In most books, someone dies. Unfortunately, it’s usually obvious who will be the victim. Authors know they need to have some sort of death in their stories, but they may not put a lot of effort into developing that death. It may sound odd, but there is an art to it. You have to make it surprising for the readers but not unsatisfying. Let’s look at five tips to help you craft a good death.
3 Tips For Not Telegraphing A Character’s Death
First, let’s examine three things to avoid when picking a character to die. When you decide to kill a character, you have to be careful not to telegraph it to the readers. In other words, don’t hint at the death so they know the person will die. It needs to be sudden and shocking to have the best impact.
1. Don’t introduce someone just to kill them.
This is the most common mistake I see authors do. They introduce a sweet neighbor or a distant cousin so they can kill her off in the second act. Readers can tell when a character is flat and underdeveloped, and they don’t get attached to her. If you kill a flat character, the reader won’t care. It’s a meaningless death that is solely there for a plot point. Don’t make that mistake. If you want to really shake up your readers, it has to be someone they care about and whose death has meaning.
2. Don’t make a happy character the victim.
I know this sounds weird, but a happy character means a dead character in stories. We write books to show people struggling with conflict. If there isn’t anything wrong in her life, then she is most likely a pity character who is slated for death. Authors, either subconsciously or consciously, make someone seem wonderful or happy so when they die it’s a deep cut for the readers. However, most people have caught onto this scheme so, when they see a happy character, they know the person will die and hold back from getting attached.
3. Don’t give the victim a short character arc.
This connects with the last point on happy characters. If you give someone a short character arc, no one will mind if she dies after completing her arc. For instance, you have a woman who needs to reconcile with her husband. You follow her on this journey, and then half way through the book she fixes things with her husband. The arc is finished, and she is happy. So, when you kill her in the next scene, the readers aren’t surprised or upset by it. However, if you kill her before she reconciles with her husband, you have shocked the readers. They expected the character arc to finish, but it didn’t. Plan a long arc for your victim, and then cut it off mid-swing. The readers won’t see it coming.
2 Tips For Making A Death Not Completely Unsatisfying
The problem with making a character’s death surprising is you risk upsetting your readers and turning them away from the book. There are ways to protect against that (like not killing a main character), but I want to look at two ways you can ease the sadness after the death.
1. Let someone else take the abandoned role.
You can pick someone else to fill the void the character left in the story. Now, don’t introduce the replacement right before or after the death because it will seem too coincidental. Make sure you already have the person in place and moving toward that goal way before you need her. If you kill the girlfriend, then have a second love interest already lined up to step into her place. This will help fill the expectations the readers have for a love story, but it does it in an unexpected way—with someone they weren’t expecting. Just a word of warning, don’t telegraph the replacement’s similar character arc too much or the readers won’t be surprised (or care) that one died.
2. Have someone else complete the victim’s character arc.
This can be literal or implied. Take our example above about the woman and her husband. If she dies before she reconciles with him, you could have someone literally finish her arc by finding her husband and delivering a note of reconciliation from her. An implied completed arc would be if someone finishes it in a separate arc. For example, say a man traveling with the woman realizes life is short and he should reconcile with his brother. If he does so before the end of the book, he has completed the arc of reconciliation. The readers still get the satisfaction of the arc being finished, even if in a different way.
Final Thoughts
Killing characters is a powerful tool for authors, but too many people sling it around without thought. The point of a character death is to shake up the readers and create a twist in how the story ends. If your readers can tell who will die before they do, then you aren’t doing your job right. Make sure you surprise them and then leave them satisfied with how things worked out. Deaths, after all, are just plot twists, and all good plot twists need to be unexpected and end better than the reader originally imagined.
Thanks for reading!
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