I don't like when the reader/watcher get's a bunch of info about a character, who had very little to do till now, all the sudden is the focus. When this happens I right away think to myself "oh yeah you're dead. You're already dead." It's right next to "2 days before retirement" in a cop drama and "I can't wait to see my girl." in a war drama.
Great call! Whenever the spotlight (or magnifying glass) falls on a minor character, you can count on them dying soon. Happened a lot in The Walking Dead now that I think of it. "Hey, let's hurry up and make the audience care so the upcoming death matters!"
I recently read a trilogy that did this badly. The protagonist's lover and ex lover had bickered ceaselessly. When the lover sought the ex to apologize for misdeeds it was painfully obvious the lover was about to die. Sudden, melodramatic, and annoying death.
Yeah, I had that in my first draft on my current story, but I realized this, and changed it so the reader wouldn’t expect it. So I changed it so the character was more introduced in the beginning, and didn’t have too much introduction. Just the same as the other side characters
Your #6 comment made me think of Jane in Breaking Bad. Her death clouded over Jesse for the rest of the series. The guilt of it ate at Walt until he confessed to Jesse. The grief made her dad mess up at work and caused the airplane crash. Her death affected the story going forward in many ways. And the amazing thing is you know in a lesser writer's hands her death is just going to be "Jesse sad, look at how evil Walter is getting." Instead it is flushed out, her death touched everyone who knew her significantly, and touched others indirectly as well.
Not to mention that they did not pull any punches. That scene was raw, drawn out and developed Walters character by miles, with him switching between emotions and wants.
@conorowens3892 funny thing about that. Mike was never supposed to be there. Saul was originally written to help Jesse with the cover up, but Bob Odenkirk has scheduling conflicts so they brought in Mike for that scene.
I like how the death has soo much character impact. It’s less heavy on the story side. Jesse stays in New Mexico, some financial troubles from the car damage, etc. But the character impacts are insane. We see walt trying to justify this to himself in the speech at the school, we see Walt trying to be a father figure to Jesse while clearly still guilty (when he approaches him in the crack house in the finale of S2). Once Walt and jesse’s relationship has been destroyed, Walt uses it to spite Jesse in Ozymandias. It’s a really effective moment in the story
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty Some characters, due to the over-proliferation of reboots and parallel universes are doomed to die over and over again. They deserve the Honorary Petunia Award. Speaking of proliferation: Since George Martin "popularised" sudden death of main characters, I saw many examples where authors used it for a fleeting shock effect, but left me pondering "Why?!?".
Edit: Someone mentioned I should've put a spoiler warning at the top, and they're probably right. There will be spoilers later in this comment. About some of these: Peter Parker's death in Into the Spiderverse was at the beginning, and be was supposed to be a mentor character to Miles but then died before he really got to teach Miles anything, which forced Miles to search for a new mentor. This was an integral part of Miles' character development. Then, later on, spoiler alert: Uncle Aaron dies. This is shortly after we discover he's the Prowler. We have grown to care about Aaron throughout the movie, so the reveal is surprising. We see the good in him because of everything that's happened previously. Then, when Miles reveals his face, Uncle Aaron realises what he's doing is wrong. These are real people he's killing. He decides to quit working as the Prowler. This is the start of a redemption arc. KingPin puts a stop to that. Both deaths were important to the plot, but Aaron's death was much more impactful. Also, Aaron's death was more surprising, since we expect a role-model to die in a Spiderman origin story. Peter's death serves that role. But we only later realise that Uncle Aaron was so much more of a role-model than Peter.
whoa, that's a really good observation! I never realized that Peter's death in the beginning acts as a device to fool the readers who mostly are already aware of the Spider-man story (aka 1 closest character always dies to trigger the creation of a true Spider-man)
You should've put the spoiler warning at the top. I do not mind your comment but that literally spoilt everything for me. I was planning on watching the movie.
I think my favourite character death is Count Dooku, in the novelisation of Revenge of the Sith. In the movie, he just gets outfought, betrayed and murdered - but in the novelisation there's so much more to it: we see his own idea of what was supposed to happen, leading up to his death. The entire fight is told from his perspective, making Anakin and Obi-Wan the antagonists for two-and-a-bit chapters and showing just how dark a threat Anakin poses to those he fights - and exactly how Palpatine manipulates EVERYONE - including and especially his own inner circle. It's tragic, it's poignant, it fits the theme of the story, and it hits astonishingly hard considering most people who read it will have already seen the movie and know exactly what's coming.
I miss when Star Wars Novelizations expanded on the movies like this instead of just coming up with excuses for important plot points that shouldn't realistically happen (Rey downloading Kylo Ren's knowledge of lightsaber combat, and somehow beating him in a duel in TFA before retconning her to be Palpatine's granddaughter)
Another way of dealing with this is separating the emotions brought forth from death from death itself. Characters don't always have to die to be dead. They can turn coat. They can lose themselves or get lost along the way. Permanency in separation is as good as burying someone. This way it doesn't feel as cheap when characters return to the protagonists side instead of miraculously getting revived
Or you could cripple them. Like in Full Metal Alchemist. People get put in a wheelchair or are blinded and they still play a major role. And it kinda feels more heavy than 'just' death.
@@inkwyvern5171 Yes and no. Because Death is permanent there is no after math for the dead character. No more suffering, no more danger. Thats why it is easier to get over it. On the other hand, a bad ass who lost his eyesight has pain, struggle, and is more in danger than ever because he does have the same enemies as before but not the same capabilities. Therefore we are forced to worry about this character even more, and it hurts see him struggle time and time again even more because we saw first hand what he was capable of before his injury. It think it is just logical because you dont let the reader of the hook. The only difficulties are that the injury doesnt feel like you pulled your punches and that you dont throw away the character because he cant fight anymore.
@@inkwyvern5171 oh yeah from a writers perspective for sure. I have the situation the other way around. I have a point in the story where a character has to die. It is the only way the protagonist can live and become the version he is at the end. Knowing all this I look forward to flesh out his character and at the same time I really dont want to because I might get to attached to him.
@@SryButI think it works so well because Kishimoto is excellent at not telegraphing character deaths, but is spectacular at building dread. Like a fight starts and you have no idea that it's coming at first but as it drags on...then you see them lose an arm...
@@kanemccarthy1979yeah but it gets really annoying when it dawns on you that they never will kill off any character that isn’t a mentor except neji who hadn’t been relevant for hundreds of episodes at that point. Naruto is really too scared to kill off characters when a lot of its die characters realistically should have died in their fights on top of the fact it would of been more impactful since they do pretty much nothing for most of the series
Oberyn Martell's death in Game of Thrones elicited the single most visceral emotional reaction from me that I've ever had in regards to a fictional character's death. I was furious. And it's not because it was bad or out of place, but as a viewer/reader, I really wanted him to get his revenge, but it was written very well with his personality in mind. He was blinded by his emotions (which allowed readers and viewers to empathize with him), which caused him to make a fatal mistake, and then he died a (seemingly) meaningless death to one of the most despicable people in Westeros. As much as I hated seeing him die that way, I think the story became so much more compelling with that death.
tbf, in a way he did get revenge on the Mountain, as in the books it is said that he suffered for weeks before eventually succumbing to the poison Oberyn tipped his spear in.
@@ultratrongerbruh the argument of how old something is is so incredibly stupid considering how many thousands of works of media come out don’t is not feasible for everyone to have seen everything that has ever come out. As the other guy said it’s more so dense to not expect spoilers in a comment section about character death
I’ve always loved in Star Wars Rebels when, after Kanan gives his life to save Hera and the other rebels in the final season, the next episode is basically entirely devoted to their grief. Sabine and Zeb lash out at the Empire, Ezra finds himself rudderless once again without his Master’s guidance, and Hera is utterly destroyed by feeling responsible for the death of the man she loves. They all ultimately find their own ways to shake off the funk by the end of the episode, but it was great to see that explored in a way I feel too few shows do nowadays.
I recently played a video game that dealt with death and revival a lot. If a character died in the story, they were reborn, but they would not remember anything from their past life, and would be like a completely new person.
@eirdonne_ Not trying to come off as a smartass, but that's simply not true. As someone who has played a ton of games over their life (I have Autism and video games are my special interest), most games don't do this, and instead apt for just killing off a character for story reasons and not reviving them (well, except for the main character when you respawn, but besides from meta games like Undertale, that character coming back isn't actually supposed to happen in the story).
The tip about a promising future reminds me of Narancia from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. As they were close to finding the villain, he was talking with one of the other characters about how he was excited to try going to school again to get his life in shape and wanting to eat a nice pizza. I remember watching it and feeling so distraught that he never got to accomplish that.
George R.R. Martin has said Gandalf's resurrection shaped his philosophy in killing characters no matter how matter now important they are. He set that tone from the first book with Ned Stark. Game of Thrones effectively abandoned this philosophy when Arya was stabbed repeatedly by the Waif, jumped in the dirty water and was immediately fine ("merely a flesh wound", to quote Monty Python). From then on, the fan favorite characters suddenly all developed plot armor thicker than dragon scales.
Good example with Arya, it seems like she has the ”plot armor”, what some people call it. To be fair that non-death wasn’t G.R.R.M’s books, so only the show writers to blame
Tbf, the first book of ASoIaF would’ve been the prologue of a different series How many parents do you actually expect to survive the prologue of a series?😂
@@pn2294Ned was more than just the parent character. He was the central character of the first book A Game Of Thrones. No character in a song of ice and fire has had more pov chapters in a single book then Ned. And by your logic Catelyn Tully also should have died because she too was a parent.
The "future promise" one reminds me if Axel from The Walking Dead. I liked how with him, he had been a prisoner who was only just pitiful enough to talk Rick out of killing him, and afterwards his relationship with the group began to get better as he had a funny vibe to him. And then, while he's lamenting to Carol about his past in a way that puts it behind him, he gets shot through the head - no warning, no realisation that it's over, just gets one shot. That gave me a lot of shock
And then you get absolutely obliterated emotionally when his dead body gets littered with dozens more bullets and Carol uses it as a shield. Shit's just disturbing
I love how Watership down creates the sense of tention after killing off a character almost right after their adventure stars to make it feel like anyone could die at any moment
Another tip, more likely to be found in romantic stories, inspired by the promise a future tip: the no future character. It's that character who already knows he or she will die soon but his/her lover and close ones still hope that won't happen. The reader roots for them, believes that the character will make it but the inevitable fate comes crushing all our hopes.
#4 id say this is a double-edged sword. The good old "2 weeks until retirement" cliché comes to mind. By this point a promising future has conditioned the audience to expect the character to die, and it often feels trite and unimaginative to kill them in this method. Or even worse, it might even worsen your story and cheapen the death of it leaves a story arc incomplete or feels too sudden, especially if it means characters don't buy the death. The death of John snow in game of Thrones was the worst offender here, his death was handled so badly it was obvious he wasn't gone for good the moment he hits the ground, because there was too much unfinished business going on for anyone to buy that he was actually dead. It feels like a very "gotcha" tip, and one I feel is a pretty bad tip nowadays when bright future makes readers expect death is coming.
Yeah, as soon as I hear or read about a character and their good fortune or promising future is mentioned, I'm already thinking, they are going to die soon. I think the promising future trope has to be handled with care. Maybe if the promising future isn't solely for this one character, but affects multiple people. Maybe if the character is just making believable plans (with uncertain outcomes).
XD I didn't know the "two weeks until retirement" thing was a cliche, so I accidentally subverted it in the beginning of one of my stories. The character in question actually does just go into retirement. Granted, he does have to drag his freshly disabled, workaholic best friend along with him, so his life afterward isn't as peaceful as he'd hoped, but he does at least get to leave the military.
A better way to see #4 is not as a promising future but a promise of a future. That is, the audience/reader can see that the character has more to accomplish in the story but then they are taken away. Chrissy Cunningham's death in Stranger Things is an example. They set her up like she has a part to play in the season with character development and a story but then is killed. If she was just a generic High school cheerleader with no story, no inner character issues, and no people she was connecting with her death wouldn't mean much to us.
