My protagonist (lets call him Bob) starts the story as a likeable detective, definitely a bit jaded , but not so extreme that he is a boring grizzled detective trope. He does his job because he has a genuine desire to help people, and is a firm believer in justice. His partner is a women (lets call her Betty) with extensive forensic experience who has only newly become part of the operation. One day, while both are at a public event, a famous philanthropist who is speaking that day gets shot while giving a speech, resulting in the events of the story taking place. By the end of the story, Bob needs to be a man willing to murder political figures for their crimes without any regard for legality, essentially becoming a borderline nilalistic vigilante. during the story, it is reveled that pretty much the entire legal system of his nation is corrupt, giving valid reason for this. The problem lies in that during the events of the story, Betty and Bob develop a romance, and then Betty dies. The obvious motivation for Bob to go full vigilante would be because of Bettys death, but that sounds a lot like fridging and I would very much like to avoid that. Unfortunately, Betty is a character that has to exist for this story to work, and she definitely has to be dead by the end, and I don't really know how to have this character without it seeming a lot like fridging. I suppose i could make Bob gay, but that seems dodgy and like shallow character motivation. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I'm a little troubled by the Betty & Bob thing, you might want to change one of those names. Or you might be able to make it work if you can create good characters with some depth, and maybe people make fun of them as a couple for the names. First thing that comes to mind is the corrupt government kidnaps or tortures or kills somebody in Bob's family, or a friend or something, before Betty dies. Oh, and I feel it's my sacred duty to inform you, since it seems to be an important word to you, that Nihilistic only has one vowel in it. Makes it easy to remember.
Another possibility. This is the basic premise for the beginning of Ben Hur: Ben had a friend when he was a young boy named Messala. They were very competitive and athletic, liked to run and race and test each other at sling and javelin and wrestling. Messala moved away, and returns a decade or 2 later, only now he's some kind of digniatry for Rome. Ben Hur is a Jew, and in fact the political leader of Judea, and Messala is here to announce that Rome is going to annex Judea, and it will all go much easier if Ben helps rather than making trouble. Their meeting begins as a friendly reunion but ends bitterly, as Ben realizes there's no way in hell he's going to sell out his own people, and his former friend is now his bitterest enemy. If you adapt this or some variation of it then there's no need for anybody to die, which could be considered fridging (it sort of sounds like fridging means nobody can die anymore in order to kick off a story... or at least a lot of people seem to think so.)
All characters serve the story. They are not real people and their lives are not fair. Their lives are deliberately unfair because events conspire against them to further the story. These characters are literally being used and discarded. There are pros out there who pretend that the story world is the real world and that characters should be respected as if they're alive. Don't let them influence you. If a character needs to be killed, then it's RIP and don't worry about the funeral. Same thing goes for them being hurt, slurred, offended, or wronged in any way. That's all in my opinion, and you should be as willing to ignore mine as much as anyone else's. I would just point out that the people giving the "X cannot die" advice are not interested in seeing you write a better story. (Keyword: story). They'll say they want your writing to be more real. (Keyword: real). The story world is not the real world. It's a beautiful lie. I want you to write a better story, and so my advice is to put the story first. If there's a danger, it's in being cliché. That's what I would worry about. If you don't want the MC to have a death/revenge purpose, then just give him something else to care about. It's all about loss. If he cares about what's being lost, then that's enough. Establish its meaning to him. It could be something he had that was stolen or something he was going to get that was taken/ruined by someone else. He could also be acting as a proxy for another. He starts on a mad quest to get what was lost, and the GF tries to stop him. She's killed in the process. She wasn't necessarily wrong though, just unfortunate. Maybe her death moves him away from his goal. But then another loss moves him back to his desire. The question then is: what can the MC lose? You're ruling out the life of a loved one. You still have property, wealth, sanity, health, freedom, love, respect, faith, status. (I'm sure there are others.) You also have the negatives of those. That would really twist things far away from the dying GF.
Those were placeholder names lol I thought the genericness was enough to convey that Also in my defense I am slightly drunk and watching the dark knight rises so I might have used the word nihilism a few more times than I intended Heath Ledger is honestly astounding as the joker
Can't argue with that. I'm about to catch up. Still got a few Bud Ice's left over from the 4th. Down tha hatch!!
