Killing Your Darlings -- A Guide to Writing Effective Character Deaths

This was originally going to be a post about tension. I started writing, but then it became a post about how to write awesome fights. But then I realized that before I delve into either of those topics, I want to address two big puzzlers every writer must face at one time or another.

How do I make the audience fear for my characters' lives?

How do I kill a character without it being lame or predictable?

This dilemma is best described as a game of chicken with the audience. If they know that you won’t kill, maim or permanently change anyone, then you will lose this game. No matter how many guns you point at your characters, no matter how many velociraptors or shadow monsters or angry, alien dogs you have nipping at their heels, the audience will be all like “whatever pussy, we know you ain’t gonna do shit.”

You gonna take that?

I didn’t think so.

But here's the thing. Killing a character is often the laziest thing you can do with them. It’s very difficult to get a character death right.

It's very easy, on the other hand, for a character’s death to come off as pointless and sensationalist. It is also very easy for it to be predictable. Uh oh, have all this character's major conflicts suddenly been resolved? Shiiitttt he is so dead.

Seriously, as a writer, the day my goals and dreams come to fruition all at once, I will be fearing for my life.

And then, after winning this castle and its glorious unicorn guardian in a raffle, Shaun came down with SARS, the Rage Virus, and a nasty case of Blood Needles.

So what can we do? How do we show the audience we mean business?

Do horrible, horrible things to your characters -- that's what. Have them fail. Have them get hurt. Have them lose something or someone they love, in a way that is somehow their fault, in some way having to do with their own weakness, or arrogance, or inexperience.

Here's the important part: Make it bad, but not nearly as bad as you want things to be later on.

Look at it as a fight, and the audience as an experienced fighter. In the beginning, do you play it defensive, pretend to be a worse fighter than you actually are, get in some light hits but nothing serious? And then, when they least suspect it, do you hit them as hard as you can?

NO.

The audience is not stupid. They know what you're trying to do, they know eventually you're gonna take an actual swing, or you wouldn't be there in the ring with them. And maybe when you do, it's surprising, and shocking, but for that build up? Bored, annoyed, and not waiting scared for your first hit -- just waiting expectantly, wondering when something's going to happen.

Every scene should be tense. Every moment, something should be at stake. But where is this tension going to come from if the audience doesn't think you mean business?

So let's go back to the fight metaphor. Instead of staying defensive in the beginning, you hit, and you hit HARD.

After establishing that you're a complete and utter bastard who is seriously out to get these characters that people (hopefully) love, establishing that shit could go down at any moment, you will have the audience scared -- you will have the upper hand in the game of chicken. You've already hit them hard enough to at least chip a tooth or two, now they'll be waiting for you to knock some out at any turn.

Alright, so now they know that you have no qualms with serious change in your narrative. Cool. How about when you finally get to that point where you want to kill of one of your characters?

FIRST, I need you to ask yourself a few very, very important questions.

DO I REALLY NEED TO KILL THIS CHARACTER?

Am I doing this as a sensationalist attention grabber?

Will this death have a profound, lingering effect on the story?

If the answer is yes, no, and yes, then cool. But how about

What purpose does this death serve?

Assuming this death passes the previous 3 question test, I find that death for major characters can only succeed if they are for one of two reasons.

1.) To demonstrate that life sucks, and that for some of these characters, it is going to end tragically.

2.) If the death is a profound and life changing removal of a friend, family member, lover, or antagonist (or any combination of the four) that alters the course of one or more of the other character's prime narrative arcs.

Companion Cube -- slumbering in the arms of angels. Rest well, old friend. Rest well.

SECOND STEP -- THE LEAD UP.

This is where it starts to get hard. You are caught between the desire to tie up all the character's loose ends, to conclude his or her story in a satisfying fashion, but you also don't want the death to be predictable. If things start to go suspiciously well for a character, the audience is smart enough to smell death in the air.

In real life, deaths are rarely satisfying. They are usually sudden and unexpected, or horribly drawn out. They are usually pretty meaningless.