If they followed Jon’s death path in the books it would have been more in-line with the video and less predictable to bring back. The whole book he’s trying to balance being this impartial leader with secretly aiding someone to avenge his family. At the end he decides to break his vows and abandon his post to rescue someone whom he believes to be his sister and join the king in the battle for his home…only for Jon to be killed by his own men. And we’ve seen with Beric Dondarrion and Lady Stoneheart how traumatic death is, so even when Jon gets resurrected in the books it is gonna scar him permanently. Book Jon’s death kills essentially a complete character, promises a future of him fighting to reclaim his home, ties in thematically with his choice to pursue love instead of duty, and will have a cost of resurrection
The most disappointing death I’ve seen in a story would probably have to be Avdol’s death from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure part 3. The first time he “died” it had a big impact on Polnarref, allowing him to grow further as a character, and than later we find out that he didn’t actually die which was suprising and actually pretty cool to see, but than when they killed him for real later on it just wasn’t as impactful in my opinion.
@@IDSearcher Yeah, I didn’t have a problem with him coming back. It was when he died a 2nd time by Cream, because the 2nd time didn’t have the same impact and felt repetitive.
@@userdata9511 I agree. I didn’t hate it, per se, but his second death was much less impactful. The anticlimactic death and the fact that it was the second time he had “died” made his death not feel real. I wasn’t even sure if he was dead or not until the very end.
I'm a massive JoJo fan, and I feel like if it could be rewritten so those deaths still take place, I'd like it if Avdol's Dad was a real character who takes Avdol's place after he dies to Hol Horse and J Geil. Still though, I love how Araki made IGGY'S death more impactful than Avdol's lmaoo
As an RPG GM I find these tips really thought inspiring. I know that in many RPGs, especially Dungeons and Dragon's newer editions, death is cheap, and resurrection is cheaper. It makes the stories we tell around the table cheaper too. The wins the players characters get never feel as earned as in games where they know it was just as likely they would die as the villain
One thing about killing off a character is big consequences. Like you mentioned with the mentor. He knows everything and guides, then dies. Similar characters can be a very helpful or supportive, a safety that keeps everyone out of trouble. So their death isn't as much that they're dead but "Oh no, they're completely vulnerable now. How will they handle the situation now?". They had a plan and a backup, now both are gone and they're stuck in the middle. And the viewer can't directly tell how they're gonna deal with this. Take two factions and one is hunting the party blamed for a coup on both. A buddy gives them political protection and vouches for them so the other faction protects them so they can see the leader and plead innocence. Then he dies and they're blamed. Now the safe haven faction is hostile like they're outsiders and the bad faction can now hunt them. And now they're blamed for both crimes and have lost the only chance to redeem them selves. The party is caught with their pants down.
Excellent tips! I write under a pen name so won't reveal it here. I have killed 'villains' in all of my books. Sometimes they are main villains, sometimes they are minor villains (that work for main villains), sometimes they are what I refer to as 'on camera' kills or in great detail on the page, sometimes it happens 'off camera' where the reader is aware that the death is occurring but the death itself isn't described in detail (because usually it occurs after the villain has been tortured in detail by a main character - yes, some of my main characters walk a thin line between good and evil). The setting and method, is whatever the story calls for. But, the worst emotional experience for me, as a writer, was in my second book where the story called for the death of a major side character. I literally SOBBED throughout his death scene as I was writing it. I mixed it with the 'off camera' death of the major villain - where the reader knew that the hero was fighting and killing the villain 'off camera', but were witnessing the death of the major side character in the arms of the heroine 'on camera' due to a fatal injury sustained when he gave his life protecting hers. My readers lost their minds; but in a good way. I believe, that if we as writers, can't feel the death of a character, either triumph because it was the death of an evil character, or despair and grief because it was the death of a good character, why would we expect our readers to feel anything when it occurs? If we aren't emotionally connected to our characters - why would anyone else be? Of course, as a specific genre writer, I always ask myself the question at the end of my all of my novels, is this the book that is going to end my writing adventures? Have I pushed too far? I am working on my fifth book now - so as Aria Stark always said, "Not today." 😃 Love your videos!
Great point on the emotional resonance of a character's death. One trap I fall into a lot during my early drafts is that I have characters who die for the sake of "impact" but there is no impact because I didn't do the work to establish why those characters matter. I'm going through revisions on a story right now, and I need to keep that in mind.
Dobby. Dobby was a wonderful little house elf and didn’t deserve death. There was so much more that he could’ve done. I feel like his death wasn’t recognized enough after watching your video and after all the death prior to his, it just felt like one too many. Poor Dobby ❤️
This was also a great example of how a character death serves the purpose of moving the character forward and is impactful all the way to the end. Dobby is innocent and loyal, and represents how even those characters are vulnerable to the casualties of war.
The "mentor death" segment made me think of The Kingsman. You're going through the movie thinking the mentor will probably die, somehow. But then the young hero gets killed, and it REALLY throws you for a loop. Especially with _how_ it happens.
I have a story where the biggest point (That i've come up with so far) is the death and eventual return of the main character, but since it's my first time ever writing a long story, i'm really not sure if went about it the right way. The death itself is caused by a disease known as a Blight, the same genetic mutation that many characters have adapted to and gained special powers from. The MC slowly begins to falter in their duties as a guard, and even notices signs of serious illness/damage to their body, but hides it from the royal family and other guards out of habit and refusal to abandon their duty. Eventually though, the Blight advances and causes the mc to lose the ability to properly function - Joints become unable to move and keep them contained to a bed, they can barely speak, yet the physical pain is nothing compared to the pain of seeing their love, the princess, weeping over them and refusing to leave their side. After the disease finally kills them off, the grief of their companions and the princess causes many problems in the palace - The blind aerokinetic guard's powers begin to falter and cause her ability to navigate her surroundings to falter (She senses air flow to navigate), the princess remains locked up in her room for weeks at a time and eventually leaves her home to become a mercenary under a different name, etc. Eventually though, the mc returns as through an already mysterious power known as "The Hollow" (Still workshopping the actual event and names). The costs of becoming a Walker include loss of memory, white hair and occasional hits of pure agony at essentially random times. Because nobody was around for their revival and they wear a stolen combat suit w/ a mask, not even the princess recognises them when they meet face to face, and the mc also doesn't remember her due to the memory loss. I apologize for the massive wall of text, i can't help myself. Even though every single character has a name, i didn't put any in, mostly because i thought it would be better to just explain the concept Edit: This entire concept has recently been overhauled and improved to avoid annoying cliches, but i won't go into detail because this comment is long enough :/
Jon Snow's death and revival in the tv show was disappointing cause it's as if nothing happened to him. He feels pretty much the same except maybe a bit more disgruntled . It felt like they did a better job with the resurrections of the side character Beric Dondarrion
On the contrary he did undergo a change….. they undid all his character development and regressed him to the whipping boy he was in the earlier seasons. It was completely negative on all counts, and thoroughly unsatisfying.
I actually disagree with this. I believe that Jon Snow lost his hope and fire after being resurrected. He felt compelled to lead the attack against the Boltons out of family loyalty but he no longer had the desire to lead that he had growing up. When Jon Snow first joined the Night's Watch, he wanted to become First Ranger like his uncle. He felt like he was being blocked but was then pleased with the idea of possibly becoming Lord Commander, after Sam put the idea in his head. He didn't like how he eventually did become Lord Commander, since he loved and respected Jeor Mormont. However, once he was elected, Jon did the best job that he could and believed he was the right man for the position. After being brought back, Jon says, "I did what I thought was right, and I got murdered for it." At this point, Jon's spark and desire is gone. He knows that some Free Folk will follow him because he stood up for them and he knows that some Northern families will follow him out of respect for the Starks, but Jon Snow doesn't want to do any of it. Before the Battle of the Bastards, Jon tells Melisandre to leave him dead if he falls in battle, but he sounds like he's actually hoping for it. It's not until Jon is about to suffocate and be trampled to death, that he makes the conscious decision to keep living. Lastly, one of the main reasons why Jon falls for Daenerys so hard, is that she makes you believe in the impossible. She reminds Jon of Ygritte's fierceness and he starts to feel some hope again, that was lost ever since his death.
In the books it’s not a question of whether he’ll come back but how it will change his character. Others certainly have. There’s also the matter of him warging into Ghost’s body first and foremost… He might not be too grateful towards those who just killed him
Wow, you reopened something I'd forgotten about 10 years ago, that moment of excitement that Ned Stark was going to take the black and reuinite with Jon Snow at the Wall. Gut-wrenching! But I should have realized that Ned was doomed as soon as Lord Commander Mormont said, "He must be allowed to take the black, I need a man of his caliber here." No way things work out that well in book one.
Hey this was an awesome video, very timely. I've been juggling with the thought of killing off my mentor character, and how to do it. This video gave me some insight in how to go about it. And yes, I agree that bringing a character back from the dead shouldn't be easier than curing the common cold.
i´ve read something a while ago where the mentor was a master of poisons and the apprentice was getting more and more sick of his ways, finally planning to kill him and take over his business, but he was prepared and always one step ahead, killing her and while she was paralyzed and slowly died he was holding her, comforting and praising her for the skills she aquired along their way. When she was dead he was like "damn, it happened again, i´ll need another apprentice"... that storyline was something else
This is something I'm really trying to get right in my book. I want none of my characters to be safe. I want the reader to feel something when a character dies, whether that is relief or sadness. Either way I'm trying to build the characters up so that the moments hold weight and impact the rest of the story.
i wanna write a book thats in first person, then the main character dies and the book switches midway through to third person. in theory, it'd make it super unique and throw everyone for a complete loop
Something I hate about serial storytelling - Walking Dead was especially guilty of this - is when cool villains are set up and then killed off, and then the author realises they lost an awesome character and tries to create another villain just like the other one.
In regards to number 4, here are some examples in Stranger Things: Bob: Marrying Joyce and moving to Maine with her Alexei: Becoming a US citizen after defecting from the Soviet Union Eddie: Graduating from Hawkins Highschool
Most disappointed 'death' was actually a 'Oh, he's alive again, haha' moment Long story short: Guy who MC has a crush on puts himself into a 'He's definitely not getting out alive situation' to buy MC and friends time to get away. But then he is illogically alive and waiting for MC in the epilogue. It's like, 'Sure, these feelings of grief don't matter now, huh?' moment and seemed stupid af
Aside from the "crush" angle, this was Billy's death in Jurassic Park 3. I watched it years ago when I was younger, and it was probably the first time I ever remember feeling disappointed that a character actually lived.
Ive only killed one major character in all my stories, and I'm quite proud of how it turned out. He was the love interest to my main character and his death had been planned from the very beginning. The entire theme of the story centered around depression and it was very important that he die simply because my main character had been leaning on him as a crutch instead of finding out the root of her depression and dealing with it. I have quiiiite a few comments (because the story is on wattpad) of people mad at me because I made them cry and killed off such a nice character. So how did I pull this off? Well, he acted as the main characters protector because she is blind but is keeping it a secret from everyone but him (its a weird case for how she is able to pull this off effectively). Anyway, I foreshadowed his death quite a lot in the chapters leading up to it and even threw in a crow for extra measure. Now, what I think what got the majority of them crying was the scene right after his death where the main character is laying down crying to herself. Throughout the entire story, I had done my best to show how good of a relationship they had but she never quite said "I love you" to him. But now that she was alone, she regretted not telling him over and over again how much she loved him and how badly she really wanted to start a family with him. I remember quite clearly crying myself while writing it 😅 but now that its been a few years, I'm finally going back to it to clean up all the plot holes. I had a few commentors point out that sometimes it seemed she only stayed with him because he acted as her eyes when that wasnt my intention at all. I have quite a lot of rewriting to do, but I hope to make this scene just as impactful (or maybe even more so!) when I eventually get to it.
This obviously isn't a "death" in the usual sense, but I remember as a kid I was *devastated* at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis) when Lucy is told she won't be coming back to Narnia (or maybe it was at the end of Prince Caspian when Peter and Susan are told the same, now I think maybe I conflated the two in my memory.) Just to say, there are non-lethal ways of removing characters and getting the emotional impact. And it made it OK for her character to reappear later without technically returning to Narnia and without her having to be resurrected.