All fair points. I suppose one part of my concern would be that fridging is so common that killing off the gf might be the most predictable part of my story, even if doing it did not bother me for other reasons. Your suggestions are definitely good, And I will probably incorporate them to some degree, but I do need to find a way to get rid of her character by the end without being obvious... If she does need to die, then do you have any suggestions as to how I could try to make that less obvious? Its just such a common trope and it is frankly the weakest part of the story.
BINGO!! Fridging, bury your gays, these are really just very specific subheadings under a particular cliche, that of killing off a person who served no purpose other than to kick off a revenge plot. Whether they're gay or female or have curly hair is irrelevant, and kind of oddly specific. The way to avoid it is to make sure the character has some depth, some purpose other than to be a too-perfect girlfriend or wife or friend (ever see the Netflix series The Punisher? ) and then get killed to show how awful the bad guy is and how wounded the protag is. And don't get me wrong, I really liked most aspects of The Punisher, but that whole thing with his flashbacks to Paradise and his Utterly Perfect Wife and Kids were just done poorly, they felt like a Breck commercial rather than part of the same series. Though I really did like the way he would literally get punched into a flashback.
I am taking care to try and make Betty an active character instead of a helpless secondary character without any agency, Do you think that as long as she is portrayed as an actual human instead of a cardboard cutout perfect girlfriend it will be a little more tasteful? I am fully aware that this kind of story tends to trivialize the female characters quite a bit, otherwise I would not be so hesitant. Sometimes even if a story does not use a cliche itself, you need to be very aware that the genre has a bad rap in some areas.
I think so, or at least I believe it can be, depending of course on how it's handled. She needs to be more than just a love interest, she needs to have her own goals, her own life. And it might be hard to develop her enough if she dies pretty early. But I'm getting out of my depth here, I've never written such a character and I'm not very familiar with Detective stories in general. I guess I've seen more movies than read the books.
Maybe flip the characters? Do a gender swap. have Betty your protagonist/detective and Bob gets killed. At least imagine it that way for a while, and I mean really think about it, maybe write about it for a while, see how it's different if it is. Maybe even do it that way for real.
The plan is that she dies very late in the story and is actually the one to solve the mystery. She dies waiting for the main character to show up so she can reveal the plot twist. I should have mentioned this before, but this is actually a storyboard for a visually told story, not a book. I guess I am just going to have to go for it, I can gone over my plan and her death is the only way anything makes sense. Thanks for the advice!
The problem is that the story takes place in an analog for 1960's america. I don't imagine a female detective would have been taken seriously enough to be on stage during a famous assassination. Doing that might be interesting, But would drastically change most of the character interactions.
The TV series Police Woman with Angie Dickinson disagrees, though that might have been in the 70's. [Yep, 1974. My bad.] But yeah, I see where you're coming from. I still might try writing about it with the roles flipped just as an exercise (I do stuff like that all the time and advocate it freely). When you say visually, are you the one who recently said you're an animator? I've done a bit of that myself in the past, in the form of stopmotion.
Somewhat new to animation, but yes. Never done anything this complex before, but I am having fun playing with art styles a bit. It will definitely be a long while before I have anything close to presentable, but I am going to take pride in making it look as good as I can. Ill try to flip the roles, but honestly it just seems like the hassles that would accompany a female detective at that time would bog down a story that could be better told without that(Much more plot driven than the typical old timey detective story). Ill probably take a look at police women to see how well it works in practice.
Oh, if you were going to do it as an exercise, I wouldn't worry about all that. Just write a scene or 2 with them flipped, and see how it changes the dynamics. But honestly, I see no need for that now, it sounds like the character is well developed and does far too much to be considered a fridging. I also like to re-write scenes with the characters 10 years old on a playground, or just mix things up like that to break out of the stereotypes,m to show me where they are and how I might change them. It's playful and fun and helps promote creative thinking. Actually, I don't know why I said 'rewrite a scene or two", that isn't really what I do. I write exploratory scenes, that aren't in the story itself, with the characters changed in certain ways or somehow the relationship dynamics changed.
