felt that since he died in the last episode, that the series could well and truly end. Killing off all your characters at the end of the story is of course inadvisable. Take it from me; Readers don’t really like it when everyone’s dead.
Basically, you need to have the death mean something, and the more subtle the better. Even if it is a character staying true to oneself, it can have a powerful effect.
Red Shirts are necessary for reality checks. Yes, this is dangerous. Having it be obvious enough that people who have never seen an episode of Star Trek know what being a Red Shirt means, is not so good.
I hope this helps.
Sean
January 7, 2010 @ 11:36 pm
not a book, but the bombdiggidy of all holiness was in the movie deep blue sea when samual l jackson is making his speech and…BAM…he is just like gone…..that is the best killing of a main (and most famous actor) in a movie…..great great stuff there……..stupid movie
sean
Cora
January 8, 2010 @ 12:38 am
Torchwood is actually a perfect example of how not to kill off characters, if you do not want to risk your audience never watching anything you do ever again.
The show killed off what looked like a main character, played by a fairly well known actress, in the first episode. That sort of thing used to be shocking – in 2000 or thereabouts. Spooks did it, CSI did it, Joss Whedon did it, the original Battlestar Galactica did it back in 1978. It was shocking then, it’s not anymore.
When all five Torchwood members survived the end of season 1 in spite of finding themselves in truly dire situations, I assumed that those characters would be safe, which made me happy, because I liked some of them a lot. What is more, an absolutely loathsome secondary character and narrative deadweight, who had actually died in the finale of Torchwood season 1, was actually resurrected by some lame time reversal stunt. So I assumed the core five characters were safe and that it was okay to become attached to them.
But then Torchwood pointlessly and brutally killed off two of its five main characters in the season 2 finale, including my favourite character in the entire show. I was furious, but I still hoped for a resurrection of sorts. But there was none and then in season 3 they killed off another core character, ironically the only one I didn’t hate or want to strangle by that point. Oh yes, and the supposed hero is turned into a guy who kills children. Add to that RTD’s statements of “Dead is dead, there are no resurrections”, even though he resurrected the one character who should have remained dead at the end of season 1 and steadfastly refuses to die ever since. And of course, the parent show Doctor Who never really kills off any important characters either, even if the show would be better for it.
If Torchwood had killed off one or more of the core five characters in season 1, I probably wouldn’t have been as outraged by the latter deaths. Instead I would have treated it as a “Don’t get attached to the characters, they’ll only die anyway” show, which is how I treat Spooks or Joss Whedon’s work and a German cop show no one here will ever have heard of which kills off the partner of the main character every two seasons or so. But as it was, I stopped watching in disgust, even though I loved the show a lot during season 1. Maybe someday I’ll be able to rewatch season 1 and just pretend that season 2 and 3 never happened.
What is more, Torchwood doesn’t kill off its characters for any good reason (when your main character is immortal, killing off his friends and teammates just makes him seem sloppy and careless) but just for shock value. Which is pretty much what Joss Whedon does as well in anything he ever wrote, except that I expect it from Joss and that Joss never actually managed to kill off my favourite characters.
Regarding Serenity, I agree that the last death was shocking (and I really expected them all to die in the following attack), but the other two important deaths in the film actually bothered me more.
Jim C. Hines
January 8, 2010 @ 8:20 am
That sounds like it might get into another area — trying to keep focus in an ever-growing series. So far I’ve done a trilogy and am working on a four-book series, but I can’t imagine trying to do some of these 10 or 20-book series. (Though I’m told the Dresden books are managing to make it work pretty well, at least so far.)
Jim C. Hines
January 8, 2010 @ 8:22 am
Between here, my LJ, and Facebook, I think Torchwood has received more criticism for slaughtering its cast of characters than any other show or book.
Jim C. Hines
January 8, 2010 @ 8:24 am
Samuel L. Jackson makes everything better. If they ever make a movie of my goblin books, I want him to play Tymalous Shadowstar 🙂
Jim C. Hines
January 8, 2010 @ 8:32 am
I think that’s the kind that bothers me most — the deaths that just don’t mean anything. I understand that in real life death is often pointless and random, but fiction is not real life.