In stories, however, nobody wants a meaningless death. People want their heroes to go heroically. They don't want good people to die unless they are ready -- unless they've achieved their goals and dreams, and are at least somewhat ready to go.

Well, here's the thing -- you can't always give the audience what they want. Life is a blend of awful and wonderful. It is tragic, and sometimes terribly, terribly sad -- but it's balanced out by that first kiss, and fresh picked strawberries, and that nap on the couch after thanksgiving dinner, and that lull at the end of a night when you and your buddies are just sitting there in the firelight, sleepy and drunk, listening as your one friend with the okay voice quietly hums and strums the guitar.

Example: Things in life that are straight up awesome.

Life is bittersweet. The most effective stories are as well. Don't just kill off your character, give them something, anything, even if just one small moment of happiness before it all goes to shit. But don't give them too much. Don't wrap up everything for them -- their unfinished business, that sense of not being ready to go, their need for just one more goddamn day --that's prime. That'll give the death a sense of tragedy, a sense of reality.

So lead up to it, just not too much. Balance the sour with the sweet. And that brings us to the

THIRD STEP - THE DEATH ITSELF

Keep this one very important thing in mind. A permanent, meaningful change (that was realistically achieved) in a character's personality or position in the story is just as powerful as a death -- and often more so. It is a death of sorts, as they can never truly be the same as they once were -- and if they did, it would be a cheap disservice to both them and the audience.

All characters die, in a way. Death in a story = the end of a narrative arc. This can be from a death, or from achieving a desire or objective that alters their life in an important way -- like killing the man who murdered your parents, marrying the girl of your dreams, having a child, quitting a job, getting that promotion, selling that book, or getting a car -- whatever. Just like the tarot card, death is not necessarily death. Sometimes it's just change.

I got mad love for you, shorty.

So remember, death is all about change, a new direction in your story. If the death you choose is a literal one, make it memorable. Make it unexpected. Make it have a point. And make it something that will seriously haunt the audience.

Remember -- don't make it all bad, and don't make it all good. Keep it bittersweet. Cause if it doesn't give a vague sense of satisfaction with the character's ending while still hurting like hell and making the audience wish it wasn't so -- you've done it wrong.

Play me off, powerful Gears of War 2 trailer that tells a whole, beautiful story in just about a minute, giving me the chills every time I watch you and just being way better than you really have any right to be,

-Shaun

Fun with the Apocalypse -- Writing tips and Observations

It wouldn't be too hard to write an entire book about why Apocalypse stories are awesome. Let's not debate this. They are. And if you don't think so? Well, you're wrong. Science. FACT.

My distinguished panel of experts agree:


I mean, seriously. Look at this next picture. The Garden of Earthly Delights.



That is some serious End Times shit. And, come on, it's just so. Frickin. METAL. Click it so you can see it all big, and enjoy the guitar solo that's gonna start wailing across the craggy recesses of your mind.

I could also write a blog post on why people secretly wish the apocalypse would happen. Cracked already did, though. And they're way funnier than me. The article in question is specifically talking about why people secretly want the zombie apocalypse, but, you know, whatever man. Close enough. So check it out and just pretend in your brain that it was me who wrote it, and not that James Davidson guy.

What's that? Why thank you! Yes, I thought it was a good article too. And boy was I glad to finally get published on Cracked! Well informed hilarity, my favorite.

Anyway, I've always loved stories about the end of the world. Nuclear, Plague, Biblical, Zombie, Robots, Lovecraftian, Ragnarok, Alien Attack, Astronomical (you know, asteroids, comets, the moon getting thrown out of whack, etc), World War X, Rise of the Apes, Magic War, Reality Collapse, Accidental Opening of Portal to Another Dimension, Dreampocalypse (we're all that one girl's dream oh God DON'T LET HER WAKE UP!), shit, DINOSAURS, I don't care, pick the Great Destroyer of your choice.

Did I get them all?