@@Blaqjaqshellaq No I've never watched it. There's a Byzantine rule that the king needs to not be crippled I think it was something like full in mind and body. Certain societies especially in fiction might say why are we listening to this guy or lady if they can't even fight. Dousn't matter that they killed ten enemies with spears using a fruit-cutting knife before one of them got luck and took both their knees out.
Looking for Alaska by John Green is the book that got me back. It's so good at showing you how a death affects the other characters in the story, making you like the character, and tying that character's death into the theme
Thanks for all the awesome content. I'm glad this one came up in my feed. These were some excellent tips that gave me a lot to think about. In particular the last one about reviving the dead. I had a character that was pretty significant die midway through a book only to turn up not dead, kind of the classic "if you didn't see it happen, it didn't happen". Now that I say that it seems even more of a cliche that he survived. The fact that he just showed up again like nothing happened lacks a lot of impact and it didn't really have a huge amount of ramifications outside of the immediate aftermath. The idea for it to have some consequences already is adding a lot to it and it's giving him much more of an arc as a character. So that helped a lot and I really appreciate that.
The death of Tommy in The Shawshank Redemption fulfills numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 all at once in my opinion. When I first saw Shawshank in the theatre people around us gasped and said things like 'oh my god' and 'oh no!' The screenwriter certainly didn't pull any punches on that one. His death was emotional because we were growing to like him as did the characters in the movie. He was becoming a complete character by honestly and openly exposing his past, and the explosive revelation about Elmo Blatch's jail cell confession made him suddenly and unexpectedly very important to the central character in the film, Andy Dufresne. Passing his high school equivalency test promised a bright future for him and his newborn child, but that was quickly snuffed out with one casual glance from the warden. Want to learn about character development, great story writing and how to toy with the audience's emotions? Watch Shawshank.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 finale spoilers I think Tech's death fits pretty much every single point in this video. He: -was killed as a result of Tarkin not hesitating to use his firepower/Saw going all out (hate him) with no consideration of others' survival -was developed much more throughout the season in several emotional scenes (and got a whole episode to himself) -was very close to Omega, and we see her sad reaction when Hunter tells her he's gone -had been hoping to save Crosshair and eventually return to Pabu to finally find a peaceful life (and even had a sort of love interest growing with Phee) -perfectly showcased the recurring theme of sacrifice throughout both The Clone wars and The Bad Batch As for "coming back from the dead", it's a very common Star Wars trope, and it's kind of cheap at this point, so I hope that he stays dead in the third season. (in the nicest way possible haha)
I struggle to kill off any character that isn't either a minor character or a villain. I'm not really sure what I should do about that, because it's starting to feel like a bit of a problem now that I'm writing an action story that deals a lot with death, trauma and fighting in general. However, pretty much all the developed protagonists of my story deal with so much trauma and loss already that maybe that's the real reason I just don't want to deliver any death blows to them. Like they've gone through enough already, a death would be like overkill in that context. As if killing any of them would just make my already dark story too dark, as I don't want for it to become a downright tragedy. Also as my main theme for this story is "recovery" I really need for the amounts of tragedy vs rising from it to be well balanced and proportional. And... you can't recover from death. Even the one character I could have chosen to kill I instead chose to keep alive (but gravely injured) because that would actually lead to a more intense emotional impact and cause more resolution for the other characters. In almost all cases for my characters, death would either be too cheap, or take away too much of what little positivity they've got going. When you start a story with "All these characters have a lot of suffering and very little good things to hold onto" and want for most of them to have a positive arc, you kinda end up with not much to reasonably take away from them. Somehow I feel like that's better than to get fixated on the idea that just because the characters are in a life and death situation a lot, that means they can't all survive. I take it more to mean that if they all survive, they're going to be really (emotionally and physically) scarred. Basically, my point is: maybe death isn't the only kinda trauma of high emotional and shock value you can put your characters through. I say that because I realized I never had trouble killing off characters in my previous works, but now suddenly I do. In fact, I've been very trigger happy with my fully developed characters in other stories. I made a lot of deeply emotionally impactful deaths that had me crying through the script for every edit. It felt right because it was meaningful. Even though that wasn't action stories at all, they were dramas and tragedies. It's just with this particular story (my current project) that it suddenly doesn't sit right with me to kill off a lot of characters, even though this is the most action-packed story I've written so far. And maybe that's why I feel insecure about it, because this is my first action story and I don't wanna be bad at that genre.
Bonnie Blue Butler's death in "Gone With The Wind" was a hard one to take. But I love Scarlet's realization that her daughter has the same willful spirit as her father. She whispers "Just like papa" right before Bonnie jumps over the fence.
One of my favorite deaths is Noah in the Walking Dead. He’s a young man who decides to step up in the community. He goes to the builder guy and says he wants to learn from him and wants to do his part. Later that same episode, he dies one of the most graphic deaths in a revolving door. SOOO good.
I would like to note that death cliche and thematic tie ins might seem like contradictory advice, but people should focus on how and when to use them. Even something as simple as having one of those "non bullies" end up dying in a surprise but inadvertant fashion.
I really needed to watch this, I’m writing a murder mystery series. My main rule is: never have characters that you know well perish. I never kill characters that were in previous books. It just ruins the series.
I'm a guy who is possibly gonna make an animated series/movie in the future, although it is still in its concept stages, and this video helped with some of the story parts that are no longer in the concept stages! Thanks! -Trigger warning: mentions of [self-deletion] later in the comment, trust me it is relevant to what I talk about. Also, I'd like to add to the part about bringing characters back to life. One of the best examples of this is the youtube movie "Emesis Blue". (Minor spoiler warning, if you haven't watched Emesis Blue, go do so, it's really good) The plot of the movie revolves around a machine that brings mercenaries back to life each time they die, but the cost is their mental health. Multiple of these mercenaries have either suffered from symptoms of schizophrenia, or more extreme stuff like time anomalies and time loops or physical and mental mutations. The machine has a chance to fail, and when it does... well, watch the movie for yourself. The effects of a failed revive are so extreme to the point that the 10th of the mercenaries (now there are 9) has attempted [self-deletion], so that he doesn't have to live through the torture. This, I believe is one of the best examples of the cost of ressurection I have seen so far. I have left certain details in the comment intentionally vague, because I would hate to spoil the movie for someone.
My general concept for killing characters is to write the general concept of the story and which characters are necessary for it. Then, add a few characters that aren't needed for the story, but develop them in the exact same way as you do your major supporting characters and main characters, as early as possible and as well written as possible. From the start, you account for them not being required for the story to function, and from the start, you already planned their death, yet from the pov of the reader, they can't really tell the difference from that character to the others, until the character dies off, giving the sense that any character can die, since the character did not really appear any different from the others until then. Only in hindsight will it become clear, that the character wasn't needed for the story and only added character development to the others.. Killing off undeveloped sidecharacters really is no fun anyways, no emotional impact, no surprise. As a reader, you almost always have the sense of security, that certain characters are simply safe, cause they're the main characters. Something that I really dislike but feels hard to overcome in writing
#4 promising a future can become a cliche itself, especially the more promising the future. If a character is about to have all his dreams come true and it seems like his future is too good to be true, you know he gonna die. I would recommend tempering that promised future with some realism. Don't promise that his life will be great. Promise that his life will be just a little bit better. #6 reaction to death: I've seen a very bad example of this. I don't know what movie it was but there was a scene where six astronauts were space walking, climbing all over the outside of the craft to rescue it. I'm not sure what they were rescuing it from but one of the astronauts finally made it to this control panel and flipped the switch, only to be immediately pulverized by a bit of space debris. Then the danger was over and one of the five remaining said, "We all survived." and the five remaining astronauts calmly climbed back into the craft.
The death i never saw coming and upset me because of the struggle he went through before he died was Leonardo's character in The Departed. Hated his death but it had a hell of an impact. Fantastic movie.
great video, i just think the thumpnail is quite ironic considering martin recently said that he had problems with already killing off a character he later realised he needed
9:40 The best example of reviving a dead character is the revival of Catelyn Stark as Lady Stoneheart. Even though, she came back to life, she isn't herself anymore. She has become a killing machine to avenge her family deaths and she has become heartless.
Even as a teen I sensed this lesson when reading Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels. In the first novel, she kills off the main character in a glorious and satisfying way, that buys time for the other characters to be able to grow into the hero roles. However, by the third book, she was so in love with the characters that you knew none of them were ever really at risk, making the suspense hollow. I love the bit about hinting at a promising future. That is a brilliant tip and I totally plan to use it soon.
A way I've managed to incorporate worries into the reader and doubt. It's a superhero story set in medieval times, the villain and the hero share a trait to steal the superhuman abilities of other people. One that is highly focused on is the power of literal immortality. Both the villain and hero are continiously shifting, switching and playing with a multitude of powers, rapidly changing with every punch they throw, with their entire loadout seeming to change every time they touch eachother. I like to use it to scare the reader into thinking, 'WHO IS IMMORTAL, WHO IS SAFE RIGHT NOW???' And in these intense main conflicts and fights, not even the characters can know, constantly trying everything they can to survive at all times. Along with a large group of people, who are witchhunted for having these people, trusting their only defenses, their superpowers to one person, giving up their defences so someone can risk it all and win. Another story I've written, clearly shows I love playing with the concept of immortality. I mean, almost all the characters are highly resilient, semi-immortal. About a species of monster that are alter-egos to humans, they embody the humans emotions and cannot die unless their human dies. But if they were to die? They'll be out of commission to reform, which can take a day to a week based on injuries, and each time they die, a piece of their humans soul is killed, making them more miserable, more depressed and/or sickly. But the main duo of the story, one of these mosnters who lost their shield of immortality, and a human being, are mortal from the very beginning of the story. And it created anxiety as they deal with grusome and incredibly grizzly scenarios that could kill them in half a second. This story is very focused on not letting your past ruin your life as it will come back to bite you through your own wreckless decisions.
While killing a character with a promising future does have a strong impact, I think killing a character with a difficult future is often more of a waste. In particular someone who started or is just about to start a redemption arc. That’s cutting out a lot of potential drama and character development. Which is also a cliche.
One of the most meaningful deaths I've ever read in fiction was in C.L. Wlison's Tairen Soul series. The couple had a whole subplot and I was rooting for them until the end. I still sob when i read it.
In my story, my mage main character is still learning his abilities. He tries something never done before, a massive magical sphere to teleport his people away from a losing battle. However, everyone on the edge of the sphere only gets umm... "partially teleported" (cut in half). One of these people happens to be his best friend and it guilt wracks him for the rest of the story, in a way crippling his character development
[SPOILERS] As a horror specialist, the question of the day is very easy. Alex Browning. Was it the most emotionally disappointing for me? I feel like there might’ve been worse. However in Final Destination 2, they couldn’t get his actor so they just killed him inbetween movies. The way he died was getting a single brick to the head. Dull Machete award, this deserved
9:40 perfect description of death in dragon ball. They can die, do a crazy amount of training because they don’t get tired or have to eat, and then get revived.
Hey Brandon! Thank you for making this video. Will definitely keep this information in mind and even come back and revisit this video when I feel ready to write a novel!
I really liked this. I've been working on a story on and off for a long time now and many things have changed since I first began working on it, but one thing that hasn't changed since I thought it up is the death of the main characters' sister. I am nowhere near writing that scene, but the fact that she dies is something that is integral to the story I'm writing as she is a symbol for the main character, in a way. Now I have a video to come back to for when I need to reference good death writing techniques.
Goblin Slayer gets a lot of flack for gratuity in its violence (and for being a Japanese gameworld fantasy light novel series...), but the first few chapters being dedicated to adventurers who get violated by a group of goblins makes the deaths and worse really impactful beyond the shock. You saw their hubris and friendship, you learn about what they want to do with their lives, and most important you come to like them. In fact, until his death the book tries to make you think the novice warrior of the group is who eventually becomes the title character. But no. And no matter what one's opinions are on the series going forward, that intro makes those deaths matter.
