By Katie Lewis
The only certainties in life are death and taxes, according to Benjamin Franklin. So, to procrastinate on filing my taxes, I thought I’d sit down and talk about character death first. In the real world, death is an inescapable end that all too often feels senseless. As writers, we are the architectures of the worlds we create. Therefore, we need to approach death with a sense of purpose. Character death needs to be meaningful.
We Have to Care About the Character First
Just as death touches us more deeply in real life when it’s someone we are close to, readers have to feel close to a character for their death to have any impact. You’ll achieve the best sense of this if you think more as a reader than a writer. I’d bet money that if you stop to think about it, you’ve been brought to tears when a character who felt like a friend or a family member died but felt somewhat indifferent if that reader-character bond was never established.
One of the earliest examples in my life was Gandalf’s fall in Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring. In 5th Grade, a friend kicked off my love of Tolkien by daring me to read The Hobbit because our school library had a copy with a particularly egregious cover that made it impossible to know what the book was actually about.
Even before Ian McKellen took the role, I adored how snarky and long-suffering Gandalf acted. He was like that Great Uncle at the family reunion who constantly rolls his eyes, but you know deep down he loves you.
You know where I’m going with this: Gandalf’s death destroyed me. I had just spent two books with this character. I’d grown to look forward to his every move and every line of dialogue. Then he was gone, and I was just as bereft as the rest of the Fellowship. The movies hadn’t come out just yet, so like the other characters, I had no idea his return as Gandalf the White was even possible. This brings me to the next crucial ingredient in crafting character death.
The Other Characters Also Have to Care
How the other characters react to a death is as important as how the reader responds. If we’re crying, we want them to be crying, too—unless they’re a villain. When a character acts contrary to the reader’s feelings, it can foster dislike, if not outright rejection, of that character. So, if the other character in the scene isn’t meant to be a villain, they must validate how the reader feels.
There’s a reason why a good portion of Fellowship mainly consists of the group recovering in the elvish realm of Lothlórien. It’s a beautiful setting, but the characters and the reader are both in desperate need of a safe place to grieve and regroup following Gandalf’s death.
As a reader, those chapters offer you a chance to breathe. They are full of subtle descriptions of how the Fellowship emotionally heals enough to continue their quest.
Another excellent example comes from The Hunger Games. Midway through the battle royale, Katniss befriends a young girl named Rue. Katniss is immediately reminded of her younger sister, and the readers quickly endeared to Rue as well.
Some might say that Rue’s death is predictable, given the nature of the plot, and I’m not about to argue against that. Typically, you want to avoid writing a death that feels predictable. In this case, though, that aspect is actually part of why her death is so important.
Rue engenders a protective instinct in both Katniss and the reader. It’s not that you can’t see her death coming. Instead, it’s that Rue is so young (and frankly too kind for the brutality she’s been thrust into) that the reader becomes desperate for a miracle to save her.
It is all the more painful when no such miracle occurs. I don’t care who you are. Katniss burying Rue in flowers is heart-wrenching.
In Rue’s case, her death also serves to motivate the protagonist. Until that point, Katniss is focused on staying alive out of a sense of duty. She seems convinced that her mother and sister will not survive without her. But when Rue—a symbolic stand-in for her sister—dies, Katniss doesn’t just feel grief. She also feels rage.
Rue’s death is the catalyst for Katniss to consider fighting not just for herself but to dismantle the system. We, the readers, are equally motivated to cheer her on.
Well-Written Doesn’t Equal Meaningful
So, now that we’ve reviewed a few good examples, I want to offer up (in my opinion) a bad one for your consideration. In particular, this scene is exceptionally well-written, and yet the deaths involved have little to no impact on the readers or the other characters.
This is one of my favorite scenes in A Song of Ice and Fire. It gave me chills reading it. In fact, it’s because the scene is such a spectacle that it ultimately falls flat.
Yep, The Red Wedding from A Storm of Swords.
As I said, this scene is beautifully written. I remember reading it on my lunch break at work and feeling so enamored that when I got home, I flipped right back to the beginning of the chapter and reread it. The slow build-up of tension in this chapter gave me goosebumps. So, it’s regrettable that the shock value of the scene is precisely why it doesn’t work.
If you’ve never read the books, each chapter is told from a different character’s POV. The Red Wedding is the final chapter from Catelyn Stark’s POV. She attends her son’s wedding, Rob Stark, only to realize too late that the entire celebration is a trap.
I was captivated by the creeping unease in that chapter as Catelyn slowly recognized that something wasn’t right. From a scene-writing perspective, it’s a powerful crescendo.
The main reason this death scene doesn’t work is that Rob’s death happens off-screen, and then Catelyn is killed before she can even process what has happened. Her grief is cut short with her life, as is the chapter. Additionally, when the remaining Stark siblings find out, they barely appear to experience any grief and don’t seem particularly motivated by the loss.
With all that in mind, no matter how much I love watching that chapter play out, it has little emotional impact on the other characters or the readers. Elsewhere in the series, George R. R. Martin writes some meaningful death scenes, but this isn’t one of them. The lesson to be learned here is simple: never make the mistake of thinking good prose will make up for a lack of emotional investment.
The Writing Bug 