is killing off characters always necessary in a story?

[henrymidfields]

The other option is to have the characters survive, but have them face permanent (or semi-permanent) and serious consequences for their severe injury. Maybe it could be that the character suffering from a car accident has to deal with loss of employment and/or having to undergo rehab in order to be able to walk again. If that character is a parent, then maybe the family suffers loss of income, or breakdown of relationship. It could be that a boxer has to deal with brain damage. It could also be that a soldier ends up being paralysed, or undergo nightmares or trauma.

This can be one option to keep characters alive and relevant, yet maintain tension.

[eclipse]

No to the "necessary" part.

Some stories can fly on their own without character deaths. The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is pretty good about having everyone come out alive (even if it requires a block of cheese). Other stories fit in character deaths nicely, whether it be because of some disaster/war/mystery/etc. It all depends on the setting, and the story that's being told!

Best use of death, IMO, is Old Yeller.

[Knight]

I thought about this a bit more, and I've come to a conclusion that the most important element to a story is a change in the characters. Death is a change, and a highly effective one as it is both a change in the character who lives and then dies, but it is also a change in all the surrounding characters. Some characters will find sadness in the advent of a person dying, others will find joy, anger, all sorts of emotions. Death is, however, a tool that we can use to cause change in our characters, among many others. Loss of home, or of meaningful belongings can also bring a change of sadness, and a change of joy for the villain who feeds off the hero's sadness. A series of changes in a character is what creates their arc in the story, and is what both upholds and attracts readers to the plot, more than simply who dies. If I say 20 died (with no context), you feel no emotional connection. If I say 20 people died in a horrible railway accident yesterday, then you begin to relate, make connections, imagine the sadness people are going through. Death is, as I've stated, not the only way to do this. A poster for a lost dog is another way of provoking a sad response, but if you come back to that poster and you see "DOG FOUND" then you have a story right there with a sad beginning and a happy ending and no death. You could write a story of the process of how the "DOG FOUND" message came to be, and now I'm just rambling.

(It should be noted that "change" means more than emotional change. Change in knowledge, in wisdom, in time and space, in progress towards a goal, or in nearness to defeat, all of these are important changes that help build a story. And of course there is the change of closeness to life or death. Emotional change is often the one that most affects us though.)

Edited December 11, 2015 by Knight

[Snowy_One]

Every time you kill a character you make it so you can never do anything more with them. Worse, if you KEEP killing characters your audience learns to never get attached to them because their favorite character could die before too long.

That, of course, doesn't mean you shouldn't ever kill characters. Look at

Obi-Wan or Aerith

. Their deaths ended up meaning a lot. So... not killing anyone is fine, but if you kill a character make sure it MEANS SOMETHING instead of just being there for 'shock' or 'tension' or anything like that.

Let me see if I can explain this a bit better. Lots of spoilers ahead.

Whenever you kill a character their death needs to have an impact or else it's little more than death for the sake of death. In Madoka Magicka Mami's death is VERY important because it's the moment where all the glamor of being a magical girl is ripped away from the viewer. Mami was clearly experienced, capable, and likable through and through, yet she let her guard down for one second and, not only did things get bad, she was outright EATEN! From that moment on the viewer is going to realize that these girls are risking their lives and the deaths can be very gruesome. Then Sayaka loses her mind and becomes a witch. This further accents just how bad being a magical girl can be because Sayaka was a good person; yet she cracked in the end and became one of the monsters.

Let's compare that to Star Wars Episode III. Why? When everything starts off it's a complete mess. Dooku and Grevious's death's don't serve any purpose other than to show that the series is wrapping up. Padme dies simply because the plot from IV demanded it. Many of the jedi, some of which the player likely came to like through the EU, don't just die, but are killed off without even a chance to do anything. Literally shot in the back. The Force doesn't give them any warning, they don't get to fight back, they don't even seem to get a degree of 'sorry sir/madame/whatever, I'm just following orders. I respect you enough to at least bury you though'. The deaths serve no purpose other than to showcase death and because the plot from IV demanded it. The count may have been much higher but they were nowhere near as impactful as in MM.