Steve Buchheit
January 8, 2010 @ 9:55 am
Okay, I now have a WHOLE NEW perspective on the books. I may have to reread them to fully understand all the permutations of that.
KatG
January 8, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
From what he’s said and from watching his shows, I don’t think Whedon ever kills anyone for shock value. His brain just sometimes says, we’re going to the dark place now. And then sometimes he resurrects them.
Martin wins the award for psyching me out with the surprise killing off of a main character who turns out not to be dead in Game of Thrones. And he did it by doing it really fast, so it did not seem at first a feint. I am not easily deceived by plot maneuvers, so I’ve always been fond of him for that.
Jim C. Hines
January 8, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
It would be a very different take on the character, but I think it could work. If Sylar can play Spock, why can’t Jackson be Shadowstar? Might have to tweak some of the dialogue to fit Jackson’s style, though…
Jim C. Hines
January 8, 2010 @ 2:39 pm
As I understand it, death #2 in Serenity was a deliberate choice to make it clear that anyone could die at any time. So not just for the shock value, no. But while it was effective (I really was wondering who, if anyone, was going ot make it out alive), it also felt … forced. I could feel Joss pulling my strings, and I didn’t like that.
I know it worked for some people. And some of my reaction is probably because I really liked that character. But still … didn’t really work for me the way it happened.
Marilynn Byerly
January 8, 2010 @ 4:32 pm
Having people die is no more realistic than not having people die. Sometimes, everyone survives in the real world, just as in fiction.
I like Stephen King’s comment on the literary equivalent of Red Shirts. First you make the reader care for a character, then you kill that character.
Some nameless guy gets killed by a monster. Yawn. Fred on the way to the convenience store in the middle of the night because his beloved pregnant wife craves pickles is killed by the monster, and the reader cares.
That said, I don’t like to read about or watch an important character die. And the more often it happens, the less I’m engaged in the story. As a writer, I remember that and try to avoid annihilating too many characters.
Stuart Clark
January 12, 2010 @ 10:26 pm
The most stunning death for me (and by that I mean, I was completely stunned by it!) was that of the character of Allanon in Terry Brooks first Shannara trilogy. He was such a strong, central character, you began to believe that he was invincible. When it happened, I just literally could not believe it – but part of that was because his death scene was written so well.
As a writer myself, I don’t think it’s realistic to have all your heroes survive. My character’s are in risky situations. Yes, they have a healthy sense of self-preservation, but sometimes surviving is more about luck than anything else. Not all character’s can survive everything you throw at them.
I have mixed feelings about killing off central characters. It’s genuinely heart-breaking to do it. You’ve invested so much of yourself in writing this character, in creating them and making them believable that killing them off is almost a travesty. The flip side of that coin is that once a central character has been killed off, I feel that it frees me up to focus on other things in the novel. It’s a double edged sword, but I think it needs to be done – although not necessarily with a sword.
Diana
March 27, 2010 @ 1:31 pm
I agree– Allanon’s death bothered me more than most character deaths I have read. Partially because he was my favorite character… largely because he was this FORCE, this invincible being that was always there when things got tough. Having him die was intense… what happens when the one you’ve always relied on is no longer there? Just my two cents.
Diana
March 27, 2010 @ 1:33 pm
In terms of deaths NOT done well, I think the last Harry Potter book was the worst I have read. At one point I decided that she killed someone off whenever her editor called to check on her progress. It didn’t really seem to serve any purpose after a while, and doing it out of spite seemed as good a reason as any I can come up with.
Jim C. Hines
March 31, 2010 @ 7:50 am
I don’t know that I’d call it the worst, but I wasn’t happy. I definitely lost the sense that the deaths served the purpose, as opposed to being there for some other external purpose.
I do believe fiction is manipulative, with the author deliberately trying to evoke certain reactions from the readers. But there’s subtle, effective manipulation, and there’s the big, clumsy, blatant kind.