In almost every genre, killing one of your characters is common. These scenes can be heart-breaking or nerve-wracking, all depending on the context and use of the death itself. Of course, maybe the writer just knew that it was the right thing for the story, but that is incredibly difficult to judge. How can I write death to be heartbreaking? Why did I cheer when this particular character met their demise? These are all difficult questions to answer and even more difficult to recreate in your own story, but I will give you a few key elements which will help your character deaths feel more authentic and have the intended effect.
Contents:
Investment in Character
Effect on the Reader
Effect on the Character
For Tension
Things to be careful for
Tips
Conclusion
Investment in Character:
As with everything in your novel, if your readers are not invested, then you are fighting an uphill battle to keep them engaged. Before the reader gets to the character's death, however, they need to care about your characters and the conflict they are going through. This is why it is difficult to pull off a death scene near the beginning of the story and have the readers care about it.
To make the death more effective and spark emotions in the reader develop the character as much as you can before the scene. These preliminary scenes are how you change what impact death has on the other characters and of course, on the reader. For example, if you wanted it to be frustrating, have them almost complete their objective but fail at the last moment. Alternatively, if you want to spark anger in a reader, bring in an antagonist to be one of the key elements of their death.
Further on in the story, where your readers should be more in tune with your characters, it is easier to make them care about the death of someone important to the protagonist. This can be done for various effects depending on how you foreshadow it. Almost every time you want to foreshadow the death so that it doesn’t seem out of place. For more on foreshadowing, click here.
Effect on the Reader:
Other than developing empathy and respect for your characters, the emotional impact you want the reader to experience is the next important. Do you want them to feel sad, angry or even happy if a particularly horrible antagonist was removed from the narrative? While planning or editing the scene, ask yourself this question as it dictates what you write about. This makes it much easier to focus your descriptions and character reactions on exactly what will have the desired effect. This makes it clear, subconsciously, to the reader how they should feel about the death.
One of the most common intentions that the author has for death is sadness. They want to make the reader as sad as possible because strong emotions are memorable. However, be careful with how much you want to hit the reader with that particular emotion as it can become distracting from the rest of the story and only work so much before they become tired of it. Be aware of the promises that you are making at the beginning to what kind of book they are getting themselves into. Don’t begin with a quarter of the book being comedic and light-hearted, to then drop the readers into a very dark and depressing sequence of events. This is not saying that you should change your book to be something that it’s not, just be aware of what your audience will put up with.
One of my favourite emotions to insert when writing is frustration. One of the best places I have seen this is in failed redemption arcs. There are a lot of these in books they are very effective and almost more heartbreaking than a ‘good’ character dying. In Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series, there is a scene where a character has realised their past faults and is trying their best to improve as a person but ends up dying before they get to that point.
One of the most difficult deaths to pull off is the death of the main point of view. By its nature, this is generally done at the very end of a book and is usually the conclusion to the arc of the story. This change can make an optimistic story into a tragic one, potentially cementing it in the reader's mind.
Effect on the Character:
The internal impact of a death can make or break a death sequence. The character should feel something, whether it is satisfaction or grief at the death of another character. Having them feel nothing unless done intentionally, can make the story feel unrealistic and will pull readers from the narrative.
The protagonist should have some reaction, and if not, have another character feel that death. But just as you want every character to feel unique, their reactions should also be their own. The emotions that they display or feel, from grief to anger, will characterise them while also showing the death’s significance.
The likelihood is that you have already experienced some kind of death in your life if it were a pet or a family member. This will have had a slightly different impact on those that knew that particular person depending on what the person meant to them. In fiction, it is generally a good idea to highlight these differences rather than have them very subtle. Conveying intricate emotions is difficult at the best of times and especially in scenes like these.
In line with all of this, the death of the main character should have more of an impact on the plot and the narrative, because if they are important enough to warrant a lot of attention, they will have a large impact, even if it is shown through another character that was close to them.