There are a LOT of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic books, movies, tv-shows and games out there.

I recently started writing another post-apocalyptic YA, and so I went and picked up four popular books in the genre. Life as We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and The Knife of Never Letting Go. I've read all but TKONLG (sorry, long title) which I'm working on, and holy crap. What a stint of complete awesome.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, was the last book I finished. Really excellent stuff, a zombie story done right. Which, unfortunately, is not all that common. As the zombie genre increases in popularity, the flaws inherent to the conventional nature of survival stories becomes ever more glaring.

Now, as much as I love Zombies, I find that most of the time, Zombie stories just don't really work for me. Zombies, mindless flood of biting, brain dead things that they are, are a force of nature rather than antagonists. They are an obstacle to overcome -- that old metaphor for slow creeping death, inescapable no matter what you do.

So very often the villain turns out to be...man himself! The living! GASP. What. a. twist.

*yaaaaawwwwn*

Waldo Baby is not impressed by your cliched narrative.

So often, zombie stories rely on the kind of tension you see in bullshit reality shows like The Real World, Big Brother, or whatever you kids are watching these days. They're all about what happens when you stick a bunch of petty strangers representing different audience demographics and stereotypes in an enclosed environment and add a bunch of random, external stressors to see what sort of meaningless soap opera drama will go down.

Only instead of Zombies, reality shows use alcohol, and fake jobs/challenges that don't mean anything.

Admittedly, The Real World: ZOMBIE ISLAND is a show that I would watch.

Cliches used for tension:

1.) WHICH person is going to hide the fact that they've been bitten, or hide the fact that someone else they care for has been bitten even though they know they're going to turn?!

2.) WHICH obvious greedy coward is going to turn on everyone to save himself despite the fact that everyone should have figured it would go down that way after all of the over-the-top asshole behavior and hamfisted foreshadowing? This character being brutally killed within the next ten minutes of the film doesn't make this any better, despite the fact that it's supposed to be the only (or one of the few) feel good scenes of Zombies tearing out someone's intestines and chowing down like it's Fruit by the Foot.



3.) HOW is everyone except for maybe the Badass Main Character Guy and maybe that one Hot Chick, or that Strong, Pragmatic Female Lead and that one Sexy Dude who is also a Badass going to inevitably be killed off for shock value instead of being treated to a satisfying dramatic conclusion?

(*sniff* affable, comic relief supporting character who sacrifices himself so nobly, you will be missed)

Now, as for almost everyone dying off, I get it. Zombie movies are supposed to examine people (and the world) in their final days. Killing off characters is more important than bringing them to the end of a full and satisfying narrative arc -- because in the end EVERYONE dies in real life, and it's terrifying, and fascinating, and we like to see how other people deal with it, come to accept it, etc. Zombies = death. I get it.

Problem is, most of the characters are killed off for shock value, and most of the survivors don't seem to really come to the end of any discernible character arc that I can see.

I find that most Zombie films have a disappointing third act. Name me 5 zombie movies with satisfying conclusions. Do it. I challenge you! Even in the instance of a solid third act, the first two acts of zombie films are just SO much better. They're are more interesting, exciting, enjoyable, and awesome.

Why is this?

I would assert that it's an issue with SCOPE.

Zombie films are about characters overcoming the obstacle of The Zombie Apocalypse.

The FIRST ACT introduces the audience surrogate to this world, either when the apocalypse first strikes, or soon after. It's new, it's exciting, it's scary as hell! It begs the questions, in this situation, what the hell do I do? Where the hell do I go?

The SECOND ACT is generally The Journey, or Riding Out the Storm -- trying to get to safety or holing up somewhere to wait for help.

In the first two acts, the obstacle is The Zombies, and the fall of civilization. This obstacle, which is often used in lieu of an antagonist, is problematic, because the scope of the obstacle is simply too big.

What does it come down to in the THIRD ACT? Assuming any of the characters survive?