2:04 Granted it’s a TV Show but… (Spoilers for Better Call Saul S6) Howard Hamlin’s death is a perfect example of this to me. It’s shocking and violent, no one was expecting Lalo to come in and the nonchalance in which he murders Howard is shocking. Equally it’s tragic and beautiful ending to his story. It felt right, and it didn’t feel forced or like it was done for shock value. Most importantly it has impact on the story and characters.
I made a Lego Star Wars stop-motion and I just killed off random characters just for the sh*ts and giggles. And whenever a major death happened in the short film, the character would sorta just die like a background character. I MUST NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AGAIN
A character death that has really stuck with me is from Walking Dead season2 when Sophia stumbled out of the barn after the characters spent half a season desperately looking for her.
Well, I did have a few difficult options for Project Jector(still workshopping the name). Heaven mode is the easiest mode, which enemies are weaker, and if a character if defeated, you can bring them back to consciousness unless all your characters fall. Surface mode is the game’s normal mode that disallows that, if your character falls, you can’t use them until the level is clear, and the enemies are at normal strength. That leaves me with Heck Mode, the hard mode. It’s similar to how Fire Emblem does it, which if your character falls, they die, leaving you unable to use them for the rest of the game, and the enemies are strongest.
On 6. This is very true. It's also very true for acting. Every scene of 'great acting' has great reacting from the rest of the cast which really heightens the impact of the scene. Same should be true for books. If your characters don't care, why would your readers?
3:34 that is the thing that the Hamish Macbeth does, the book let's us see the dead character before they die, letting us get to know their personality a little, sometimes they make you love the character, or they make you hate the character to sympathise with the killer.
Everything has been done before, so it’s a balancing act, and if you make death too out of left field then that in itself is a cliché (subverting expectations). Showing a character has a promising future is a huge cliche if clumsily done (“Here’s a photo of the girl I’m going to marry. “, “I retire next week. “). So is anything to do with mentors, since mentor become villain has been way overused. Honestly I think the best approach is not to overthink it, since it’s only really a cliche if you try too hard to force something on the reader.
Most painful character deaths: Robb Stark, Oberyn Martell, Rue and Finnick. And also Chris Chambers in Stand By Me (I know it was at the end... but it was still sad hearing about it) Most disappointing: Colossus (because they brought him back... they should have kept him dead) Best resurrection: Jean Grey and Lady Stoneheart... and we'll see about Jon Snow's resurrection in The Winds of Winter. Honourable mention would be for T'Challa / Chadwick Boseman 😢
I remember a short story I wrote, sci fi type, did upset some people cause I killed off a main character during an away mission. He was given a backstory, motivation, a future he wanted to pursue. Then it was ripped away. One reply from a reader asked why I didn’t kill off one of the titular “red shirts” ie a character just there for that particular mission etc. Reason is simple, I hate that. I despise that common devaluing of life but n fiction. The goal is to show that the plot armour you expect isn’t there, raising the stakes. However also to have it mean something to the characters and audience that someone died. Someone with hopes dreams struggles, friends and family. Not just a virtually faceless drone. I will say tge particular series is a bit cheaty in that it’s a more dynamic style of sci fi. Not like Star Trek where each iteration is 1 crew 1 ship. Instead it’s different ships different crews of a navy. With very few recurring characters. Each story being about the struggles, of the various ships crewa, stresses of the navy being stretched thin, and more. Sometimes the good guys lose, sometimes the cavalry shows up and rescues the heroes, sometimes they are too late. The underlying idea though is that there’s no 1 hero ship. That the navy doesn’t consist of a single crew. That each ship each crew is valuable with their own stories own lives and dreams. Not just inconsequential names in the background.
About the resurrection trope, there's an aspect of it which is not very discussed but I find it fascinating: when the resurrection works technically as in the character is brought back to life but they are... different. Not like their old self. Maybe they forgot all the skills they have including basic survival skills and they need to be taught like a toddler. Maybe they have full amnesia (which cannot be cured with just a magic spell or something). Maybe the character cannot be who they used to be before their death so they have to learn to become someone new. Or maybe their resurrection comes at a great cost and another character close to them dies because of it. I think there are many possibilities to make resurrection interesting.
Something I have in my story is the main character sees death quite a lot, but none of it being those close to them. Shortly after a major revelation that shakes the MC and turns their world upside down and causes him to act irrationally, the major character whom is closest to him dies, but he manages to bring her back through an expanded use of the powers he has been learning and practicing throughout the story. But during that fight she ended up losing one of her eyes, a wing and a large portion of her tail, leaving her permanently scarred and a constant reminder to him that it was his negligence that led to those wounds. Then not long after this they're thrown into a confrontation with a reoccurring antagonist working for the current "villain". This character has been on the fence between if they're friend or foe, as well as teaching the MC some valuable lessons that have helped him survive so the MC doesn't want to fight, making it seem like they'll find a way to bridge that gap and have them survive since I'd set the precendent "important characters don't die". But no, the antagonist gives him no choice. It's a fight to the death and thus resulting the first major death of the story and laying the groundwork for future deaths for other characters important to the main character. I view it as a way to set an expectation through the deaths of minor/non-characters, reinforce that expectation through the revival of a main character, only to immediately put a massive crack in the expectation with a major character death, and then finally shatter it completely with the deaths of some of the MC's closest allies.
I’m making my own villain but his sad backstory. But the thing in his story that makes him more like he is today feels like it’s literally forcing it to make the sad part happen, because in his story, a accident happens, which makes him like that his brother accidentally tipped over something and it just feels like I couldn’t get a different other reason so I’m trying to fix it
What you said about reviving the dead is actually a huge deal and, being a huge fan of anime, I’ll use that as an example. I’m sure I don’t have to explain how Dragon Ball fumbled this concept. The story has to rely completely on our desire for the characters to achieve their goals because death has no consequence and can’t be used for that purpose. Naruto, on the other hand, uses this concept perfectly. It cannot be done without sacrificing a living person and the revived are completely controlled by the person reviving them. This explains why the heroes can’t do it themselves, as their morals won’t allow them to sacrifice a living person, and why the villain would use it, to create turmoil for the heroes and the dead alike by pitting them against each other. What make’s it’s usage in the story so great though is not only that it makes sense why it exists and why it’s being used, but it creates a way to tie up a bunch of character arcs that would otherwise be left unresolved. It proves that creating something to advance the plot isn’t a bad thing as long as it doesn’t break the rules of the universe or it’s characters and serves the story in a meaningful way.
In my book soon to be published, "Unveiling Shadows of the Past" I kill characters, and without looking to videos as to how to kill them, I already did these things! Man that's fascinating!
I think if writing a story, have your main focus characters and then backup characters if that makes sense. Ned stark does and then Rob (backup character) takes his place, then rob dies and Jon takes his place as main north focus. Both rob and Ned had important things to do integral to the story so when they died their story had not finished which leaves the reader in shock. But the story can continue because there are supporting characters that can take over their place in the story. If rob and Jon did not exist in the story it would feel out of place for Ned to die and that part of the story to be abandoned. Another shock death that could have been great is qui gon jin. He was supposed to train anakin but died shortly before the training began. If we didn’t know he had to die from the original movies, his death would have been far more emotional
I can't think of many resurrections that I don't hate. Coming back from the dead has become a cancer on fiction IMO. It's gotten to the point where I can't convince people who read my fiction that I've actually killed a character. I have a prelude story in a world where archaeology uncovers a lot more than it does in the real world, unearthing a vast ancient advanced civilization, and I had a demi-goddess character literally detonate and annihilate herself on a subatomic level, and I can't convince some readers that she is actually dead within the diegesis of the story.
The resurrection of a certain character in The Burning White by Brent Weeks still pisses me off to this day. I'll still re-read the series because there's so much to like about it, but that one decision really harms the ending.
My favourite way a character can be defeated or killed in a movie is with Poetic Justice/Irony, like foreshadowing that is hidden to set up a character’s death without us knowing initially or when they achieve their goal but still lose. Examples like: - Thanos at the end of “Avengers Endgame” being snapped away by the very stones that he tried to get all his life and those which his Infinity War counterpart already used in the prior movie. - Syndrome in “The Incredibles” being shredded by a plane turbine due to his cape, which is one of the things that Edna warned Mr Incredible about when denying superhero capes. - The Ring that Kept Gollum alive for centuries is the very thing that causes him to fall and die in the lava of Mount Doom in “LOTR: The Return Of The King.” - Megatron in the first live-action “Transformers” movie is defeated and shredded by the Allspark cube, the very thing that he seeked to use to amplify his Decepticon army. Anyway I’m sure there are many other examples but yeah irony is my favourite method in taking out a character.
I've been thinking about Gandolf death. There wasn't a cost to it, obviously. But it very much advanced the Christian themes of the story. Really interesting. Thank you.
1. He was an immortal, so he wasn't dead. 2. He payed a huge price, he had to step into a role he didn't want. He wanted to be the advisor, work in the background. Instead he had to go against the person he looked up to, Saruman, to take his place as leader and move to the foreground.
I think I can give an example of killing off a character early that we still get to know a bit about. Spoilers for the Oshinoko manga and anime . . Ai Hoshino dies in the 8th-9th chapter of the manga and the first episode of the anime. Yet i feel audiences get to know enough about her that her death is heartbreaking She’s an idol who’s never been shown love her whole life so she lies hoping that lie will be the truth and she can love others truly. So knowing her character even if she dies early, makes her death impactful and you’re still learning bits about her from there on.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
So, avoid reactions like,
"Oh my god, they killed Kenny!"
"You bastards!"
South Park probably breaks all the rules, but the brilliance is that they make it work 😅
I felt that.
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO so true!
Unless you mean to do that and it can have the appropriate effect, mmm-kay?
@@christianoutlawi actually read that in Mr. Mackey's voice 😂
I don't like when the reader/watcher get's a bunch of info about a character, who had very little to do till now, all the sudden is the focus. When this happens I right away think to myself "oh yeah you're dead. You're already dead." It's right next to "2 days before retirement" in a cop drama and "I can't wait to see my girl." in a war drama.
Great call! Whenever the spotlight (or magnifying glass) falls on a minor character, you can count on them dying soon. Happened a lot in The Walking Dead now that I think of it.
"Hey, let's hurry up and make the audience care so the upcoming death matters!"
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty 😅😂😂
I recently read a trilogy that did this badly. The protagonist's lover and ex lover had bickered ceaselessly. When the lover sought the ex to apologize for misdeeds it was painfully obvious the lover was about to die. Sudden, melodramatic, and annoying death.
ah, the "Red Shirt Syndrome". It's like in cheap crime series where you can tell the bad guy out by the way the camera moves and spotlights them...
Yeah, I had that in my first draft on my current story, but I realized this, and changed it so the reader wouldn’t expect it. So I changed it so the character was more introduced in the beginning, and didn’t have too much introduction. Just the same as the other side characters
Your #6 comment made me think of Jane in Breaking Bad. Her death clouded over Jesse for the rest of the series. The guilt of it ate at Walt until he confessed to Jesse. The grief made her dad mess up at work and caused the airplane crash. Her death affected the story going forward in many ways. And the amazing thing is you know in a lesser writer's hands her death is just going to be "Jesse sad, look at how evil Walter is getting." Instead it is flushed out, her death touched everyone who knew her significantly, and touched others indirectly as well.
Not to mention that they did not pull any punches.
That scene was raw, drawn out and developed Walters character by miles, with him switching between emotions and wants.
Not only that- but it was a good way to introduce Mike as Saul's "cleaner."
@conorowens3892 funny thing about that. Mike was never supposed to be there. Saul was originally written to help Jesse with the cover up, but Bob Odenkirk has scheduling conflicts so they brought in Mike for that scene.
I like how the death has soo much character impact. It’s less heavy on the story side. Jesse stays in New Mexico, some financial troubles from the car damage, etc.
But the character impacts are insane. We see walt trying to justify this to himself in the speech at the school, we see Walt trying to be a father figure to Jesse while clearly still guilty (when he approaches him in the crack house in the finale of S2).
