One thing I’ve been having difficulty within the process of plotting out my story is the deaths of two minor characters, but for two different reasons. The first death is my MC’s mother and his entire village (around 30 people). This what kickstarts my MC into his journey since he believes the Big Bads of the story did it, and it will also serve as a bigger plot point later on. What I’m having trouble with is how I’m even supposed to write it without it feeling like a cheap plot device. Since this is at the very beginning of my story I’m wondering if I should start before the fire (the cause of death) and actually introduce his mother and some aspects of his relationship with her, or after the fire, when he’s returning from the marketplace (about a week’s journey) and just noticing the residual smoke in the air. Should I expect readers to really care about his mother or his village? My second character death has its own issues. This character will be in the book for a few chapters as he’s helping the main group out by making them weapons. His death is also essential to my plot, as it shows the Big Bads are a serious threat and it also prompts an otherwise reluctant character to join in the fight. For his death, he’s going to be killed by one of the Big Bads as he attempts to save another character (the person closest to him, who is unaware of what’s happening). The main group has already left his home at this point and I was going to put the chapter in his POV (Since I alternate between my two MC’s POVs). As it is, I want readers to be crying over his death but am unsure as to how I’m supposed to endear him to the audience in the span of a few chapters. For context, he’s basically a god of the afterlife in the body of a sixteen-year-old boy (though he’s been alive for much longer) so he’s very empathetic and has a feel for the souls of others. All animals love him and he loves all animals, he takes care of them when they are sick or injured, he’s basically Snow White but can also talk to dead people. His death also won’t have as much impact on my MC, since they just met, but it will severely affect one of my more major characters (as she saw him as a brother) and the character he died protecting (who will join the group because of this.) He’s based on a few different characters and people I know but I still wonder if he’s coming across as too nice. Should I show some of his flaws? Or is it okay because it’s only a few chapters? Sorry if I'm rambling, it's just something my brains been stuck on for the past few weeks and it's incredibly frustrating. Any insights or advice is welcome, and I will be forever grateful!
I never mourned for Aunt Beru or Uncle Owen. No one's going to give a shit about your protagonist's mom, either. Hell, it's standard practice for protagonists to be orphaned in these genres. You just gotta get used to it. If the other guy isn't important to the reader (which depends on how you write him), then he'll be in the same boat. I might even gloat over Snow White getting offed. >.> None of these things is really that harmful, though, if the story's good.
Honestly the dead-parents-at-the-beginning trope is so overdone that nobody cares anymore, so don't expect most of the readers to care about the mother's death. As for the other guy, some might have sympathy or empathy for him, so some might cry, but personally i won't. But perhaps you can make it sad by showing the emotional impact of his death, instead of focusing on his death scene. Like the reactions of the girl character since she was close to him. Or maybe the guy that he saved wants to live by his example, caring about others and whatnot.
I don't think endearing a character to the readers should be a goal in character design. Whether or not the readers become attached to the character is up to them, not the writer. Focus on fleshing out the characters as YOU would like them to be, and make sure to establish his death as important to the other characters if that's how you wish to proceed with the story. Personally, seeing the death of a specific character in a story, if that character was created JUST to die and generate sympathy with the reader, annoys me and can sometimes be overkill. I put this trope in the same category as "cosmic punishment". I'll pull a classic example of this from anime, which is notorious for killing off minor characters for drawing sympathy. Clannad: After Story is a pretty popular example. Don't read if you plan to watch the show yourself. Spoiler The main character, Tomoya, gets married to his main love interest, Nagisa, from the first season of the show and they have a child together. During childbirth, however, Nagisa dies from a disease that has kept her body in poor health for most of her life. This is a tragic, but good death for the show, because it is built up in the previous episodes and season as a risk that's always present, and the death sets up the rest of the show. After Nagisa's passing, Tomoya falls into a state of depression, living in seclusion while his parents-in-law look after his daughter, Ushio. He becomes addicted to alcohol and gambling to cope with the loss, and his mental state is bothered even more by his troubled relationship with his own father. Eventually Nagisa's parents devise a plan to get Tomoya to look after his young daughter Ushio, and the two end up reconnecting as a parent and child should. Tomoya also reconciles with his dad, and there are touching moments of bonding between the three of them. After this is where the show takes a turning point for the worst. Ushio becomes sick, and it is made known to the viewer that she was born with the same debilitating condition as her mother, but apparently much worse, seeing as how Ushio doesn't recover. She dies in her father's arms, and Tomoya, stricken by another loss and overwhelming sense of grief, has a heart attack and dies as well, while clutching his precious child's body. What in the hell, right? Tragedy is one thing, but this is just cruel and unfair to the characters and viewers. Even worse, the show goes on to bring Ushio, Tomoya, AND Nagisa back to life by turning back time through some sort of magic force that exists in the town they live in, basically undoing everything that happened, making all their deaths up to that point, well, pointless. The entire show was good up until Ushio got sick, then threw in emotional cheap shots. Bad writing like this should be avoided at all costs. Now my example is about main characters, but it should generally apply to minor characters as well. Good luck with your story!
