The death of fictional characters is an oft-used device in all sorts of storytelling. Sometimes a character has to die in order to tell the "truth" that resides in fiction. I recently learned there are also times when a character has to die for the story to be told in the first place.
A good writer knows, when the story tells you that your character must meet their demise then it must be written that way. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling showed many times in her books that any character could die at any time. The publication of each book was preceded by massive amounts of speculation regarding who would die and how. Throughout the course of the series both main and peripheral characters came face to face with death.
Television series often use the death of a major character as a promotional stunt during sweeps weeks, or during season finales. "Next week on Lost," the announcer will say in dire tones, "someone.will.die." If done well, these deaths can add to the realism and depth of a story. It proves the characters are human and subject to the same fate as the rest of us.
Sometimes death is just a gimmick. Comic book heroes and villains often die only to be resurrected at a later date, or it is proved they were never dead at all. The same can be said of many characters in Joss Whedon's Buffyverse.
I encountered a circumstance in my own fiction where a character had to die in order for the story to be told. What I originally posted on Twitter is "If the ability to "see" a character in your novel is a constant chore it's probably best to let that character go early." I want to expound on that idea a bit.
In my latest manuscript I was trying to tell a story from three separate points of view. Each chapter would alternate between one of the three characters as they moved through the story and eventually encountered each other. Two of the characters existed at the story's conception. The third came later, and I must admit rather inorganically. What I mean by that is she was a forced creation, someone I invented wholly on my own because I thought she belonged in the story.
Some of you may be thinking that I invented all three of the characters, so what's the problem. The problem is that's just not true. The first two characters came to me along with the idea. I saw the story and the people who would be involved in telling it. They're creations of my mind, sure, but not entirely. I like to think they come across the ether, but that's just me.
Anyway this third character grew harder and harder to see. When I'm writing it's like transcription. I see the setting, I hear what he character thinks, I watch them interact with their surroundings and I write down what I see. I could never see the third character clearly. I began making up the parts I couldn't see and they clunked on the page. I wrote horrible, wooden passages that took the story nowhere.
That's a danger for me. Give me something or someone to write about and I'll do it. Give me a word count and I'll hit it. But with fiction if it's not true, if it isn't real, then it's just dead words on a page. I knew I had to let this character go before things got out of hand.
I deleted her sections of the book, and what I discovered is the other two characters flourished when I wasn't directing my energy at creating someone out of nothing. The two of them were already there, waiting for me to tell their stories. I just needed to assassinate the distractions first.
A good writer knows, when the story tells you that your character must meet their demise then it must be written that way. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling showed many times in her books that any character could die at any time. The publication of each book was preceded by massive amounts of speculation regarding who would die and how. Throughout the course of the series both main and peripheral characters came face to face with death.
Television series often use the death of a major character as a promotional stunt during sweeps weeks, or during season finales. "Next week on Lost," the announcer will say in dire tones, "someone.will.die." If done well, these deaths can add to the realism and depth of a story. It proves the characters are human and subject to the same fate as the rest of us.
Sometimes death is just a gimmick. Comic book heroes and villains often die only to be resurrected at a later date, or it is proved they were never dead at all. The same can be said of many characters in Joss Whedon's Buffyverse.
I encountered a circumstance in my own fiction where a character had to die in order for the story to be told. What I originally posted on Twitter is "If the ability to "see" a character in your novel is a constant chore it's probably best to let that character go early." I want to expound on that idea a bit.
In my latest manuscript I was trying to tell a story from three separate points of view. Each chapter would alternate between one of the three characters as they moved through the story and eventually encountered each other. Two of the characters existed at the story's conception. The third came later, and I must admit rather inorganically. What I mean by that is she was a forced creation, someone I invented wholly on my own because I thought she belonged in the story.
Some of you may be thinking that I invented all three of the characters, so what's the problem. The problem is that's just not true. The first two characters came to me along with the idea. I saw the story and the people who would be involved in telling it. They're creations of my mind, sure, but not entirely. I like to think they come across the ether, but that's just me.
Anyway this third character grew harder and harder to see. When I'm writing it's like transcription. I see the setting, I hear what he character thinks, I watch them interact with their surroundings and I write down what I see. I could never see the third character clearly. I began making up the parts I couldn't see and they clunked on the page. I wrote horrible, wooden passages that took the story nowhere.
That's a danger for me. Give me something or someone to write about and I'll do it. Give me a word count and I'll hit it. But with fiction if it's not true, if it isn't real, then it's just dead words on a page. I knew I had to let this character go before things got out of hand.
I deleted her sections of the book, and what I discovered is the other two characters flourished when I wasn't directing my energy at creating someone out of nothing. The two of them were already there, waiting for me to tell their stories. I just needed to assassinate the distractions first.