But let's keep going. In FFIV a lot of characters die or are otherwise removed from the story. Normally this SHOULD have an impact as we spent time with these characters, and it likely did the first time or two, but it quickly becomes expected and, thusly, meaningless. Deaths need to carry weight and need to be infrequent enough so that, when they DO happen, it's actually a shock and carries weight. Do not waste a character EVER!

Edited December 12, 2015 by Snowy_One

[eclipse]

Every time you kill a character you make it so you can never do anything more with them. Worse, if you KEEP killing characters your audience learns to never get attached to them because their favorite character could die before too long.

The Trails in the Sky series wants a word with you.

Lena starts the game dead, and yet she gets a lot more character development in the second chapter of the game. She already had some character basis in the first game, but by a certain point in the second game, she goes from "a caring mother" to "oh that's why Cassius married her".

[Jotari]

Every time you kill a character you make it so you can never do anything more with them. Worse, if you KEEP killing characters your audience learns to never get attached to them because their favorite character could die before too long.

That, of course, doesn't mean you shouldn't ever kill characters. Look at

Obi-Wan or Aerith

. Their deaths ended up meaning a lot. So... not killing anyone is fine, but if you kill a character make sure it MEANS SOMETHING instead of just being there for 'shock' or 'tension' or anything like that.

Let me see if I can explain this a bit better. Lots of spoilers ahead.

Whenever you kill a character their death needs to have an impact or else it's little more than death for the sake of death. In Madoka Magicka Mami's death is VERY important because it's the moment where all the glamor of being a magical girl is ripped away from the viewer. Mami was clearly experienced, capable, and likable through and through, yet she let her guard down for one second and, not only did things get bad, she was outright EATEN! From that moment on the viewer is going to realize that these girls are risking their lives and the deaths can be very gruesome. Then Sayaka loses her mind and becomes a witch. This further accents just how bad being a magical girl can be because Sayaka was a good person; yet she cracked in the end and became one of the monsters.

Let's compare that to Star Wars Episode III. Why? When everything starts off it's a complete mess. Dooku and Grevious's death's don't serve any purpose other than to show that the series is wrapping up. Padme dies simply because the plot from IV demanded it. Many of the jedi, some of which the player likely came to like through the EU, don't just die, but are killed off without even a chance to do anything. Literally shot in the back. The Force doesn't give them any warning, they don't get to fight back, they don't even seem to get a degree of 'sorry sir/madame/whatever, I'm just following orders. I respect you enough to at least bury you though'. The deaths serve no purpose other than to showcase death and because the plot from IV demanded it. The count may have been much higher but they were nowhere near as impactful as in MM.

But let's keep going. In FFIV a lot of characters die or are otherwise removed from the story. Normally this SHOULD have an impact as we spent time with these characters, and it likely did the first time or two, but it quickly becomes expected and, thusly, meaningless. Deaths need to carry weight and need to be infrequent enough so that, when they DO happen, it's actually a shock and carries weight. Do not waste a character EVER!

Actually the plot for original trilogy didn't demand this at all. Quite the opposite in fact. At one point (can't really remember exactly when) Leia references having a few memories of her mother as a very young child saying she always seemed sad.

And the deaths and resurrections in Final Fantasy IV borderline comedic genius in how ridiculous and contrived they are. It's hilarious.

[Snowy_One]

Actually the plot for original trilogy didn't demand this at all. Quite the opposite in fact. At one point (can't really remember exactly when) Leia references having a few memories of her mother as a very young child saying she always seemed sad.

Actually, it did. If she had lived then Leia would have known much more about her mother. Though how a newborn infant who probably hadn't even opened her eyes could even remember her mother, much less know that she was 'sad' or anything like that, is strange at the least. Regardless, the point is that simply killing off a character to make things shocking or to wrap up a plot/clear the table is generally a bad idea since it, once again, can come off as hack writing and/or forced as opposed to a legit progression.