The impact of minor deaths depends on how you see death. Imo, when you let an entire village die, don’t include the happening. Maybe show how the fire starts/that the fire has started/et. I personally wouldn’t want to read how everyone is dying in the fire, it’s sureal to me and wouldn’t be able to connect to the scene. In stories where lots of death happens it numbs down death itself, having then scenes where MC’s on the brink of death won’t seem believable because the mc will survive. As other have stated it’s kind of an overused trope, and won’t bring a lot of depth to the story imo. Also, a death as large as a whole village, all people the MC must have grown up with is something most of us won’t be able to understand of the horrors the mc must’ve gone through. If you really want to add this I personally would on describe it as a hazy suppressed memory, and let the reader fill in blanks. However, if you create a character which for you just exist to die doesn’t matter aslong as you let the the reader believe otherwise. Give the character reason to live for a long period of time; let it be useful to the mc at point b but dies at point a. The death becomes meaningful if the character has hopes and dreams, and shows the mortality of everyone including of the MC’. Like other also stated, how it influences others emotional state is also important. I won’t mind reading a character actually dying if I believe if the character can survive and still be part of the story. So all in all, if you’re writing about death, show that they’re alive.
@MythMachine puts it across very well - I think the advice given is very helpful. They call them "sacrificial lambs", or "sacrificial lions" in the case of main characters. Either way, they mean the same thing: their only purpose is to die. That character can still take an arrow to the eye in the enemy volley and he have been around for the past 25 chapters, and that's OK too. The point is that he should have served his purpose before that point. Which implies the purpose of the character should have been created before you consider how and when they're going to die. Which leads me to an important distinction: characters should die when they have served their purpose, but their purpose should not be served in dying.
Yeah, not so sure I agree that characters shouldn't exist for the purpose of dying. Meaningful deaths that push the plot forward are extremely effective storytelling tools. In my second novel, a character's death is what brings the two main characters back together after they'd had a major falling out. As with anything, I think it just matters how it's written.
Characters ought to serve a function before dying .It ought not to be their only function. The danger comes when you insert a character into a story because you want them to die. You run into the risk of only being focussed on their death that they actually haven't really added anything else to the story. That's when their death is likely to be met by a simple shrug of the soldiers and "Ah well." It's time to kill a character when they have little more to add to the plot, or the plot has headed off in another direction that they probably don't have a place.
@Dracon: Ah. In that case, I disagree with the way you worded it, but not really with what you're trying to say.
Eh, I still disagree. Some characters aren't meant to add anything else to the story. Sometimes their deaths are the whole point--them dying spurs other characters into action. That doesn't mean the character can't be layered and complex. It just means they have a defined role, like a lot of other characters in the story. Whether it affects the reader is up to how it's written, and how it affects the POV character.
I was worried about that to be honest, but one of the main themes of my story is dealing with loss. All of the characters in my story have lost someone close to them, and them struggling with their grief is part of the bigger conflict. I can agree with that, and the whole Clannad thing (I was so mad at that tbh.) I think one of the reasons I'm so eager to endear him to my readers is because, as minor as he is in the story, I know who he is and what he's done and how important he is to some characters, I know how wonderful he is as a person. I suppose I'm just trying to show the readers that as well because I know his death isn't meaningless, I want readers to know that too. Fortunately, my character was not there during the fire (he was at the market which is like a weeks travel to and from) but unfortunately, he is the one who finds the remains. I do think you make a really good point in your second paragraph, because I know in a lot of shows nowadays when a new character is introduced they're usually killed off, to the point that it's now surprising for me when a character continues in the show. I want it to be clear when my character dies that it wasn't expected, it's almost a "wrong place at the wrong time" sort of thing. I agree 100% and I really hope that I didn't make him come across as a character that doesn't serve a purpose before his death. The things the character does in those few chapters have a lingering effect on the rest of the story and the characters, but his death also serves a purpose in the grand scheme of things. I just want to make it clear to readers that his death is a tragedy, that the death he gets isn't one he deserves.
