How to Craft Impactful Character Deaths
Death is nearly as common an occurrence in fiction as it is in real life. Soldiers march onto the battlefield. Loved ones grow old or ill. Accidents have tragic consequences, and killers lurk in the shadows, waiting for the opportunity to strike.
Our stories have seen it all, and for good reason. Death can serve as a powerful storytelling tool in many ways, but with great power comes great responsibility.
While a well-written character death can deepen readers’ emotional connection and immersion in a story, killing a character in an unrealistic or arbitrary way can pull them out of the narrative. So, what's the secret sauce to killing off characters in a way that readers can respect?
If you've been hanging around Well-Storied for a while, then the answer should come as no surprise. Every aspect of your story must serve a clear and notable narrative purpose, and your characters’ deaths are no exception.
The urge to shock readers with your edgy narrative choices isn't reason enough to break out the big guns. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with killing off your character in a shocking way, the desire to provoke a strong emotional response in readers should never be the driving force behind sending your character to the guillotine.
Focus on crafting a strong story first, and death will always leave its mark.
With that in mind, what narrative purposes can a character’s death serve? Let’s take a look at the five most common reasons that authors kill their characters:
#1: Death Can Establish Exposition
Exposition is the background information that helps readers better understand a character or conflict (e.g. backstory, historical context, characterization).
To avoid the dreaded info-dump and otherwise keep readers immersed in the story, writers often use the “Show, Don’t Tell” technique to convey exposition. Having a character die on-page can be one way to achieve this aim.
Say, for example, that a plague is ravaging a small village in your novel. Rather than telling readers that the plague is deadly, you might choose to show an infected character die on their sickbed.
Similarly, if you want to show readers that your story’s Big Bad has no scruples with killing, then you might have them murder someone execution-style. Ouch.
Because you’re sacrificing someone to make a quick point, it’s often best to use minor characters to relay exposition through death. The more expendable the character, the less likely that readers will feel cheated by a death scene that otherwise lacks narrative purpose.
#2: Death Can Raise a Story’s Stakes
When faced with danger, the death of a minor or secondary character can raise your story’s stakes, ramping up the tension that keeps readers turning pages.
For example, knowing that a deadly plague is ravaging the village, readers are going to be concerned when a bright, red rash breaks out on your protagonist’s skin. It’s the same tension they’ll feel when the unwitting hero meets up with the unscrupulous Big Bad to make a dangerous deal.
For characters who are aware of what’s at stake, death can serve as a catalyst for action, which brings us to our next narrative purpose…
#3: Death Can Serve As a Plot Device
A plot device is any catalyst that pushes your story forward. Given that death often raises a story’s stakes and provokes a strong emotional response, authors often use character deaths as plot devices to spur their protagonists into action.
Consider The Fellowship of the Ring, in which Gandalf’s sacrificial death is what convinces Frodo to break from the fellowship to keep his friends safe.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with using death as a plot device, do consider how killing one character to motivate another can prove problematic.
“Fridging” is a term used to describe when an author kills the only notable female character in their story to motivate the male hero. Similar terms have been used to describe when the deaths of marginalized characters are used as catalysts in stories featuring non-marginalized protagonists.
These types of deaths are seen as problematic because they frame women and marginalized people as expendable plot devices rather than fully-developed characters worthy of their own stories.
#4: Death Can Illustrate a Story’s Themes
A theme is a topic that a story discusses, while a thematic statement is a message about a theme that readers can derive from the story’s events.
The nature of a character’s death can make a powerful statement about one of your story’s themes, perhaps even the theme of death itself.
In The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins uses Cato’s death to illustrate that killing someone can be an act of mercy. In The Fault in Our Stars, Augustus’s sudden passing explores the inevitable and often arbitrary nature of death.
#5: Death Can Fulfill a Character Arc
Using death as the resolution to a character’s internal journey can be one of the most impactful ways to kill a character. Authors most often use death as a form of fulfilling their characters’ arcs in one of three ways.
In positive character arcs, death is often framed as a redeeming or sacrificial act. Having changed for the better, the protagonist chooses to embrace death to atone for their mistakes or prove their selflessness. In A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton’s choice to trade places with Charles Darnay, who is set to be executed, is a prime example of this type of death.
In static character arcs, death serves as the ultimate fulfillment of the Truth the character has fought to maintain. In Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, Maximus’s death during his duel with Commodus serves as the culmination of his commitment to protecting Rome against barbarism and corruption.
In negative character arcs, death is frequently the result of the character’s fatal flaw. A popular recent example can be found in George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, wherein Ned Stark’s tragic sense of nobility leads to his execution.
These five narrative purposes don’t need to be mutually exclusive. Generally speaking, the greater your reasons for killing off a character, the more impactful and emotional their death with be. This is especially important to bear in mind when putting major characters on the chopping block.
To further ensure your characters’ deaths hit home with readers, remember that actions and events have consequences. The grief, trauma, and shifting circumstances that accompany death hold the power to reshape your characters’ narratives, and this power shouldn’t be ignored. Use death as an impactful narrative tool rather than a momentary source of drama, and you can’t go wrong.
