Good Character Deaths: what they should and shouldn’t be

I yelled about this on Twitter last night because some frustration built up in me over it, but I feel like it might be worth going into it in some further detail, because it matters:

DON’T WRITE SHITTY DEATHS

Here are a few pointers on how to avoid this. A good character death:

1. Shouldn't be just for pathos. That's not to say that it can't be for pathos at all, but you shouldn't axe a character simply because you feel like the story needs more drama and sadness. There are other ways to do that. Making a character suffer in order to create pathos and angst is actually fine, I think, but it all depends on how you do it, how you explore the aftermath and what it all means. Killing someone merely to achieve the same effect is lazy. Don't. 

2. Shouldn't serve only to develop another character. This is somewhat tricky, because it's also true that a well-written death will necessarily develop other characters. It has to; if the death is meaningful, it's going to deeply affect the characters and the plot, and it's bad writing to not explore that in appropriate depth. That said, the death:

3. Should have meaning in itself for the character who’s killed. It's the end of their story; what kind of ending is it? It's absolutely crucial to remember that endings work backward and color all the story that led up to that ending. What does this ending say about who this person is? What does it say about what you want your audience to take from them? How do you want your audience to remember them? That's not to say that every death has to be heroic or epic or whatever, and a death can be meaningful for an audience while still seeming senseless to the characters. But remember that this is an ending to a story within a story. Approach it with all the respect and care endings deserve.

4. Shouldn't happen just because you're bored. When you kill a character because your story is going flat or because you don't know what else to do with them, people can tell. You're not fooling anyone. Even if you do feel like their story is done and you don't know where else to take it, see above: Make it mean something. 

5. Shouldn't be completely random. I think I need to take a second here and call additional attention to something I just said: There is an important distinction to be made here between what your characters know and what your audience knows. Your audience knows they're experiencing a story, and as such they're aware of narrative logic and theme and whatnot. Your characters exist on a different plane of awareness; what is meaningful for the audience is not necessarily meaningful to them. As such, you can write a death that stuns them, that comes out of nowhere for them, that seems as senseless and cruel as any death ever is—while the audience perceives it as part of the larger whole. So the death needs to fit into the fabric of the story overall. It needs to follow. The audience needs to be able to look back and see what led up to it and why it happened, even if they're also crushed.

6. Should involve some measure of closure. This is where we come back to a proper exploration of what effect this has on other characters, and—when possible—what kind of goodbye those characters are able to say, how they handle their grief and find ways to go on. A good and also relatively easy way to handle this is to show some kind of funeral or memorial; by “attending” the event, the audience is able to bid their own kind of farewell. If you're trying to make the death cruelly impact the other characters, that doesn't preclude closure for the audience. Again, think about how you want the audience to remember this character. Think about what kind of goodbye you'd like them to be able to say.

Once more, I really want to emphasize this: I am not saying don't be tragic. I'm actually saying that in order to be successfully tragic, you need to be bearing at least some of these things in mind. There's a big difference between tragedy and WTF, and most people know it when they see it, even if they can't quite articulate why they feel what they're feeling. 

There have been plenty of dead characters where I actually hate that they died and wish they hadn't, while still being readily willing to admit that the deaths themselves were written well and were reasonably satisfying. 

A good tragic character death should leave you feeling wrecked and gutted. It should not leave you feeling angry and dissatisfied. I promise, this can be done, and it's worth trying to do.