SpikeTheLobsterCharacter Death And Murder
April 4th 2009 12:06
A combination of two things brought this subject to mind: firstly, the utterly pointless, formulaic 'sacrifice' death of Adrian Lester's character in Doomsday and secondly this post by Janice over on her blog.
Killing off characters in a story is always a rather drastic activity: unless you're writing something mildly supernatural, it means they can never appear again. It also risks alienating the reader, especially if they like the character and even more so if the story's part of a longer series. I suppose this is why constructing a 'meaningful' death is always so important and, whether it's meaningful or not, the consequences must be considered.
Remember all the noise that surrounded J.K. Rowling's decision to kill off a character in the Harry Potter books? Now, I've never read them - I should have done so when a friend in France suggested it, before they became hugely popular, turned into films and had millions of people ranting about them - but when there's such a furore surrounding a death-decision, it goes to show just how scary dedicated readers can be!
The thing is that there are very few subjects about which people are so emotional. They get attached to characters almost as much as to real people. My partner's like this: she even has to be careful what TV series she watches, for fear of someone she's fond of biting the bullet! Death is, for some, a taboo subject.
From a writer's perspective, the real question is whether murdering someone has a point. If you're just doing it to shock or you're simply getting rid of someone you don't really like, it might not be a very sensible thing to do - unless it has a massive effect on the story. Sacrifice for a greater good, death in the line of duty, murder to show just how evil the villain is or demise to allow another character to grieve - all of these are good tools.
Unlike in real life, people in books don't generally die for no reason.
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