Once Walt and jesse’s relationship has been destroyed, Walt uses it to spite Jesse in Ozymandias. It’s a really effective moment in the story
The moment he said "they mess up at work" I immediately thought, "crashing 2 airplanes is a pretty big mess up"
Meanwhile, in comics-world: A character dies, means he/she went on an extended holiday.
UNLESS it's Uncle Ben or Thomas/Martha Wayne haha
@@WriterBrandonMcNulty Some characters, due to the over-proliferation of reboots and parallel universes are doomed to die over and over again. They deserve the Honorary Petunia Award.
Speaking of proliferation: Since George Martin "popularised" sudden death of main characters, I saw many examples where authors used it for a fleeting shock effect, but left me pondering "Why?!?".
Edit: Someone mentioned I should've put a spoiler warning at the top, and they're probably right.
There will be spoilers later in this comment.
About some of these:
Peter Parker's death in Into the Spiderverse was at the beginning, and be was supposed to be a mentor character to Miles but then died before he really got to teach Miles anything, which forced Miles to search for a new mentor. This was an integral part of Miles' character development.
Then, later on, spoiler alert:
Uncle Aaron dies. This is shortly after we discover he's the Prowler. We have grown to care about Aaron throughout the movie, so the reveal is surprising. We see the good in him because of everything that's happened previously. Then, when Miles reveals his face, Uncle Aaron realises what he's doing is wrong. These are real people he's killing. He decides to quit working as the Prowler. This is the start of a redemption arc.
KingPin puts a stop to that.
Both deaths were important to the plot, but Aaron's death was much more impactful.
Also, Aaron's death was more surprising, since we expect a role-model to die in a Spiderman origin story. Peter's death serves that role. But we only later realise that Uncle Aaron was so much more of a role-model than Peter.
whoa, that's a really good observation! I never realized that Peter's death in the beginning acts as a device to fool the readers who mostly are already aware of the Spider-man story (aka 1 closest character always dies to trigger the creation of a true Spider-man)
You should've put the spoiler warning at the top. I do not mind your comment but that literally spoilt everything for me. I was planning on watching the movie.
I think my favourite character death is Count Dooku, in the novelisation of Revenge of the Sith. In the movie, he just gets outfought, betrayed and murdered - but in the novelisation there's so much more to it: we see his own idea of what was supposed to happen, leading up to his death. The entire fight is told from his perspective, making Anakin and Obi-Wan the antagonists for two-and-a-bit chapters and showing just how dark a threat Anakin poses to those he fights - and exactly how Palpatine manipulates EVERYONE - including and especially his own inner circle.
It's tragic, it's poignant, it fits the theme of the story, and it hits astonishingly hard considering most people who read it will have already seen the movie and know exactly what's coming.
That novelization went *hard.* It's one of my favorite things to go back to when I'm writing.
I miss when Star Wars Novelizations expanded on the movies like this instead of just coming up with excuses for important plot points that shouldn't realistically happen (Rey downloading Kylo Ren's knowledge of lightsaber combat, and somehow beating him in a duel in TFA before retconning her to be Palpatine's granddaughter)
Absolutely right man! It's been a while since I have read revenge of the Sith but I remember that death sticking out for me.
Another way of dealing with this is separating the emotions brought forth from death from death itself. Characters don't always have to die to be dead. They can turn coat. They can lose themselves or get lost along the way. Permanency in separation is as good as burying someone. This way it doesn't feel as cheap when characters return to the protagonists side instead of miraculously getting revived
Or you could cripple them. Like in Full Metal Alchemist. People get put in a wheelchair or are blinded and they still play a major role. And it kinda feels more heavy than 'just' death.
@@JustLooseMe it's weird that we've cheapenened death more so than a handicap
@@inkwyvern5171 Yes and no. Because Death is permanent there is no after math for the dead character. No more suffering, no more danger. Thats why it is easier to get over it.
On the other hand, a bad ass who lost his eyesight has pain, struggle, and is more in danger than ever because he does have the same enemies as before but not the same capabilities. Therefore we are forced to worry about this character even more, and it hurts see him struggle time and time again even more because we saw first hand what he was capable of before his injury.
It think it is just logical because you dont let the reader of the hook.
The only difficulties are that the injury doesnt feel like you pulled your punches and that you dont throw away the character because he cant fight anymore.
@@JustLooseMe I struggle to kill my characters. I develop attachments to them and dread the impending scenes when it's their time.
@@inkwyvern5171 oh yeah from a writers perspective for sure. I have the situation the other way around. I have a point in the story where a character has to die. It is the only way the protagonist can live and become the version he is at the end. Knowing all this I look forward to flesh out his character and at the same time I really dont want to because I might get to attached to him.
I think in T2, the T-800's 'death' was probably one of the most impactful on screen deaths of all time.
👍🏼
Naruto Spoiler:
I go with Jirayas death. Like, it was kinda teased but DAMN, that shit just hit!
@@SryButI think it works so well because Kishimoto is excellent at not telegraphing character deaths, but is spectacular at building dread. Like a fight starts and you have no idea that it's coming at first but as it drags on...then you see them lose an arm...
@@kanemccarthy1979 Yeah.
@@kanemccarthy1979yeah but it gets really annoying when it dawns on you that they never will kill off any character that isn’t a mentor except neji who hadn’t been relevant for hundreds of episodes at that point. Naruto is really too scared to kill off characters when a lot of its die characters realistically should have died in their fights on top of the fact it would of been more impactful since they do pretty much nothing for most of the series
Oberyn Martell's death in Game of Thrones elicited the single most visceral emotional reaction from me that I've ever had in regards to a fictional character's death. I was furious. And it's not because it was bad or out of place, but as a viewer/reader, I really wanted him to get his revenge, but it was written very well with his personality in mind. He was blinded by his emotions (which allowed readers and viewers to empathize with him), which caused him to make a fatal mistake, and then he died a (seemingly) meaningless death to one of the most despicable people in Westeros.
As much as I hated seeing him die that way, I think the story became so much more compelling with that death.
tbf, in a way he did get revenge on the Mountain, as in the books it is said that he suffered for weeks before eventually succumbing to the poison Oberyn tipped his spear in.
Mind putting a spoiler warning?
@@johnclever8813your in the comment section of a video discussing character death. You should’ve expected people to give examples of character death.
@@johnclever8813 it's been 23 years since oberyn's death, 10 years if you count the show
@@ultratrongerbruh the argument of how old something is is so incredibly stupid considering how many thousands of works of media come out don’t is not feasible for everyone to have seen everything that has ever come out. As the other guy said it’s more so dense to not expect spoilers in a comment section about character death
I’ve always loved in Star Wars Rebels when, after Kanan gives his life to save Hera and the other rebels in the final season, the next episode is basically entirely devoted to their grief. Sabine and Zeb lash out at the Empire, Ezra finds himself rudderless once again without his Master’s guidance, and Hera is utterly destroyed by feeling responsible for the death of the man she loves. They all ultimately find their own ways to shake off the funk by the end of the episode, but it was great to see that explored in a way I feel too few shows do nowadays.
I recently played a video game that dealt with death and revival a lot.
If a character died in the story, they were reborn, but they would not remember anything from their past life, and would be like a completely new person.
What game was that?
Literally any game ever@@TrueBK77
Damn, I didn't know Flappy Bird had such a deep and intriguing plot@@eirdonne_
@eirdonne_ Not trying to come off as a smartass, but that's simply not true. As someone who has played a ton of games over their life (I have Autism and video games are my special interest), most games don't do this, and instead apt for just killing off a character for story reasons and not reviving them (well, except for the main character when you respawn, but besides from meta games like Undertale, that character coming back isn't actually supposed to happen in the story).
@@masterwolfgaming3436We don't care that you're autistic everyone plays video games 💀
The tip about a promising future reminds me of Narancia from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. As they were close to finding the villain, he was talking with one of the other characters about how he was excited to try going to school again to get his life in shape and wanting to eat a nice pizza. I remember watching it and feeling so distraught that he never got to accomplish that.
Exactly what I was thinking of lmao
George R.R. Martin has said Gandalf's resurrection shaped his philosophy in killing characters no matter how matter now important they are. He set that tone from the first book with Ned Stark.
Game of Thrones effectively abandoned this philosophy when Arya was stabbed repeatedly by the Waif, jumped in the dirty water and was immediately fine ("merely a flesh wound", to quote Monty Python). From then on, the fan favorite characters suddenly all developed plot armor thicker than dragon scales.
Good example with Arya, it seems like she has the ”plot armor”, what some people call it. To be fair that non-death wasn’t G.R.R.M’s books, so only the show writers to blame
Tbf, the first book of ASoIaF would’ve been the prologue of a different series
How many parents do you actually expect to survive the prologue of a series?😂
@@pn2294Ned was more than just the parent character. He was the central character of the first book A Game Of Thrones. No character in a song of ice and fire has had more pov chapters in a single book then Ned. And by your logic Catelyn Tully also should have died because she too was a parent.
@@imtired3861 honestly this still isn’t any different than if Uncle Ben was the main character of the first episode of Spider-Man.
Why though? Gandalf made sense in his resurrection.
The "future promise" one reminds me if Axel from The Walking Dead. I liked how with him, he had been a prisoner who was only just pitiful enough to talk Rick out of killing him, and afterwards his relationship with the group began to get better as he had a funny vibe to him. And then, while he's lamenting to Carol about his past in a way that puts it behind him, he gets shot through the head - no warning, no realisation that it's over, just gets one shot. That gave me a lot of shock
Governor Jumpscare
And then you get absolutely obliterated emotionally when his dead body gets littered with dozens more bullets and Carol uses it as a shield. Shit's just disturbing
I love how Watership down creates the sense of tention after killing off a character almost right after their adventure stars to make it feel like anyone could die at any moment
I felt that way when watching Invincible
Another tip, more likely to be found in romantic stories, inspired by the promise a future tip: the no future character. It's that character who already knows he or she will die soon but his/her lover and close ones still hope that won't happen. The reader roots for them, believes that the character will make it but the inevitable fate comes crushing all our hopes.
#4 id say this is a double-edged sword.
The good old "2 weeks until retirement" cliché comes to mind. By this point a promising future has conditioned the audience to expect the character to die, and it often feels trite and unimaginative to kill them in this method. Or even worse, it might even worsen your story and cheapen the death of it leaves a story arc incomplete or feels too sudden, especially if it means characters don't buy the death.
The death of John snow in game of Thrones was the worst offender here, his death was handled so badly it was obvious he wasn't gone for good the moment he hits the ground, because there was too much unfinished business going on for anyone to buy that he was actually dead. It feels like a very "gotcha" tip, and one I feel is a pretty bad tip nowadays when bright future makes readers expect death is coming.
Yeah, as soon as I hear or read about a character and their good fortune or promising future is mentioned, I'm already thinking, they are going to die soon. I think the promising future trope has to be handled with care. Maybe if the promising future isn't solely for this one character, but affects multiple people. Maybe if the character is just making believable plans (with uncertain outcomes).
XD I didn't know the "two weeks until retirement" thing was a cliche, so I accidentally subverted it in the beginning of one of my stories. The character in question actually does just go into retirement. Granted, he does have to drag his freshly disabled, workaholic best friend along with him, so his life afterward isn't as peaceful as he'd hoped, but he does at least get to leave the military.
A better way to see #4 is not as a promising future but a promise of a future. That is, the audience/reader can see that the character has more to accomplish in the story but then they are taken away.
Chrissy Cunningham's death in Stranger Things is an example. They set her up like she has a part to play in the season with character development and a story but then is killed.
If she was just a generic High school cheerleader with no story, no inner character issues, and no people she was connecting with her death wouldn't mean much to us.
If they followed Jon’s death path in the books it would have been more in-line with the video and less predictable to bring back. The whole book he’s trying to balance being this impartial leader with secretly aiding someone to avenge his family. At the end he decides to break his vows and abandon his post to rescue someone whom he believes to be his sister and join the king in the battle for his home…only for Jon to be killed by his own men. And we’ve seen with Beric Dondarrion and Lady Stoneheart how traumatic death is, so even when Jon gets resurrected in the books it is gonna scar him permanently.
