Death in Fiction

One thing I seem to be reminded of every time it's come up, I'm pretty bad at murdering my characters.

Any advice, other than just not killing them?

Comments

[Lord Of Dorkness]

There's shades between 'Just Peachy' and 'He's dead, Jim.'

As long as you don't mind keeping track of more detail, there's always the scars or disfigurement route. That way, the character suffers a permanent (or at least decently semi-permanent depending on the magic/tech level of the setting.) blow against them.

Might even be the end for them as power-players without being The End for them.

You've ever read the Dresden Files? If not, they might be a good inspiration for what I'm talking about.

[Silver Chord]

In order for you to effectively kill your characters off, they need to have a tragic, and sometimes gruesome death. Not only that, but you need to make sure that your character had a strong development before they die. Also, when you set them up to be murdered, don't just kill them quickly and very suddenly. Most of the time, that rarely works. It worked in Fallout: Equestria, but that was because it was already a tragic setting and when a protagonist died, the author built it up so that the death was so tragic that it affected the reader.

... Did that help?

[Spiritus Arcane]

Make it a good death? Everyone loves a good heroic sacrifice.

[Fresnor]

Hey! It was your fault for not leaving a body. If there's no body then you can't prove that they are dead. Also if you don't want to kill them that is what a vegetative state is for or the nut house.

[harts fire]

it sounds like you really need to talk. you know ware to find me most of the time I am there.

[badninja]

If you need to kill a character it needs to be by their own actions, either intentional or by their choices. For an example in the web comic Order of the Stick had a villain who's own actions led to their own death. The villain got them self killed by not thinking out their actions. It was a very unsettling death and actually pretty tragic because if they had not made the choices they did, they never would have been in that situation to begin with.

So if the character is in a situation that results in their death then it has to come. You do a good job of making your characters their own beings and if their own choices lead to their deaths then so be it.

[David Silver]

3469738 Sure it did. Maybe the actual killing blow was too quick. That would explain a lot, and is worth considering.

[David Silver]

3469758 It twere the actions of a close friend that spelled their end.

[Silver Chord]

3469760 ... I helped?

[David Silver]

3469770 You completely did, thank you. :)

[Silver Chord]

3469771 I helped! I helped! [Silver calls his mother.] Hey mom! I helped someone!

[LordMentat]

1. Character is whisked away via DeusExMachina/MagicBullShittus to a far away place.

2. Character is stoned. The rocky kind.

3. Character leaves on a journey of self-introspection.

4. Character is jailed for doing bad things and forgotten.

5. Character just moves away to another town and does boring things like mowing grass for a living.

All ideas where you can get rid of a Character and still be able to bring them back later if you need someone to fill dead air or someone for 'save-the-day'-izims.

Remember, Characters are not dead till you see the body.

[David Silver]

3469775 I find it kind of amazing that your name is Silver, all matters considered.

[David Silver]

3469777 They didn't see a dead body, but the riot over the scene was immediate, loud, and resulted in about 5 more -1s.

[Alzrius]

All characters ultimately act in service to the story. If a character's death is something that has impact, both in how it happens (e.g. it seems to follow a narratively-intuitive progression of events, something that is beyond simple cause-and-effect relationships, but instead feels like a reasonable outcome of the plot itself), and in how it affects both the in-character world around them and the flow and pacing of the tale, then it's something that can be admired, even if it's tragic.

It's hard to do, for certain, and that's even if we leave aside writers becoming too attached to their characters to let them go.

[David Silver]

3469835 I don't have that problem at least. Suffer, poor character. SUFFER!

[No one is home]

There's nothing wrong, in my book, with how you killed Silver. It was brutal, senseless, and radom. Because that's how death works.
duh-dum-da-ta-da-da That's Death.
Of course I'm probably the least qualified person here to offer advice on writing stories to NOT get down-votes. But asked opiions and that's mine.

[David Silver]

3469919 Brutal, surely, but it wasn't random, or so I didn't aim for it to be. It had an in character reason to happen that didn't involve chance. The pieces were in place in the chapter before things came down. I just saw them in the right formation, and death came to visit. Brutal, swift... Maybe too swift.

But random, and senseless? I hope not.

[Istaran]

As general advice, if you kill a character they should stay dead. You should explore the ramifications of their death, emotional and practical, and let their death be felt. And then.... no and then. They're dead.
If you do that, you let death be death.
Characters can reach non-lethal ends to their stories, and live on to potentially come back, or maybe never come back. The story can live on without the character, and pick up as someone else's story. Etc. Lots of options. But if you reverse death, you open up a different can of worms. You prevent death from being death. Which makes for a very different sort of story.

Silver in particular already crossed that line. Tying it to alicorness and cannibalizing an unborn foal in the process helped limit how much it could 'cheapen' death, but it still did. This story is one in which death is not necessarily permanent, already.

[David Silver]

3470011 I admit to not knowing where you're going with this. If death lost its teeth, why the violent reaction to it? I'm not the one moping about death being important. The readers said it was too much, undeserved, etc, etc.

[No one is home]

3469939 Maybe I need to clarify. When I say "senseless and random", I don't mean it the way I think your taking it. I think maybe "unexpected" is a better word than "random". No-one saw it coming, most certainly not the characters in the story itself. When I say "senseless", well I think that's a good word actually. He didn't die in a noble sacrifice, or in a heroic act of defiance. He died because of a computer error.
Not saying that it didn't make sense. Or that it happened out of context to the story. Not at all. Like I said, I liked the way it was writen. It was a real sucker punch where you see the pieces falling in place about the same time as the victim and it builds into a total gut shot that leaves the reader feeling empty inside and maybe a little sick. That said, when you unexpectedly kill off characters that are projections of yourself, you should always end with an authors note stating, in no uncertain terms, that you are in no way depressed or anything like that, and it was all part of the show. It saves everyone from the awkward, "you okay dude?" questions.