In the end, it comes to finding an equilibrium with this new found environment. Of finding a way to survive, and endure. The problem can never be solved, the obstacle can never be fully overcome. The conflict introduced will continue indefinitely, usually resulting in a lack of resolution.

This is because the ending is really the FIRST FOOTSTEP OF A LONGER JOURNEY.

This is not satisfying. This is not compelling.

This is also why Zombieland, the Forest of Hands and Teeth, and the comic book series The Walking Dead are SO good. They are the stories of the next steps in this journey -- no longer focusing on the obstacle of the apocalypse as the primary focus of the narrative, but of the characters themselves. Death is no longer their inevitable end, and that simple fact makes their stories infinitely more interesting.

Let's use Zombieland to illustrate. The conflict is not "Oh shit there's Zombies! What are the main characters going to do?" Zombieland takes place months after the zombie apocalypse, and just about everyone is dead. The main characters have adapted to this world, and they all have their own ways of surviving -- like the protagonist's charmingly OCDish list of things like 1.Cardio, 2. Double-Tap, 4.Wear Seatbelts, 18.Limber up, etc.

The conflict of the story is how can these fucked up loners learn to rely on and care about other people? They survived until now BECAUSE they're loners, because they don't go through the shit most people go through in normal zombie films. The tension is not derived from vapid soap opera, Big Brother/The Hills/The Real World bullshit, but from whether or not these characters can get over their bullshit and move on with their lives. Zombies, at this point, are the norm. So can they love again? Can they live again?

Zombieland was an example of the SECOND step of an apocalypse meta-narrative. It's about the people who survived finding their way back to normal living after a zombie ravaged world has become the norm.

And that's why it works. That's why it's fresh. Everyone is so caught up in the first step that they've rehashed it to death. It's been done very well, very many times. So look at the others.

Forest of Hands and Teeth is about a girl six generations after the Zombie apocalypse. Another step in the apocalypse meta-narrative, several steps down the path. The world that once was is often dismissed as myth, the main character a teenage girl living in a community surrounded by fences that has survived and thrived for a very long time. The world outside the fence has become a complete and utter mystery.

There's a lot of good conflict in this novel, but boiled down it comes to "Is survival good enough? Is normal good enough?"

It's a girl holding onto the last remnants of memories handed down to her by her mother of what Humanity and the World once was. She's the last guardian of these memories, faced with the decision of whether or not she should just settled down and find happiness in love, and family -- or if fighting to retain those memories, to try and bring civilization back to what it once was (or at least touch upon it in some way that both honors and continues it) is worth risking the continued survival of the human race?

Keeping the flame alive -- like in The Road, one of the greatest post-apocalyptic novels I've ever read.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a fascinating and real take on the Zombie Apocalypse as Normal, which I'm finding is the only genre of zombie story that actually works. Otherwise you're just stuck with shock value and cliches. Even 28 Days Later, one of my favorite films of all time, is just taking a story that's been done to death and doing it really, really well.

So let's bring it in guys. Take a knee. What kind of apocalypse stories work, that we've mentioned so far?

1.)The WHAT IF survivalist stories are the ones that are the most difficult to do. They are fun and exciting, but I recommend steering away from this genre if you want to do a Zombie novel -- it's just played out. Life as We Knew It and The Dead and The Gone are awesome examples of this being done right -- vivid, realistic stories of young protagonists coming of age in the fall of civilization after the moon's axis is thrown out of whack, and the earth is rocked with a series of horrible, cataclysmic disasters. It's important that they don't rely entirely on the Holy Shit! factor of whatever is causing the fall of civilization, focusing instead on the character narrative, but don't forget that the main appeal to these stories IS the escapism factor.

These stories should put you in the shoes of the protagonist and realistically chronicle their survival. Research is important, it should make the reader say "Yeah, that's exactly what I would do in that same situation. Shit, I better hit up Costco this weekend and buy A YEARS SUPPLY OF EVERYTHING."

"Now I just need 40 boxes of Capri Sun, and I'm set."

