How to Kill a Redshirt · 5:35am Jan 24th, 2015
Killing extras is pointless. Everyone knows this. Authors asked what they could do better, and the general consensus seems to be that we need to "spend more time with the character" before they get killed off. But what constitutes this "more time"? It is allegedly supposed to be spent "getting to know the character better", but we have all heard Niceguy McOrphanOutcast's five page backstory, and he is still a waaaangsty monologuing dweeb. So what do we do?
I think to answer the question, we need not ask what we know about a character, but what the character promises the reader.
Stop by enough comment sections and you will soon learn that readers are ruthless. They know what they want, and they know when they are getting it. You can lose people as early as the first sentence if you are not careful. So if they are here for their own entertainment or perhaps intellectual satisfaction, why do we really think that bonding time is the core building block of reader investment in a character? Love interests are the perfect counter argument: onscreen for half the movie, and we still don't remember their name. Why? Because their effect on the plot could have been filled by the sidekick and their presence came at the cost of a good 15 minute will-they-or-won't-they plot cul-de-sac.
Readers stick with a story because they have been made a promise: give me your time now and you will get to see cool stuff later. Cold and calculating as it may be, I think this is the best basis for understanding reader investment. The key element in reader investment is that the reader expects a character to pay out in some form of entertainment and has decided to keep reading until the payout happens. This has a few interesting consequences.
Let us return to the problem of killing the extra. Why does no one care that the redshirt died? Because we know better. They could walk in and tell us their life's story, but it would not change the fact that they were a broken promise from the start. If we want reader investment, then the reader needs a reasonable assurance that we are going to pay out at some point.
Even if we can convince the reader that the redshirt is not going to be killed off until later, there is the question of what the payout is going to be. We can certainly try spending time building up that they are a good person: heroic, brave, bold and so forth, but this misses the mark. Look at any standard heroic protagonist: a nice person whom the story has made "the one" because reasons. Usual reader reaction? Meh. Bored. Second in command is best character (and the villain is totally hot). We are not invested in them but rather in the payout from the things that are happening around them.
What is this payout? The easiest thing to point to are "moments." These are the trailer shots or scenes that you tell your friends about when you are trying to get them to read the story. You know the ones: dead of night, sunglasses on, shotgun in both hands, kick in the door. In general, we want to know that the character is going to give us some kind of memorable climax that only they can give. But characters are not limited to climax. There are some archetypes such as the wide-eyed innocent or deadpan snarker who we get invested in because they manage the tone and make the rest of the story bearable. Even if they have less flashy roles, we cannot imagine it being the same story without their own unique touch.
Thus, when playing with reader investment, we are not threatening the physical character, but rather what the reader can expect from the story that they have invested their time in. If you destroy the Golden Oaks Library, you are not just destroying a tree, but also Twilight's identity as that adorkable bookworm who even after becoming a princess and getting her wings preferred to stay with her friends as a humble librarian. But now the tree is gone and there is a castle, so try as she might, we have lost an important part of our little Purple Smart. To late. It's gone. It can't come back. If you were here for that part of Twilight, this is your stop.
What does this mean for our redshirt? If we want the reader investment for the inevitable death, we do not have to tell his backstory or give a melodramatic description of the kill. We just need to get the reader to trust that our redshirt is trustworthy and has a pay out that is worth putting in the time to experience. In practice, this means that we cannot think of them as an extra. If the story would be the same after a character dies, it is safe to say the reader is not going to be invested. After all: you were not invested either.
Supposing you follow the architect school of story planning, if you want reader emotional investment in your two scene redshirt, I dare you to give them some space in your plot notes. Plan as though they never died. Include the character for a few chapters past the planned scene of death. How does that character fit in with the plot and heroes? What qualities might they have that could tie them closer to the plot? How do they make themselves useful? What kinds of scenes do they inspire? Let your story rest on that wobbly table leg. Forget they are going to die. Now write your scene with that mindset:
Nothing going on here. Just establishing our two privates in the British Army as brothers in arms surviving withering Prussian shot and shell. Protagonist just took shrapnel through the leg after shoving redshirt out of the way of a bomb. But redshirt's a loyal type: he goes back to give protagonist a shoulder. They are limping away from the charging Prussians. Enemy is gaining. Formation's breaking. I hear Prussian prison camps are brutal, but if we just press on we'll be-
And then bullet for redshirt.