[David Silver]

3470051 I never claimed to be a well person. It only fuels my writing.

[serPomiz]

the blow is not letal if the characther can still give the final speech trope, may it bebleeding out or not; unless cut in half.

effective death have buildings, but fast resolution, endign up with a corpse and the one around either try to avoid the same end, or to grasp that X is actually dead

or, it is so sudden thatthe readed have to re-read the thing more than once to understeand what happened

and, most important thing, unless someone on a third part actually checked the body, the death is not confirmed

[albedoequals1]

Several people have said something similar to this, but I think to make a death scene work, there has to be a good reason for the death. In fiction, having things just work out bad for someone is never very satisfying. It's much easier to cope with the death of an important character if they either died from a calculated risk, or lost to the villain. If the hero goes into a deadly situation to accomplish something important, then the thing they were trying to do gives the death weight. If the hero dies because a villain killed them, the death serves to make the reader hate the villain.

Real life deaths rarely have any purpose, but story deaths should always be "needed" by the story. Even the apparently senseless deaths in Fallout: Equestria had a purpose; showing the reader that nobody was safe made the action more tense.

[David Silver]

3470084 It fails that margin, I suppose? Since the immediate danger to the rest of everything was ramped down a bit before the falling hammer came.

[Luckyfanisaac]

Half alive half dead.?.
img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130521143632/tardis/images/7/7e/The_Master_Unstable_Body.jpg

[albedoequals1]

3470115 Maybe I'm missing context, but I got the impression that he died from an unfortunate misunderstanding. Plus, the actual cause of death would have totally escapable except that you wanted him to die there.

I'm basing this characterization mostly on the fact that nobody in or out of the story was talking about his noble sacrifice, but rather, "What? He died? Why?"

[David Silver]

3470142 Very few accepted the death, in or out of the story. This much is entirely true.

The plot rolls on!

[David Silver]

3470142 'wanted him to die there'

This statement feels...

Don't I technically 'want' everything that happens in a story, being the one writing it? I argue otherwise. I let my characters tell me what happens, and very rarely do I get the final vote. I don't write that way.

[albedoequals1]

3470156

I let my characters tell me what happens

Yes, but your characters are also you, so it all comes back to you eventually. There is always a reason for everything, but the reason for this specific event was not plain, so it seems arbitrary.

[David Silver]

3470168 You say that. I've had characters I planned to engage in a whole chapter of stuff just break down and start crying before, derailing the entire plan. Like The Text I fumed at them a bit, but they had to work through their emotions, on camera, so the chapter ended up far different than where I had intended when I first sat down.

[albedoequals1]

3470175 Maybe you're a schizophrenic? Or is that multiple personality disorder?

Even though you can compartmentalize the creative part of your brain, it still all comes from you somehow. Randomness is an illusion created by not being able to track all the variables.

[David Silver]

3470188 Eh, just a writing style. I loathe planning, so I let that part of me just go free. Freeee! Sometimes it results in things that pisses my readers off.

[Aatxe360]

There are fates other than death that can effectively kill off any more character development. Maybe have Celestia turn him into a statue in her garden? Discord might be the only being to escape that.

[David Silver]

3470402 That wouldn't make much sense? The goal isn't to remove the character for the sake of removing the character. The characters did the wrong thing, that pissed off a literal living ship. It reacted violently within a space it had near-complete control over the environment. It ended poorly for one of the protagonists.

[Aatxe360]

3470405

I haven't read so I just suggested that without context. I thought you were looking for alternatives to death.

[David Silver]

3470450 No harm done. I do appreciate the reply!

[Istaran]

3470031

Amusingly, in this story it appears death is vulnerable to reader protest. ;)

I see it as a sliding scale. At one extreme is, well, true to life. Death can come suddenly, without rhyme or reason. A windstorm causes a tree branch to break and kill your child at a birthday party. WTF life?! And once dead, nothing can bring them back.

At the other extreme is like... a videogame with infinite lives. Who cares if you die, you'll just respawn. Your story is a bit farther toward the latter end because resurrection is a thing, but far from trivial. As presented, there's no reason to worry people will be respawning left and right. You’re still a fair bit more 'real' than, say, Dragonball where there's a known mechanism to resurrect anyone who dies (once per person, supposedly, but with exceptions to that limit).

I don't care, personally. Heck, I've learned I don’t care for lethal RPGs where a character can easily permanently die before I am ready to be done with them. But some people dislike it because it can bleed out the tension. It's bad enough protagonists often have plot armor making them immune to death in the first place, but now even if they die that isn’t guaranteed to hold. So why do we care about the danger they are in?

It's a matter of taste, though. I can enjoy things with no real 'risk' to the protagonists, even violent action sequences. Not everyone does. And some just don't want their favorite character to die.

[Silver Chord]

3469779 Musician's name.

[David Silver]

3471610 Actual name, and character in the story's name, but he's a filthy self-insert.

[Silver Chord]

3471629 Oooh! Cool! Silver was just a name that my uncle gave me when I visited him in Italy, and it's the name of my best and first MLP OC.

[AFK Fiction]

plan the charters end. like Mr pee just walks down to the street to his finds, then a bus runs him down because he walks on the street.

give a charter a time line and chose his or hers fate.

everyone die in the end .