There's a distinction here about caring about the character that died, and caring about the characters that are mourning them. I agree that no one's likely to care about the mother or the friend's deaths. But hopefully they'll care about the MC, so you need to direct the reader's emotion through the MC. Or potentially through others--for example, for the loved-all-the-animals guy, having a cranky grumpy nasty dog that hates everybody else but clearly mourns that character may help draw some emotion from your readers.
Couple random thoughts: 1. Characters can have more than one function. If their continued life doesn't address their story-function, you could kill them off, but you could also just put them on a bus. Being out of the story doesn't mean they have to die. Their death, if you go that way, should serve some other function. 2. It could also be the case that their death is their only function. In this case I think it helps to think of them less as characters and more as just any random plot-beat. Like a surprise rainstorm or something. Just because someone's a person doesn't mean that they need to be a "character" in the sense of having motivations, a personality etc.
This. It's true that character death can serve it's own purpose in the plot, but in order for that death to have impact in the first place, that character must have done something substantial in the story already to impress the reader. If not, then their death must serve some purpose after the fact. Even in the tired trope of "dead parents", we may not really care about the parents, but their deaths still serves a purpose to the main character, so even though it's a cliche, it's not a pointless cliche. In the case of Clannad, the death of Nagisa has impact because she's been in the story all along, and while you are given the information that she is in poor health throughout the story, you still don't want to believe that she will die during childbirth. Her death then sets up Tomoya's depression and estrangement from his daughter, and that in itself reflects his estranged relationship with his own father, which he is able to reconcile after reconnecting with Ushio. Sadly, this pales Ushio's death in comparison. It's so sudden and unforgiving to both the readers and Tomoya that it feels like a slap in the face to all of their efforts to have a more stable family life, a cheap trick with no real purpose to the story. Tomoya's death? There was no more life left in the story for me to even sympathize, even though I grew to love his character. I agree, but I will add that, in my examples, I was referring to deaths that have no purpose to progressing the story or the characters. The character will die, then the cast moves on as if they were never there, or the story ends soon after, throwing any chance for meaning out the window. Heck, a reader can connect with the characters, but if they're killed just for the sake of killing them, with no impact to the plot or other characters, then what is even the point? Why kill a character if they don't need to die for the story? Sympathy for a character is a by-product of good writing and character development, not something that to be fished for with cheap emotional bait. It's even worse when the author can't commit to the death they just wrote and brings the dead characters back to life through some sort of sorcery or skulduggery. The Dragonball manga/anime franchise is infamous for this, to the point that death eventually means practically nothing in the story unless it's a villain death, and sometimes not even then...
I agree that the death of the character's mother doesn't have to personally impact the reader. It impacts the character. It doesn't really matter how the story starts. You could begin with his happy childhood, etc, so that we see what he's lost. You could begin with him arriving back at the village, and seeing it in smoking ruins. You can start with him halfway down the road, grieving and distracted. Or you could start years later, with him grimly clinging to his life's purpose, which is to track down the killers, etc. In all of these instances, we just need to see the impact of the mother's death on your character. We don't have to personally love the mother and mourn her ourselves. The example quoted by @archer88i about Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru is spot-on. SPOILER ALERT for Game of Thrones newbies: The second problem of your 'nice' character is a bit more complicated. I'd direct you to the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Eddard Stark dies at the end of it. Eddard was almost the protagonist in that book. He was a good person, with some political power, trying to do the right thing in trying circumstances. The last thing I expected was for him to die! However, his death set off the train of events that is still ongoing. It was a huge plot point and extremely well-crafted. Of course you don't have to write a Neverendum, like Martin is doing. But you might take some pointers from how he handles this issue with Eddard. A good character whom we identify with, and whom we don't expect to die. Maybe go back and re-read that first book, or read it for the first time, if you haven't done it already. I would be less eager to explore how Martin kills off his other characters, though. I think those subsequent deaths just seemed, for the most part, as if he'd run out of ideas for the characters, or just wanted to keep suspense going. The other deaths quickly became pointless, in my opinion, to the extent that I stopped reading the series and no longer care who gains that throne. At the rate Martin is going, it will simply be the last person left standing.
I agree with this. It doesn't have to be overtly obvious, though--nameless soldiers dying in a battle (onscreen, not just in the background text), for example. They exist in the story only to die. Their deaths may not appear to have any effect on the character, maybe because she's seen so much bloodshed that she's numb to it. But that, in itself, is an effect on the character, I'd argue. So yes, I'd say a death should have some impact on the story or character, no matter how subtle.