Book Jon’s death kills essentially a complete character, promises a future of him fighting to reclaim his home, ties in thematically with his choice to pursue love instead of duty, and will have a cost of resurrection
You can promise a future for all other characters, not only the one to die, though you must avoid the "what are you going to do after the war" talk.
The most disappointing death I’ve seen in a story would probably have to be Avdol’s death from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure part 3. The first time he “died” it had a big impact on Polnarref, allowing him to grow further as a character, and than later we find out that he didn’t actually die which was suprising and actually pretty cool to see, but than when they killed him for real later on it just wasn’t as impactful in my opinion.
To be fair, he was supposed to die the first time, but Araki brought him back because fans loved him and demanded it.
@@IDSearcher Yeah, I didn’t have a problem with him coming back. It was when he died a 2nd time by Cream, because the 2nd time didn’t have the same impact and felt repetitive.
@@userdata9511 I agree. I didn’t hate it, per se, but his second death was much less impactful. The anticlimactic death and the fact that it was the second time he had “died” made his death not feel real. I wasn’t even sure if he was dead or not until the very end.
@@tostey Well said. But regardless. I still hold the series to be among my favorite fictional works.
I'm a massive JoJo fan, and I feel like if it could be rewritten so those deaths still take place, I'd like it if Avdol's Dad was a real character who takes Avdol's place after he dies to Hol Horse and J Geil.
Still though, I love how Araki made IGGY'S death more impactful than Avdol's lmaoo
As an RPG GM I find these tips really thought inspiring.
I know that in many RPGs, especially Dungeons and Dragon's newer editions, death is cheap, and resurrection is cheaper. It makes the stories we tell around the table cheaper too.
The wins the players characters get never feel as earned as in games where they know it was just as likely they would die as the villain
One thing about killing off a character is big consequences.
Like you mentioned with the mentor. He knows everything and guides, then dies.
Similar characters can be a very helpful or supportive, a safety that keeps everyone out of trouble. So their death isn't as much that they're dead but "Oh no, they're completely vulnerable now. How will they handle the situation now?". They had a plan and a backup, now both are gone and they're stuck in the middle. And the viewer can't directly tell how they're gonna deal with this.
Take two factions and one is hunting the party blamed for a coup on both. A buddy gives them political protection and vouches for them so the other faction protects them so they can see the leader and plead innocence. Then he dies and they're blamed.
Now the safe haven faction is hostile like they're outsiders and the bad faction can now hunt them. And now they're blamed for both crimes and have lost the only chance to redeem them selves. The party is caught with their pants down.
Excellent tips!
I write under a pen name so won't reveal it here. I have killed 'villains' in all of my books. Sometimes they are main villains, sometimes they are minor villains (that work for main villains), sometimes they are what I refer to as 'on camera' kills or in great detail on the page, sometimes it happens 'off camera' where the reader is aware that the death is occurring but the death itself isn't described in detail (because usually it occurs after the villain has been tortured in detail by a main character - yes, some of my main characters walk a thin line between good and evil). The setting and method, is whatever the story calls for.
But, the worst emotional experience for me, as a writer, was in my second book where the story called for the death of a major side character. I literally SOBBED throughout his death scene as I was writing it. I mixed it with the 'off camera' death of the major villain - where the reader knew that the hero was fighting and killing the villain 'off camera', but were witnessing the death of the major side character in the arms of the heroine 'on camera' due to a fatal injury sustained when he gave his life protecting hers. My readers lost their minds; but in a good way.
I believe, that if we as writers, can't feel the death of a character, either triumph because it was the death of an evil character, or despair and grief because it was the death of a good character, why would we expect our readers to feel anything when it occurs? If we aren't emotionally connected to our characters - why would anyone else be?
Of course, as a specific genre writer, I always ask myself the question at the end of my all of my novels, is this the book that is going to end my writing adventures? Have I pushed too far? I am working on my fifth book now - so as Aria Stark always said, "Not today." 😃 Love your videos!
Great point on the emotional resonance of a character's death. One trap I fall into a lot during my early drafts is that I have characters who die for the sake of "impact" but there is no impact because I didn't do the work to establish why those characters matter. I'm going through revisions on a story right now, and I need to keep that in mind.
Dobby. Dobby was a wonderful little house elf and didn’t deserve death. There was so much more that he could’ve done. I feel like his death wasn’t recognized enough after watching your video and after all the death prior to his, it just felt like one too many. Poor Dobby ❤️
This was also a great example of how a character death serves the purpose of moving the character forward and is impactful all the way to the end. Dobby is innocent and loyal, and represents how even those characters are vulnerable to the casualties of war.
The "mentor death" segment made me think of The Kingsman.
You're going through the movie thinking the mentor will probably die, somehow. But then the young hero gets killed, and it REALLY throws you for a loop. Especially with _how_ it happens.
I assume you're talking about the WW1 Kingsman.
In which case, yes that was suc a good movie, and the events leading up to his death are the best part
I was thinking of that!!!!!! The shock, the abruptness, the unfairness of it all!
I have a story where the biggest point (That i've come up with so far) is the death and eventual return of the main character, but since it's my first time ever writing a long story, i'm really not sure if went about it the right way.
The death itself is caused by a disease known as a Blight, the same genetic mutation that many characters have adapted to and gained special powers from.
The MC slowly begins to falter in their duties as a guard, and even notices signs of serious illness/damage to their body, but hides it from the royal family and other guards out of habit and refusal to abandon their duty. Eventually though, the Blight advances and causes the mc to lose the ability to properly function - Joints become unable to move and keep them contained to a bed, they can barely speak, yet the physical pain is nothing compared to the pain of seeing their love, the princess, weeping over them and refusing to leave their side.
After the disease finally kills them off, the grief of their companions and the princess causes many problems in the palace - The blind aerokinetic guard's powers begin to falter and cause her ability to navigate her surroundings to falter (She senses air flow to navigate), the princess remains locked up in her room for weeks at a time and eventually leaves her home to become a mercenary under a different name, etc.
Eventually though, the mc returns as through an already mysterious power known as "The Hollow" (Still workshopping the actual event and names). The costs of becoming a Walker include loss of memory, white hair and occasional hits of pure agony at essentially random times. Because nobody was around for their revival and they wear a stolen combat suit w/ a mask, not even the princess recognises them when they meet face to face, and the mc also doesn't remember her due to the memory loss.
I apologize for the massive wall of text, i can't help myself. Even though every single character has a name, i didn't put any in, mostly because i thought it would be better to just explain the concept
Edit: This entire concept has recently been overhauled and improved to avoid annoying cliches, but i won't go into detail because this comment is long enough :/
Jon Snow's death and revival in the tv show was disappointing cause it's as if nothing happened to him. He feels pretty much the same except maybe a bit more disgruntled . It felt like they did a better job with the resurrections of the side character Beric Dondarrion
On the contrary he did undergo a change….. they undid all his character development and regressed him to the whipping boy he was in the earlier seasons. It was completely negative on all counts, and thoroughly unsatisfying.
Mmhm, just look at Lady Stoneheart. So different compared to Jon in the show
I suspect that there will be significant changes in the book if GRRM ever gets around to finishing it.
I actually disagree with this. I believe that Jon Snow lost his hope and fire after being resurrected. He felt compelled to lead the attack against the Boltons out of family loyalty but he no longer had the desire to lead that he had growing up.
When Jon Snow first joined the Night's Watch, he wanted to become First Ranger like his uncle. He felt like he was being blocked but was then pleased with the idea of possibly becoming Lord Commander, after Sam put the idea in his head. He didn't like how he eventually did become Lord Commander, since he loved and respected Jeor Mormont. However, once he was elected, Jon did the best job that he could and believed he was the right man for the position.
After being brought back, Jon says, "I did what I thought was right, and I got murdered for it." At this point, Jon's spark and desire is gone. He knows that some Free Folk will follow him because he stood up for them and he knows that some Northern families will follow him out of respect for the Starks, but Jon Snow doesn't want to do any of it. Before the Battle of the Bastards, Jon tells Melisandre to leave him dead if he falls in battle, but he sounds like he's actually hoping for it. It's not until Jon is about to suffocate and be trampled to death, that he makes the conscious decision to keep living.
Lastly, one of the main reasons why Jon falls for Daenerys so hard, is that she makes you believe in the impossible. She reminds Jon of Ygritte's fierceness and he starts to feel some hope again, that was lost ever since his death.
In the books it’s not a question of whether he’ll come back but how it will change his character. Others certainly have.
There’s also the matter of him warging into Ghost’s body first and foremost… He might not be too grateful towards those who just killed him
Wow, you reopened something I'd forgotten about 10 years ago, that moment of excitement that Ned Stark was going to take the black and reuinite with Jon Snow at the Wall. Gut-wrenching! But I should have realized that Ned was doomed as soon as Lord Commander Mormont said, "He must be allowed to take the black, I need a man of his caliber here." No way things work out that well in book one.
The same happens with his son. He just realizes he can attack the Westerlands and "just" needs the Frey's army.
Hey this was an awesome video, very timely. I've been juggling with the thought of killing off my mentor character, and how to do it. This video gave me some insight in how to go about it. And yes, I agree that bringing a character back from the dead shouldn't be easier than curing the common cold.
Thanks for watching! And mentors have a bad habit of getting killed off, so definitely work hard to find a creative/unpredictable way of doing it.
i´ve read something a while ago where the mentor was a master of poisons and the apprentice was getting more and more sick of his ways, finally planning to kill him and take over his business, but he was prepared and always one step ahead, killing her and while she was paralyzed and slowly died he was holding her, comforting and praising her for the skills she aquired along their way. When she was dead he was like "damn, it happened again, i´ll need another apprentice"... that storyline was something else
This is something I'm really trying to get right in my book. I want none of my characters to be safe. I want the reader to feel something when a character dies, whether that is relief or sadness. Either way I'm trying to build the characters up so that the moments hold weight and impact the rest of the story.
i wanna write a book thats in first person, then the main character dies and the book switches midway through to third person. in theory, it'd make it super unique and throw everyone for a complete loop
0:37 Thank you for clarifying, Brandon
Something I hate about serial storytelling - Walking Dead was especially guilty of this - is when cool villains are set up and then killed off, and then the author realises they lost an awesome character and tries to create another villain just like the other one.
In regards to number 4, here are some examples in Stranger Things:
Bob: Marrying Joyce and moving to Maine with her
Alexei: Becoming a US citizen after defecting from the Soviet Union
Eddie: Graduating from Hawkins Highschool
Still Stranger Things writers don't have balls to kill off a main character
Example, Max Mayfield.
@@sanjaykarthicks1226that will probably change with season 5
Most disappointed 'death' was actually a 'Oh, he's alive again, haha' moment
Long story short: Guy who MC has a crush on puts himself into a 'He's definitely not getting out alive situation' to buy MC and friends time to get away. But then he is illogically alive and waiting for MC in the epilogue. It's like, 'Sure, these feelings of grief don't matter now, huh?' moment and seemed stupid af
Aside from the "crush" angle, this was Billy's death in Jurassic Park 3. I watched it years ago when I was younger, and it was probably the first time I ever remember feeling disappointed that a character actually lived.
Ive only killed one major character in all my stories, and I'm quite proud of how it turned out. He was the love interest to my main character and his death had been planned from the very beginning. The entire theme of the story centered around depression and it was very important that he die simply because my main character had been leaning on him as a crutch instead of finding out the root of her depression and dealing with it. I have quiiiite a few comments (because the story is on wattpad) of people mad at me because I made them cry and killed off such a nice character.
So how did I pull this off? Well, he acted as the main characters protector because she is blind but is keeping it a secret from everyone but him (its a weird case for how she is able to pull this off effectively). Anyway, I foreshadowed his death quite a lot in the chapters leading up to it and even threw in a crow for extra measure. Now, what I think what got the majority of them crying was the scene right after his death where the main character is laying down crying to herself. Throughout the entire story, I had done my best to show how good of a relationship they had but she never quite said "I love you" to him. But now that she was alone, she regretted not telling him over and over again how much she loved him and how badly she really wanted to start a family with him.
