Thought: on killing characters

[sincere]

Er, spoiler warning for The King's Shadow?

I keep wanting to kill off a character in serious and dramatic fashion, to make readers sit back and go holy shit, she didn't just kill him/her?! I LOVED him/her!! But I can't bring myself to think of a character I could do this to. (Unless I revise Transient Paths to add more of Tilmoth pre-death? but if it's not permanent it doesn't count...)

So I say to myself, well, Rachel-san has had all along that Rhys is going to die, so that must be the key. Decide from word one, maybe before I even name the guy, that he's going to die. THEN develop him and fall in love with him. Until it's like Rhys: we love him, we don't want to kill him, he just needs a fricking hug, but we knew all along he was going to die and we can't just change it.

This would involve thinking of a plot BEFORE I think of characters, though, and that's not usually how I work. Usually plots evolve from character ideas -- as in Foxes Wild, where I had all the main characters planned out before I had any idea what they were doing there.

Will have to work on this. I want to kill someone everyone loves, damnit.

Comments

[paradoxhorizon.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of trying to kill characters off and experienced at having my favorites die so...thoughts.

Some of my characters seem to come predetermined to die. I'm currently wrestling the DoN cast into a Not Dying direction. So...you may want to think about it from a character perspective. Pick a character you like. What do they want? Where are their lives going? Maybe there's a fatal path among the choices for their lives. Or you could make it something seemingly more random but that ties into some aspect of the plot/themes/whatnot. A fatal accident. A disease. Not neccessarily plotting the entire story out here, but pondering possible events. (ex: I still don't know most of the plot of Procrastinator, but I know Jukebox dies trying to do the right thing at some point because he has to in order to redeem himself blahblahblah.)

Wandered away a moment and forgot what I was going to say. So...if you'd like to toss around ideas with me on AIM, that's cool. I think I'll head off to bed and figure out which of your characters I don't want to die because now I'm worried. Interested, but worried.

[sincere]

That's actually a really good idea -- and something that has worked for me once before. You reminded me that this actually happened in my head before, that train of thought.

I had a character (Devin) and he was cool and I loved him but his life didn't GO anywhere. He didn't even develop. He always wanted to be this seventeen-year-old kid whose only purpose in life was to be somebody's sidekick. He didn't want a job or meaningful relationships or anything. He just wanted to be a sidekick. All his siblings started growing up around him, telling me what they'd do with their professional lives and what genders they would like to pursue and while you're at it we'd like this kind of lover... But Devin was just there, like that. He wanted to be somebody's inscrutably-smiling unfailingly-insightful sidekick.

I actually started worrying about him because I really loved his character, and for the life of me I couldn't do anything with him. So I realized that he needed to die. (Weirdly enough, it helped to bounce him off my prophet, who acted so skittishly and unhappily around the boy that it helped me start thinking he might not have much future to see into.) Young, preferably before graduating high school; something needed to happen and he needed to die.

So that part happens exactly as you said it did, and that's definitely cool. <3 Of course, it didn't work out because Devin didn't quite die, well, I suppose he did die, he passed on everything that he was, but his soul didn't go anywhere, it was just wiped clean and started afresh and he became someone new (Dominick). Technically Devin is dead because Dominick, while superficially similar, is honestly a totally different person. But he didn't die die. You know.

(Side-note: I don't like Dominick as much as Devin. Harrumph. Even the author gets gypped.)

At ANY rate, I will definitely have to poke you next time I see you on AIM, because the best way to get anything done is to talk it out and I'm sure I will avoid the topic with myself. XD I will make myself a total pain in the ass and talk only about myself like I have no manners, but, um, you asked for it!

[ladygoddess.livejournal.com]

Continuing to stalk through your writing diary!

My friend recently decided to resurrect an idea she first thought up around 3 years ago of an alternate universe (AU) for her current Link characters. Vaguely fairy-taleish with the usual journey motif and prophecies, that sort of thing. While discussing things with her and the fate of the characters (very familiar faces but with subdued personalities), it occured to me that Rielka was going to die.

Being a Seer-Princess, her role in the story is her ability to see into the future. She doesn't have the usual handicapped of being unable to see into her own future which lends a bit of tragedy to the whole thing. Whether she's known all these years it was going to be because she pulled a Medea and betrayed her father, I do not know yet.

There was an important but very short interaction that could have given her character a reason to stay alive: a boy. Very brief of maybe just a few hours in total, but she loved him fierecely and he was quite taken with her. However, I cannot shake the feeling that she's stabbed and left for dead by the end of the story. Her beloved gets to her in time just for her to die in his arms. :-( Poor Rielka and Bio.

On the flip side, her original persona in the original story has a much happier fate with Bio. Including a son.

Sometimes they tell you what to do and sometimes it comes to you what's going to happen. I still cry when I watch the episode Nuriko (Fushigi Yuugi) died in. And its been years. A character death should affect you like his did.

This is 18 months later, but I hope you found the answer you were looking for.