How do you want the death to impact the MC emotionally? I think that's the question, rather then how you want it to impact the reader. If he was emotionally close to his mum, then the death could have a lasting impact throughout the story, with him constantly referencing back to "My mum used to do___" and "I miss my mum's cooking" etc. Show him grieving and the readers will feel sad with him. You may not even have to show the death or introduce the mum, but rather start the story with him doing his questing stuff, then at some point before the end of the first chapter show him telling another character: "They murdered my mum, you know." He doesn't even have to go into full detail yet. Just that one line tells the reader his mum is dead and someone killed her. You could continue on in this way, with him dropping clues about her death in conversations, but never describing the full scene of her death in detail and letting the reader put the puzzle pieces together on their own. In my long running series, the MC's mother died when he was 3 years old and he witnessed her murder. It traumatized him, but the incident is not even mentioned until the 3rd novel of the series. Throughout te series you see him mention his mum's death, but if you start to pay attention, you'll notice he describes it different every time, and those close to him, start to realize, he was so young when it happened, that he really doesn't know what happened. Now, I have other characters in the series, who's mums died, but, it'll just be mentioned in passing and no details given, because for those characters, the deaths are not important to the plot. But for the MC, his mum's death is important, because it was the shock of witnessing her death that resulted in his warped view of certain people in his life. So in this case, knowing details of his mum's death becomes important, because it hints to certain aspects of other characters. At no point however is the mother ever introduced as a character, nor is her death scene ever put on the page. This is because there is no need for the reader to get to know her as a character and, leaving the details of her death unknown, is a plot device, which allows the reader to see the MC as an unreliable narrator. So, you see, how you write the death itself, is important to the way you want to reader to see the story. In some stories, getting to know the dead character, may be important for the reader, and I've seen some authors do it where they rotate chapters. Say, chapter 1 shows the fire flashback. Chapter 2 shows the MC in current events. Chapter 3 shows a flash back before the fire with a younger MC interacting with his mum. Chapter 4 is current times with MC. Chapter 5 is an even older flashback. Etc. Like that, so that the reader gets to know the character's mum a little at a time. It all depends on the type of story you want to tell and how you wish to convey it. So there's really no right or wrong answer here. The character death on the way a few chapters in, could be a bit more difficult, if you are trying to go for tear jerking the readers. You'd have to really put the to-be-killed-character right front and center, almost to the point of feeling like he was the MC, so readers are really rooting for him and then BAM, he's dead and readers are... wait...what? But... but... wasn't that the MC? Then the real MC takes over. I've never written a story that used this sort of thing, so not sure exactly how one would go about it. As for the everyone in the village dying... my MC is seen by people as sort of a jinx because every time he arrives at a village, it ends up razed or something. So, I've written several dead village scenes, and the way I do it, is to show him arrive and have a scene of him interacting with people, show the town/village/city as more a less a nice happy place to live, show a few families living their lives. Nothing big, just, so the reader goes "awh what a cute couple, what a nice family" that sort of thing. Then move on the to MC doing his thing, moving the story along, then BOOM, without warning cut to a scene where the city is in ruins, charred bodies in the street, smoldering houses, and the MC is standing watching this... He's all "Oh no, not again" and the reader knows the people he just meet are all dead, but the deaths are not on page. It lets the reader know everyone in the village is dead without doing a scene by scene death of each person. Again it depends on the type of story you want to tell and how you wish to convey it. So there's really no right or wrong answer here. As for, should a character exist just to die.... yeah, I do that a lot. My latest novel in the series for example, the MC comes to this village where child sacrifices are happening and he rescues this little boy early in the novel. The boy's parents have already been murdered, and he can not find any relatives, so having lost his own children, takes the boy in as his own son. You see a very close relationship form over the course of the novel and the story leads the reader to believe they'll be seeing the boy as a regular character throughout the rest of the series.... until the very final scene of the novel when the boy accidently falls into a trap and bleeds to death before the MC can get him out of it. While the death serves no purpose in this particular novel.... the death is important to the next novel in the series, when the MC is now seen as emotionally crushed after the boy's death and it brings back PTSD flashbacks of the deaths of his own children. The boy in this novel, existed for one purpose: to die and trigger a mental meltdown the MC would have in a future novel. So, yes, characters can exist for the purpose of dying. They often do. In the end, my goal is never to draw the reader towards the characters who died, but rather to draw the reader closer to the MC. He is effected by the deaths, yes, but the readers are affected by his responses to the deaths. The readers do not care about the MCs dead mum, but they care about him, and feel sad with him, because he feels sad, not because they feel anything for the mum or the dead friend, or whatever. In the end, it's your novel, you know the story you want to tell, so write it your way.