I remember quite clearly crying myself while writing it 😅 but now that its been a few years, I'm finally going back to it to clean up all the plot holes. I had a few commentors point out that sometimes it seemed she only stayed with him because he acted as her eyes when that wasnt my intention at all. I have quite a lot of rewriting to do, but I hope to make this scene just as impactful (or maybe even more so!) when I eventually get to it.
This obviously isn't a "death" in the usual sense, but I remember as a kid I was *devastated* at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis) when Lucy is told she won't be coming back to Narnia (or maybe it was at the end of Prince Caspian when Peter and Susan are told the same, now I think maybe I conflated the two in my memory.) Just to say, there are non-lethal ways of removing characters and getting the emotional impact. And it made it OK for her character to reappear later without technically returning to Narnia and without her having to be resurrected.
My thought is you could cripple the mentor character. In the right kind of setting that could be really harsh.
@@cardboardbox191 Remember the TV series BIRDS OF PREY where Batgirl became a crippled mentor?
@@Blaqjaqshellaq No I've never watched it. There's a Byzantine rule that the king needs to not be crippled I think it was something like full in mind and body. Certain societies especially in fiction might say why are we listening to this guy or lady if they can't even fight. Dousn't matter that they killed ten enemies with spears using a fruit-cutting knife before one of them got luck and took both their knees out.
Looking for Alaska by John Green is the book that got me back. It's so good at showing you how a death affects the other characters in the story, making you like the character, and tying that character's death into the theme
Stephen King is honestly great at character death The Dark Tower has some of the most impactful character deaths out of any story I have read.
"I know what I have to do but I Don't know if I have the strength to do it"
Thanks for all the awesome content. I'm glad this one came up in my feed. These were some excellent tips that gave me a lot to think about. In particular the last one about reviving the dead. I had a character that was pretty significant die midway through a book only to turn up not dead, kind of the classic "if you didn't see it happen, it didn't happen". Now that I say that it seems even more of a cliche that he survived. The fact that he just showed up again like nothing happened lacks a lot of impact and it didn't really have a huge amount of ramifications outside of the immediate aftermath. The idea for it to have some consequences already is adding a lot to it and it's giving him much more of an arc as a character. So that helped a lot and I really appreciate that.
The death of Tommy in The Shawshank Redemption fulfills numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 all at once in my opinion. When I first saw Shawshank in the theatre people around us gasped and said things like 'oh my god' and 'oh no!' The screenwriter certainly didn't pull any punches on that one. His death was emotional because we were growing to like him as did the characters in the movie. He was becoming a complete character by honestly and openly exposing his past, and the explosive revelation about Elmo Blatch's jail cell confession made him suddenly and unexpectedly very important to the central character in the film, Andy Dufresne. Passing his high school equivalency test promised a bright future for him and his newborn child, but that was quickly snuffed out with one casual glance from the warden. Want to learn about character development, great story writing and how to toy with the audience's emotions? Watch Shawshank.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 finale spoilers
I think Tech's death fits pretty much every single point in this video. He:
-was killed as a result of Tarkin not hesitating to use his firepower/Saw going all out (hate him) with no consideration of others' survival
-was developed much more throughout the season in several emotional scenes (and got a whole episode to himself)
-was very close to Omega, and we see her sad reaction when Hunter tells her he's gone
-had been hoping to save Crosshair and eventually return to Pabu to finally find a peaceful life (and even had a sort of love interest growing with Phee)
-perfectly showcased the recurring theme of sacrifice throughout both The Clone wars and The Bad Batch
As for "coming back from the dead", it's a very common Star Wars trope, and it's kind of cheap at this point, so I hope that he stays dead in the third season. (in the nicest way possible haha)
I thought that!
@@occykat yay! I'm always happy to find other bad batch fans haha
@@saltysyd99 YES! Bad batch is generally amazing!
I struggle to kill off any character that isn't either a minor character or a villain. I'm not really sure what I should do about that, because it's starting to feel like a bit of a problem now that I'm writing an action story that deals a lot with death, trauma and fighting in general. However, pretty much all the developed protagonists of my story deal with so much trauma and loss already that maybe that's the real reason I just don't want to deliver any death blows to them.
Like they've gone through enough already, a death would be like overkill in that context. As if killing any of them would just make my already dark story too dark, as I don't want for it to become a downright tragedy. Also as my main theme for this story is "recovery" I really need for the amounts of tragedy vs rising from it to be well balanced and proportional. And... you can't recover from death. Even the one character I could have chosen to kill I instead chose to keep alive (but gravely injured) because that would actually lead to a more intense emotional impact and cause more resolution for the other characters. In almost all cases for my characters, death would either be too cheap, or take away too much of what little positivity they've got going. When you start a story with "All these characters have a lot of suffering and very little good things to hold onto" and want for most of them to have a positive arc, you kinda end up with not much to reasonably take away from them.
Somehow I feel like that's better than to get fixated on the idea that just because the characters are in a life and death situation a lot, that means they can't all survive. I take it more to mean that if they all survive, they're going to be really (emotionally and physically) scarred. Basically, my point is: maybe death isn't the only kinda trauma of high emotional and shock value you can put your characters through.
I say that because I realized I never had trouble killing off characters in my previous works, but now suddenly I do. In fact, I've been very trigger happy with my fully developed characters in other stories. I made a lot of deeply emotionally impactful deaths that had me crying through the script for every edit. It felt right because it was meaningful. Even though that wasn't action stories at all, they were dramas and tragedies. It's just with this particular story (my current project) that it suddenly doesn't sit right with me to kill off a lot of characters, even though this is the most action-packed story I've written so far. And maybe that's why I feel insecure about it, because this is my first action story and I don't wanna be bad at that genre.
What character death disappointed you the most? BE SURE TO MARK FOR SPOILERS AND LEAVE SPACE BEFORE ANSWERING!!
Bonnie Blue Butler's death in "Gone With The Wind" was a hard one to take. But I love Scarlet's realization that her daughter has the same willful spirit as her father. She whispers "Just like papa" right before Bonnie jumps over the fence.
Thanks, this is really gonna help with my autobiography!
I am published author with 8 books most of which are best sellers. And I want to thank you. Your videos have been very helpful.
Wish you all the best.
Cheers for this, my autobiography is gonna be fire with this one!
In large scale battles, you can’t get to know all the thousands of people who die.
One of my favorite deaths is Noah in the Walking Dead. He’s a young man who decides to step up in the community. He goes to the builder guy and says he wants to learn from him and wants to do his part. Later that same episode, he dies one of the most graphic deaths in a revolving door. SOOO good.
I would like to note that death cliche and thematic tie ins might seem like contradictory advice, but people should focus on how and when to use them.
Even something as simple as having one of those "non bullies" end up dying in a surprise but inadvertant fashion.
I really needed to watch this, I’m writing a murder mystery series. My main rule is: never have characters that you know well perish. I never kill characters that were in previous books. It just ruins the series.
Thanks man! This'll really help spice up my autobiography!
I'm a guy who is possibly gonna make an animated series/movie in the future, although it is still in its concept stages, and this video helped with some of the story parts that are no longer in the concept stages! Thanks!
-Trigger warning: mentions of [self-deletion] later in the comment, trust me it is relevant to what I talk about.
Also, I'd like to add to the part about bringing characters back to life. One of the best examples of this is the youtube movie "Emesis Blue". (Minor spoiler warning, if you haven't watched Emesis Blue, go do so, it's really good) The plot of the movie revolves around a machine that brings mercenaries back to life each time they die, but the cost is their mental health. Multiple of these mercenaries have either suffered from symptoms of schizophrenia, or more extreme stuff like time anomalies and time loops or physical and mental mutations. The machine has a chance to fail, and when it does... well, watch the movie for yourself. The effects of a failed revive are so extreme to the point that the 10th of the mercenaries (now there are 9) has attempted [self-deletion], so that he doesn't have to live through the torture. This, I believe is one of the best examples of the cost of ressurection I have seen so far. I have left certain details in the comment intentionally vague, because I would hate to spoil the movie for someone.
My general concept for killing characters is to write the general concept of the story and which characters are necessary for it. Then, add a few characters that aren't needed for the story, but develop them in the exact same way as you do your major supporting characters and main characters, as early as possible and as well written as possible. From the start, you account for them not being required for the story to function, and from the start, you already planned their death, yet from the pov of the reader, they can't really tell the difference from that character to the others, until the character dies off, giving the sense that any character can die, since the character did not really appear any different from the others until then. Only in hindsight will it become clear, that the character wasn't needed for the story and only added character development to the others.. Killing off undeveloped sidecharacters really is no fun anyways, no emotional impact, no surprise. As a reader, you almost always have the sense of security, that certain characters are simply safe, cause they're the main characters. Something that I really dislike but feels hard to overcome in writing
#4 promising a future can become a cliche itself, especially the more promising the future. If a character is about to have all his dreams come true and it seems like his future is too good to be true, you know he gonna die. I would recommend tempering that promised future with some realism. Don't promise that his life will be great. Promise that his life will be just a little bit better.
#6 reaction to death: I've seen a very bad example of this. I don't know what movie it was but there was a scene where six astronauts were space walking, climbing all over the outside of the craft to rescue it. I'm not sure what they were rescuing it from but one of the astronauts finally made it to this control panel and flipped the switch, only to be immediately pulverized by a bit of space debris. Then the danger was over and one of the five remaining said, "We all survived." and the five remaining astronauts calmly climbed back into the craft.
The death i never saw coming and upset me because of the struggle he went through before he died was Leonardo's character in The Departed. Hated his death but it had a hell of an impact. Fantastic movie.
great video, i just think the thumpnail is quite ironic considering martin recently said that he had problems with already killing off a character he later realised he needed
it’s midnight. I’ve never even took interest in writing books, yet I’m here. nice!
9:40 The best example of reviving a dead character is the revival of Catelyn Stark as Lady Stoneheart. Even though, she came back to life, she isn't herself anymore. She has become a killing machine to avenge her family deaths and she has become heartless.
This guy is soo passionate!!!! direct and to the point!
Even as a teen I sensed this lesson when reading Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels. In the first novel, she kills off the main character in a glorious and satisfying way, that buys time for the other characters to be able to grow into the hero roles. However, by the third book, she was so in love with the characters that you knew none of them were ever really at risk, making the suspense hollow.
I love the bit about hinting at a promising future. That is a brilliant tip and I totally plan to use it soon.
A way I've managed to incorporate worries into the reader and doubt.
It's a superhero story set in medieval times, the villain and the hero share a trait to steal the superhuman abilities of other people. One that is highly focused on is the power of literal immortality. Both the villain and hero are continiously shifting, switching and playing with a multitude of powers, rapidly changing with every punch they throw, with their entire loadout seeming to change every time they touch eachother. I like to use it to scare the reader into thinking, 'WHO IS IMMORTAL, WHO IS SAFE RIGHT NOW???' And in these intense main conflicts and fights, not even the characters can know, constantly trying everything they can to survive at all times. Along with a large group of people, who are witchhunted for having these people, trusting their only defenses, their superpowers to one person, giving up their defences so someone can risk it all and win.
Another story I've written, clearly shows I love playing with the concept of immortality. I mean, almost all the characters are highly resilient, semi-immortal. About a species of monster that are alter-egos to humans, they embody the humans emotions and cannot die unless their human dies. But if they were to die? They'll be out of commission to reform, which can take a day to a week based on injuries, and each time they die, a piece of their humans soul is killed, making them more miserable, more depressed and/or sickly. But the main duo of the story, one of these mosnters who lost their shield of immortality, and a human being, are mortal from the very beginning of the story. And it created anxiety as they deal with grusome and incredibly grizzly scenarios that could kill them in half a second. This story is very focused on not letting your past ruin your life as it will come back to bite you through your own wreckless decisions.
While killing a character with a promising future does have a strong impact, I think killing a character with a difficult future is often more of a waste. In particular someone who started or is just about to start a redemption arc. That’s cutting out a lot of potential drama and character development. Which is also a cliche.
One of the most meaningful deaths I've ever read in fiction was in C.L. Wlison's Tairen Soul series. The couple had a whole subplot and I was rooting for them until the end. I still sob when i read it.