For Tension:
In many genres, death is one of the worst things that can happen to a character and so it often becomes the key stake in the story. Death is a good way to show the reader that there are consequences to character actions. This also raises the stakes for the other characters and often makes the situation feel more real or dangerous to the reader. The extent to which you use this tool, however, relates to what genre and type of book you are writing. It is generally a key consideration in thrillers, fantasy and science fiction but might be less prevalent in contemporary fiction.
Death also cultivates fear in the readers of dangerous things like plague and disease if they are to become part of your narrative. A character dying to something that was otherwise considered harmless brings a new perspective on a situation. This brings realism to the narrative and drives up the tension.
It can also go the other way, for if characters die unnecessarily, to a random arrow or a tree falling on them it is incredibly unsatisfying and frustrating to readers. Deaths should generally be a consequence of character action or mistake particularly if they are very important.
Things to be careful for:
Despite this being an incredibly useful tool, there are things to be aware of while writing or planning deaths for your characters. The first of those is foreshadowing. Don’t make the reader feel that the character needed to die because the plot demanded it, make it more plausible. Maybe your character made a fatal mistake that eventually brought them down.
Dramatising the death too much makes it feel melodramatic and this deflates the tension or emotion in the scene. However, describing death in detail will add grittiness to your story so long as it feels realistic to the reader.
If the readers don’t care about the characters, they will almost certainly not care if they die. Make it personal. How does this affect your protagonist or viewpoint character? A close friend dying has a bigger effect on the character than a hundred unimportant ones.
One of the most important things to consider concerning the diversity of readers that will be reading the book. If you want your writing to be read by a wide range of readers and appreciated, then you need to at least represent a diverse set of characters. Make sure you are not killing off the only important female character or the only male character. This goes for a wide range of people, but in fantasy and science fiction it includes other fantasy races.
Reincarnation is unsatisfying unless handled right. A character dying, just to be reborn undermines the stakes in your story if they are based on death. This doesn’t mean it cannot be used, but be very aware that this can come off as frustrating unless you establish this part of the story early on.
While death is one of the most common ways to establish stakes or tension in a story, don’t use it as your only stake. What do I mean by this? To have an engaging narrative and interesting characters, there always should be other things that are at stake, such as a job, or a relationship. If dying is the only consequence of them failing, then it will often bore the reader and make the story feel shallow.
Tips:
Try to use death as a direct consequence of a character's action, misconception or mistake. It will feel inevitable that the character died and the reader can often point to a certain decision that eventually resulted in it.
Foreshadowing a death also builds suspense. It shows the reader where the characters are most at risk and how they could eventually fall. This allows you as a writer to deliver an emotional resolution to what was foreshadowed.
Reversals before death, a small happy moment undercut by sadness can also leave the death in the reader’s mind for longer. A last moment of realisation, possibly realising their mistake at the last moment adds a deeper level of impact on the reader.
Death, however, doesn’t always have to be literal. As I detailed above, death should not be the only stake. The death of their passion, goal, dream or relationship is often more heartbreaking than a character simply dying. You can draw out the consequence of this figurative death for longer if you are using the character as a point of view.
But how do I do this? Slow it down, but not too much. Try to avoid describing the actual passage of time in these scenes and instead focus on the details. Relish in the emotions, and make sure that the readers are with the character as they experience the last moments of their life or the death of a dream. Another method is to make it more realistic. Research, as horrible as it sounds, on what the characters will feel or do in those last moments, whether it be wounds or disease, will make it more vivid in the reader’s head.
Conclusion:
While death can add a level of realism to a story, there is a risk of undermining plot and character arcs if done carelessly. The most important thing I have learnt while researching this post and in writing over the last few years, is to make whatever you are doing intentional. Decide what you want the readers to feel and how you want them to react to this death. Build or edit it up from there. To get an even more accurate assessment of how well you achieved your goals with character death, use alpha or beta readers to tell you how they feel about the death but make sure you are asking them specific questions. However you decide to go about it, find out what works best for you and move on from there.