Aha the joys of the 40k universe, we can: A- Ork Nob uses Choppa to de-limb charachter. B- Chaos Lord uses bolter to remove chunks of charachter. C- Tyranid uses claws/bio-gun/teeth to gore charachter. D- Tau decides to plasma-rape the charachter. E- Necron decides to de-skin charachter. F- Eldar Ranger shoots charachter. The list goes on, don't even get me started with what can happen when a commissarr or inquisitor is around...
Good advice here. I was thinking of killing off my main-character the heroine or at least her coming close to the brink of death or something. I'll find something tramatic. After all...I AM the writer of the dead Reading this just gave me a few ideas and bits and pieces of advice that I will use. I must say, when good triumphs over evil (you know what I'm talking about) EVERY SINGLE TIME it can get dull. You need a little end-of-the-life excitement don't cha? Killing is good...in doses.
I must say, this thread is wonderful! It has given me quite a few ideas on how to kill off my main character in a KOTOR story. Great thread!
the best part of creating characters, is killing them! but leave some alive, even if it's just to say 'THE END' as long as the characters you have created are real enough for the reader to care, it's a great way of messing with their heads.
I love it when a character gets killed, but only if it's 1) unexpected or 2) a creative death or 3) unexpected and creative. You can't go wrong with #3.
Creative deaths are the best. Something really obscure that no one will see coming. It really shouldn't be this much fun to kill someone...
I think it depends on the type of story, the nature of the character, and the reasonyou need the character to die. For example, in a story about a couple on a downward spiral into drugs and other self destructibve behavior, having one find the other dead with a needle in his arm is hardly unespected, but may be the precipitating event that makes her start turning her life around. On the other hand, a truly bizarre death in a science fiction story can be the focus of thw entire plot; and if the victim is a character the reader has come to know well, the impact of the death will be profound. Another question is, how dead is dead? Don't make a habit of killing major characters and then resurrecting them later. Sure, once in a while can be sensational, but it can quickly become a bad joke. Gandalf's death with the Balrog was a mythic transformation,yet with all the emotional impact of a permanent demise. At the other end of the spectrum, Kenny in South Park is played for total absurdity. The original Star Trek series, and its extension into the movies, left people wondering how long the death would last before he "got better", and whose turn was next. Patricia Cornwell killed off Kay Scarpetta's long time love, Benton Wesley. then a couple novels later changed her mind. She wrote it that he had to fake his own death to take down an international crime cartel. It worked fairly well as a plot device. However, there were some inconsistencies that made it clear his return to life was an afterthought, not something planned at the time she killed him off.
In that respect, Cogito, I treat my characters like real people. I have power over them, but once I kill them (unless I have already decided that they will 'come back' later, and have planned out how) they stay dead.
I think killing off characters is important to writing. I have a death for some of my main characters in the series I am starting, but they shall die for reasons and their death will effect the outcome of other characters and events. I don't think there needs to be a balance just think of the way you want the story to go. Killing off certain characters however may change the story and feel of it completely. Hope I helped.
for me a character can be killed off for a few reasons -to really screw up the readers perception. e.g. she loved him...but he killed her! how nasty is that!?! thus creating a hatred for a character, or a change in feeling toward a character -when their death was for a reason. if they died for a brave cause, or they died to change the course, then there ya go. e.g. albus dumbledores death in the 6th harry potter book irrevocably changed the course of the last book. those are the two i can think of at the mo, but then it half 3 in the morning. i would say that
I've heard ppl say that killing characters off to prove your story is real is dumb. in a sence they are right. maybe it wasnt phrased right, for me killing off characters to prove that it's real just makes the story more unstable (in a good way) ppl arnt sure who will die next. if someone so important could die for no reason then why not "this guy" or "that girl" or "those fellows over there that you rather liked" I think it makes it unpredictable. nevertheless killing off too many characters can be wasteful. You still need a few ppl left living for the story to have enough twists.
Killing Well, in my book I'm on the verge of killing off main group characters. This will create anger, revenge and hate in the main character. And you don't always have to have good guys win and live... you know what I'm saying? In my book (either calling it XIII Samurai: Recreate or Darkest Dreams), all my characters die and in the end in the final battle between evil and pure evil both the good and bad die. You have to think of something different to make your readers sit on the edge of their seats, doing stuff that's already been done is just a stupid way of writing. Explore your imagination and find a good ending... but I'm going very off topic here. If you kill characters it does have to mean something, but not all the time. You could kill one of your main characters just to kill them if you want, it makes us wonder why and try and figure something out for ourselves. The best books are the books that make you think. Remember that.
In a sort of sub-novel I'm fiddling around with what death means, since it is possible for highly prepared people to have their souls "brought back" after they die. They have to have a special device made for them in order to do this, and there is a time limit involved - for a fair number of people, you have less than five minutes, although it may be far longer depending on circumstance. So to have someone risk his life might not be as brave an action as we might normally call it, since he could be brought back - but there are other things that you can explore. So you can use death to explore differences in thought, opinion, culture, and suchlike. If country A burns bodies and country B preserves them in concentrated saltwater, you can explore the reasons behind those beliefs. Also, death is probably going to have to be mentioned in any story in which a huge disaster occurs or some Great Evil (whether environmental, political, personal, or whatever) comes about. Any story about terribly frightened people will probably have to involve death, at least in the background; otherwise they'd act to remove whatever caused that fear in the first place. (That is, people would probably be willing to throw the local Evil Dictator in jail; if you make him into a truly evil guy who kills people who oppose him, then the inaction on the part of the people makes more sense.) *sigh* This has been on my mind. I'm trying to kill off Os for NaNoWriMo, and it hurts to do so. I like that fellow. He's a decent guy.
I don't think it's dumb if characters die to show the world is real. I believe that's smart and shows that the writer has guts and is in control of the story. If a character must die he must die, period. It also makes the reader afraid for the sake of the other characters. Books where characters don't die but are constantly put in life-threatening situations won't generate any suspense because the reader will know that the writer isn't willing to kill his/her characters, and thus it creates a false sense of peril when any of the characters are "close" to dieing.
I dont know what to do with mine- he is a rebel captured by the Romans in the Jewish revolt. I don't know whether he should he be crucified or fight for freedom.
