McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Killing Characters
Wordmaker:
It's a tricky balance. If there's no sense of loss, then the reader may feel that the characters have gotten through the story without any real risk. But if you kill off too many, or hurt the characters too often and too hard, then it will desensitize the audience, kind of like how everyone expects Joss Whedon to kill off the characters people like the most now.
comprex:
--- Quote from: Wordmaker on May 06, 2011, 12:54:58 PM --- But if you kill off too many, or hurt the characters too often and too hard, then it will desensitize the audience, kind of like how everyone expects Joss Whedon to kill off the characters people like the most now.
--- End quote ---
But it does sharpen and whet the per-episode sense of risk, doesn't it? :)
Wordmaker:
Only if they enjoy seeing characters suffer and watch eager to see who'll die next. If not, they can lose empathy with the characters and setting if they think there's no point because the characters are likely to die.
comprex:
--- Quote from: Wordmaker on May 06, 2011, 04:07:12 PM ---Only if they enjoy seeing characters suffer and watch eager to see who'll die next.
If not, they can lose empathy with the characters and setting if they think there's no point because the characters are likely to die.
--- End quote ---
I see both schadenfreude and loss of empathy as being completely independent of the readers' evaluation of in-narrative risk.
It is possible to have a quite accurate assessment of risk even if one doesn't care about the character surviving, no?
meg_evonne:
--- Quote from: OZ on May 05, 2011, 07:12:35 PM --- I have mixed feelings on the killing off of characters. I will try to list my arguments for both sides.
The Pros of killing off characters: ...It shows that there are real consequences to poor choices. This is the classic approach where in a tragedy, the main characters must die else their actions would be seen to have no consequence.
... IMHO the anti trope has become the greatest trope of all in much modern writing and theater.
--- End quote ---
Applauding this.
Having a death without literary reason seems pointless to me. Writing Survivor Island based on popularity seems pointless also. Killing sprees to whittle down too many plot lines seems pointless. In all these, hasn't the author lost control, and thus a sign of weakness?
I agree with Starbeam. We suspend belief when we pick up a book and enter the author's world. Just as we do, when we sit in a theater. We accept that these actors are real, when they are not.
It is crucial that an author never break their reader's contract. I suspect that someday Ebenezer is going to die and I will weep, because I love him. What I won't know is how he leaves the Dresden World, how it will impact Harry, what emotional loose ends that death leaves behind. And I have complete and absolute confidence in Jim to know that I will know those things as a result of the action.
Then there is the true blind sided death--but I'm not sure it should ever be truly blind sided. In particular, I think of Lord (click to show/hide) Stark in Game of Thrones. That death was the hook and the logical, when you looked back, action for the series. It has tremendous meaning and motivation. I feel the same way about the wolf Lady. Some would say this is not a main character, but why do I hold out hope that Lady will reappear in some fashion--either as the first potent of a trend to come or as a spiritual affirmation of her mistress' maturity? See, it had it's logical place and reason, but as a reader I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one. Perhaps it did in the death of Lord (click to show/hide)Stark anyway. I'm reading the 2nd book now, so don't blow me up without spoilers. :-)
We aren't supposed to know everything or we'd be bored, but we need to have complete confidence in the author. Otherwise, we'd just be reading horror movie kill zones, and those are not on my list to be read.
Quantus felt burned, badly burned, or he wouldn't have posted his concern. A sign that an author went without thought and against the contract the author had with Quantus specifically. Perhaps it was fine for most, but for Quantus (and any of us who find ourselves in that position) and fatal failure on the author's part. We invest in characters, because we are drawn to them. Death without logic is killing something inside the reader that was intimately tied to that character.
*Oops, off the soap box and back to work now.*
edited because I had an either without the or.... now back to work.
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