Redshirt nooooooooooo! Notice how the story has changed: we opened on two people on mutual terms helping each other to survive. We proved they can each hold up their end of the action. We might have even given them a moment staring eye to eye telling each other to buck up and get hobbling. Yes, the reader will be suspicious that it is the first scene, and it is easy to kill people off early on when there is not much to lose by doing so, but if we offer the reader the seeds of a plausible brother's story, who are they to say we are not going to write it?
Granted, this can smack of bait and switch. Remember that if you get your reader invested, you always owe them payoff -- preferably a moment or climax. Otherwise it makes it harder to get them to trust you when you start building up someone else. This is true with all characters, not just those you are killing off. If you are writing to get someone invested, you owe us some payoff before their last scene or else that character is going to fall flat on their face.
So our redshirt is shot through the lung and there is no way he is going to make it. Let him stagger on a few steps, coughing blood, drop protagonist into a convenient trench, grab a rifle, and go down shooting. Maybe let him do something desperately clever like conceal a grenade in his coat and only pull the pin with his shaking hands when he can see the whites of their eyes. We hardly knew ye, we thought we'd know ye longer, but we can still salute you because you may not have given us what we expected, but you gave us something interesting regardless.
Remember the followup as well. You planned as though the character was going to be around for a few more chapters, so now you have some convenient holes. Always leave one or two unfilled. Who is going to watch protagonist's back while he's recovering? Does our protagonist know German? Redshirt did -- he caught a few of the orders being shouted just in time to find cover. But now who is going to overhear the jailors' conversations and give us a heads up? These problems will be solved eventually, but it is only when we let them be problems for a little bit and remember that redshirt could have saved us a lot of trouble that our readers can properly mourn. Redshirt was so cool. If he were here right now, we'd have more story faster. I really hope protagonist can wreck those Huns -- they killed my time investment and derailed my story, and that's terrible.
Reader investment most reliably occurs when readers invest their time to read your story for the sake of a payoff. They are then interested most directly in their time being rewarded by the elements that caught their interest. Thus, the starting place for building strong emotional investment is not looking at the past or present, but rather establishing that this character has a future that is worth paying time to see. When readers pay their time, they get skin in the game, and only when they put skin in the game can we can play with it. Do so mercilessly 
What about Owlowiscious, though?!
I just crash their ships.
The princesses will never know I was the culprit! 
Unless Pinkie Pie tells on me. 
Hmm... good, clear advice. I've never killed off a character before, but now I want to try, so I can see how well I do. :P
2743620
What have I done!?
2743433
Well, yes, if you are going to kill them off wholesale, you might as well be efficient about it. Granted, do make sure you light the magazine before impact. Such a pity to let good powder and shot go to waste
2743432
Twi saved Owlowiscious. Granted, he had such a bit role that she more or less saved him from obscurity...
2743901
True, but we also saw him fly away... That's the one thing I'd like Season 5 to explain: Did he leave for good, or will he return and stay with Twilight in her new castle?
Also, I just realized how little relevance my comment has to this blog with the possibility that he could come back... Sorry about that.
2743901 Lol, very true for good old sailing ships. I meant spaceships crashing from orbit.
2743914
Maybe the captain is a steampunk enthusiast and keeps some black powder around for sentimental reasons?
2743909
I like comments. Therefore comments are relevant
And of course the most perfect possible example of this is such an insane spoiler for such a great movie that even to this day I hesitate to be explicit about it.
fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/113/b/4/i_am_a_leaf_on_the_wind___watch_how_i_soar_by_jasonmcmahon76-d4xdkrh.jpg
2749705
If it is the movie I'm thinking of, doesn't it START with the movie saying that he is going to die?
3689020
Definitely not. (The image file name is a clue.) There's an ironic callback to something the character said earlier but it's not presented as a statement of impending plot.
I can check in with you privately after the con if you want to compare notes on which movies we're respectively thinking of.
3689531
Oh, no, I just Googled it. We're definitely thinking of different movies. I was thinking of American Beauty.
3689020 3689531
Holy off-topic blog necro, Mare-Do-Well!
3690558
Ah, we were discussing this blog post in the write-off Skype and I kind of randomly joined the comment chain. Sorry about that.
3691098
No worries, I was just a little surprised my blogs still get traffic given I have not written in awhile.