In my story, my mage main character is still learning his abilities. He tries something never done before, a massive magical sphere to teleport his people away from a losing battle. However, everyone on the edge of the sphere only gets umm... "partially teleported" (cut in half). One of these people happens to be his best friend and it guilt wracks him for the rest of the story, in a way crippling his character development
The thumbnail is lovely!
9:22 I really love how the Shaman King anime series (the recent remake) handled this exact point brillantly.
This was SUCH an excellent set of tips, hit everything perfectly, thank you!
[SPOILERS]
As a horror specialist, the question of the day is very easy. Alex Browning. Was it the most emotionally disappointing for me? I feel like there might’ve been worse. However in Final Destination 2, they couldn’t get his actor so they just killed him inbetween movies. The way he died was getting a single brick to the head. Dull Machete award, this deserved
9:40 perfect description of death in dragon ball. They can die, do a crazy amount of training because they don’t get tired or have to eat, and then get revived.
thank you very much, this will be really useful for my autobiography
Hey Brandon! Thank you for making this video. Will definitely keep this information in mind and even come back and revisit this video when I feel ready to write a novel!
I really liked this. I've been working on a story on and off for a long time now and many things have changed since I first began working on it, but one thing that hasn't changed since I thought it up is the death of the main characters' sister. I am nowhere near writing that scene, but the fact that she dies is something that is integral to the story I'm writing as she is a symbol for the main character, in a way. Now I have a video to come back to for when I need to reference good death writing techniques.
Goblin Slayer gets a lot of flack for gratuity in its violence (and for being a Japanese gameworld fantasy light novel series...), but the first few chapters being dedicated to adventurers who get violated by a group of goblins makes the deaths and worse really impactful beyond the shock. You saw their hubris and friendship, you learn about what they want to do with their lives, and most important you come to like them. In fact, until his death the book tries to make you think the novice warrior of the group is who eventually becomes the title character. But no. And no matter what one's opinions are on the series going forward, that intro makes those deaths matter.
2:04 Granted it’s a TV Show but… (Spoilers for Better Call Saul S6)
Howard Hamlin’s death is a perfect example of this to me. It’s shocking and violent, no one was expecting Lalo to come in and the nonchalance in which he murders Howard is shocking. Equally it’s tragic and beautiful ending to his story. It felt right, and it didn’t feel forced or like it was done for shock value. Most importantly it has impact on the story and characters.
I made a Lego Star Wars stop-motion and I just killed off random characters just for the sh*ts and giggles. And whenever a major death happened in the short film, the character would sorta just die like a background character. I MUST NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AGAIN
Awesome, best of luck!
A character death that has really stuck with me is from Walking Dead season2 when Sophia stumbled out of the barn after the characters spent half a season desperately looking for her.
Well, I did have a few difficult options for Project Jector(still workshopping the name). Heaven mode is the easiest mode, which enemies are weaker, and if a character if defeated, you can bring them back to consciousness unless all your characters fall. Surface mode is the game’s normal mode that disallows that, if your character falls, you can’t use them until the level is clear, and the enemies are at normal strength. That leaves me with Heck Mode, the hard mode. It’s similar to how Fire Emblem does it, which if your character falls, they die, leaving you unable to use them for the rest of the game, and the enemies are strongest.
On 6.
This is very true. It's also very true for acting. Every scene of 'great acting' has great reacting from the rest of the cast which really heightens the impact of the scene. Same should be true for books. If your characters don't care, why would your readers?
3:34 that is the thing that the Hamish Macbeth does, the book let's us see the dead character before they die, letting us get to know their personality a little, sometimes they make you love the character, or they make you hate the character to sympathise with the killer.
Everything has been done before, so it’s a balancing act, and if you make death too out of left field then that in itself is a cliché (subverting expectations). Showing a character has a promising future is a huge cliche if clumsily done (“Here’s a photo of the girl I’m going to marry. “, “I retire next week. “). So is anything to do with mentors, since mentor become villain has been way overused. Honestly I think the best approach is not to overthink it, since it’s only really a cliche if you try too hard to force something on the reader.
Killing is best done in silence I find. Emotion is the only blanket you need to cover a corpse and no dialog can truly cover the range of reaction.
The death of chuck in maze runner😢 most traumatic
Most painful character deaths: Robb Stark, Oberyn Martell, Rue and Finnick. And also Chris Chambers in Stand By Me (I know it was at the end... but it was still sad hearing about it)
Most disappointing: Colossus (because they brought him back... they should have kept him dead)
Best resurrection: Jean Grey and Lady Stoneheart... and we'll see about Jon Snow's resurrection in The Winds of Winter.
Honourable mention would be for T'Challa / Chadwick Boseman 😢
I remember a short story I wrote, sci fi type, did upset some people cause I killed off a main character during an away mission. He was given a backstory, motivation, a future he wanted to pursue. Then it was ripped away. One reply from a reader asked why I didn’t kill off one of the titular “red shirts” ie a character just there for that particular mission etc. Reason is simple, I hate that. I despise that common devaluing of life but n fiction. The goal is to show that the plot armour you expect isn’t there, raising the stakes. However also to have it mean something to the characters and audience that someone died. Someone with hopes dreams struggles, friends and family. Not just a virtually faceless drone. I will say tge particular series is a bit cheaty in that it’s a more dynamic style of sci fi. Not like Star Trek where each iteration is 1 crew 1 ship. Instead it’s different ships different crews of a navy. With very few recurring characters. Each story being about the struggles, of the various ships crewa, stresses of the navy being stretched thin, and more. Sometimes the good guys lose, sometimes the cavalry shows up and rescues the heroes, sometimes they are too late.
The underlying idea though is that there’s no 1 hero ship. That the navy doesn’t consist of a single crew. That each ship each crew is valuable with their own stories own lives and dreams. Not just inconsequential names in the background.
Thanks, ill definitely use this. My autobiography will be legendary
About the resurrection trope, there's an aspect of it which is not very discussed but I find it fascinating: when the resurrection works technically as in the character is brought back to life but they are... different. Not like their old self. Maybe they forgot all the skills they have including basic survival skills and they need to be taught like a toddler. Maybe they have full amnesia (which cannot be cured with just a magic spell or something). Maybe the character cannot be who they used to be before their death so they have to learn to become someone new. Or maybe their resurrection comes at a great cost and another character close to them dies because of it. I think there are many possibilities to make resurrection interesting.
Instructions unclear, I am now being sentenced to life in prison
Something I have in my story is the main character sees death quite a lot, but none of it being those close to them. Shortly after a major revelation that shakes the MC and turns their world upside down and causes him to act irrationally, the major character whom is closest to him dies, but he manages to bring her back through an expanded use of the powers he has been learning and practicing throughout the story. But during that fight she ended up losing one of her eyes, a wing and a large portion of her tail, leaving her permanently scarred and a constant reminder to him that it was his negligence that led to those wounds.
Then not long after this they're thrown into a confrontation with a reoccurring antagonist working for the current "villain". This character has been on the fence between if they're friend or foe, as well as teaching the MC some valuable lessons that have helped him survive so the MC doesn't want to fight, making it seem like they'll find a way to bridge that gap and have them survive since I'd set the precendent "important characters don't die". But no, the antagonist gives him no choice. It's a fight to the death and thus resulting the first major death of the story and laying the groundwork for future deaths for other characters important to the main character.
I view it as a way to set an expectation through the deaths of minor/non-characters, reinforce that expectation through the revival of a main character, only to immediately put a massive crack in the expectation with a major character death, and then finally shatter it completely with the deaths of some of the MC's closest allies.
I’m making my own villain but his sad backstory. But the thing in his story that makes him more like he is today feels like it’s literally forcing it to make the sad part happen, because in his story, a accident happens, which makes him like that his brother accidentally tipped over something and it just feels like I couldn’t get a different other reason so I’m trying to fix it
What you said about reviving the dead is actually a huge deal and, being a huge fan of anime, I’ll use that as an example. I’m sure I don’t have to explain how Dragon Ball fumbled this concept. The story has to rely completely on our desire for the characters to achieve their goals because death has no consequence and can’t be used for that purpose. Naruto, on the other hand, uses this concept perfectly. It cannot be done without sacrificing a living person and the revived are completely controlled by the person reviving them. This explains why the heroes can’t do it themselves, as their morals won’t allow them to sacrifice a living person, and why the villain would use it, to create turmoil for the heroes and the dead alike by pitting them against each other. What make’s it’s usage in the story so great though is not only that it makes sense why it exists and why it’s being used, but it creates a way to tie up a bunch of character arcs that would otherwise be left unresolved. It proves that creating something to advance the plot isn’t a bad thing as long as it doesn’t break the rules of the universe or it’s characters and serves the story in a meaningful way.
plot armor go brrrrrrrrrrrr.
Thank you. I’m 16 and I’ve been trying to write a book sense I was twelve.
In my book soon to be published, "Unveiling Shadows of the Past"
I kill characters, and without looking to videos as to how to kill them, I already did these things!
Man that's fascinating!
I think if writing a story, have your main focus characters and then backup characters if that makes sense. Ned stark does and then Rob (backup character) takes his place, then rob dies and Jon takes his place as main north focus. Both rob and Ned had important things to do integral to the story so when they died their story had not finished which leaves the reader in shock. But the story can continue because there are supporting characters that can take over their place in the story. If rob and Jon did not exist in the story it would feel out of place for Ned to die and that part of the story to be abandoned. Another shock death that could have been great is qui gon jin. He was supposed to train anakin but died shortly before the training began. If we didn’t know he had to die from the original movies, his death would have been far more emotional
the death that disappointed me the most was probably tech from star wars the bad batch or Finnick from hunger games
I can't think of many resurrections that I don't hate. Coming back from the dead has become a cancer on fiction IMO. It's gotten to the point where I can't convince people who read my fiction that I've actually killed a character. I have a prelude story in a world where archaeology uncovers a lot more than it does in the real world, unearthing a vast ancient advanced civilization, and I had a demi-goddess character literally detonate and annihilate herself on a subatomic level, and I can't convince some readers that she is actually dead within the diegesis of the story.
Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye worked well I reckon.
The resurrection of a certain character in The Burning White by Brent Weeks still pisses me off to this day. I'll still re-read the series because there's so much to like about it, but that one decision really harms the ending.
Gandalf worked perfectly fine I'd say.
My favourite way a character can be defeated or killed in a movie is with Poetic Justice/Irony, like foreshadowing that is hidden to set up a character’s death without us knowing initially or when they achieve their goal but still lose. Examples like:
- Thanos at the end of “Avengers Endgame” being snapped away by the very stones that he tried to get all his life and those which his Infinity War counterpart already used in the prior movie.
- Syndrome in “The Incredibles” being shredded by a plane turbine due to his cape, which is one of the things that Edna warned Mr Incredible about when denying superhero capes.
- The Ring that Kept Gollum alive for centuries is the very thing that causes him to fall and die in the lava of Mount Doom in “LOTR: The Return Of The King.”
- Megatron in the first live-action “Transformers” movie is defeated and shredded by the Allspark cube, the very thing that he seeked to use to amplify his Decepticon army.
Anyway I’m sure there are many other examples but yeah irony is my favourite method in taking out a character.
Literally every character in Halo reach died in a ironic way.
I've been thinking about Gandolf death. There wasn't a cost to it, obviously. But it very much advanced the Christian themes of the story. Really interesting. Thank you.
1. He was an immortal, so he wasn't dead.
2. He payed a huge price, he had to step into a role he didn't want. He wanted to be the advisor, work in the background. Instead he had to go against the person he looked up to, Saruman, to take his place as leader and move to the foreground.
THANKS. This was quite helpful.
I think I can give an example of killing off a character early that we still get to know a bit about. Spoilers for the Oshinoko manga and anime
.
.
Ai Hoshino dies in the 8th-9th chapter of the manga and the first episode of the anime. Yet i feel audiences get to know enough about her that her death is heartbreaking
She’s an idol who’s never been shown love her whole life so she lies hoping that lie will be the truth and she can love others truly.
So knowing her character even if she dies early, makes her death impactful and you’re still learning bits about her from there on.