2.) The SO WHAT NOW post-apocalyptic stories. The apocalypse is the norm, aka The Setting, and not the primary, driving force behind the story. The main tension is no longer derived from the protagonist reacting to overwhelming, world-destroying obstacles, but trying to achieve desires and goals in spite of them.

3.) And finally the SO WTF? post-apocalyptic story. Let's delve into this right now, hmm?

The SO WTF? post-apocalyptic stories are the ones that take unconventional routes with their apocalypse. They're the stories that make you go "WTF?" and then hopefully "Holy shit, I am compelled to continue reading."

The Maze Runner is an awesome example of this. A boy wakes up with no memories in a metal box bringing him to the center of a hellish maze, full of traps and these robot monster slug things with saws and needles and shit. "WTF?" you declare. The Maze Runner is a story driven by the mysteries of the world, the nagging question of "What's outside this place?" The pacing is deliberate and driving, every chapter feeding the reader a tiny tidbit of info with one hand and handing you more questions with the other.

Oh, and amnesiac protagonists? It's a cliche, (especially in J-rpgs, the narratives of which I'll delve into in a later post) and a cliche for a reason. Because done right, it really works. Why? Because it puts the protagonist in the absolute same shoes as the reader, creating a very effective surrogate. But we'll delve into that more in a later post as well.

Another example of a great WTF? post-apocalypse is the film (I haven't read the story, I'm sure it's also good) A Boy and his Dog. A boy who's a dead-eye with a gun and his intelligent, psychic dog who throughout the film is teaching the boy history lessons, traverse the wastelands, surviving and looking for women for the boy to have sex with. Their adventures lead the boy to a lush, underground society/dystopia where the evil "It's for the good of the people!" leaders want to harvest his sperm with a gross pump machine. WTF, right? This movie has one of my favorite endings to anything ever. Check it out.

SO.

Do write:

--WHAT IF? survivalist stories

--WHAT NOW? post-apocalypse stories with conflicts not completely tied to the setting

--and WTF? where you just have fun with it and do some really weird shit.

Those are the stories that work.

Try to avoid writing:

--HOLY SHIT THERE ARE ZOMBIES WHAT DO WE DO? stories, as they've been done to death, and done extremely well by many people before you. If you can come up with something new, good for you. Go for it. But make sure you've got something REALLY original, and that the conflict isn't simply survival.

--HOLY SHIT THE WORLD'S BEEN NUKED AND now the world is like Fallout or Mad Max or The Road or any other post-nuked world story where everything is dead and the world's a radioactive. It's just been done a lot, and it's difficult to make it interesting. It can be done. Z for Zachariah was pretty solid. The Road was so good it almost made me want to give up writing because seriously how do you beat that?

-WE HAVE TO GET TO PARADISE! aka THE JOURNEY
Unless you are Wolf's Rain (one of my favorite series ever, I seriously can't even listen to the soundtrack I will get choked up) Children of Men (amazing, awesome, brutal and heartrending) or the fricking Land Before Time, having your characters stumbling through a dying world and trying to survive a string of unrelated events to find PARADISE, that magical happy place where the nukes didn't go off, or the zombies somehow missed, or the dinosaur killing global disaster has yet to take affect is hard to do well. Of course it's possible, and has been done awesomely many times before, but as with any journey piece make sure the story isn't composed of the heroes simply reacting to a bunch of random stuff. There's a reason road trip comedies are so absurdest and weird.

For any of you wondering why I haven't mentioned The Hunger Games, it's because I'm a big fat fail and I haven't read it yet. I know, I know. It's on my queue. Seriously, how is that book not in paperback yet? It's been out for like two years!

I hope this has been fun and enlightening for all you fellow apocalypse aficionados. Now go stock up on a three year supply of ramen, multi-vitamins, and Nuka-Kola!

Play me off, MC Chris making fun of Kingdom Hearts 2 in comparison to Resident Evil 4 in a NSFW rant!



-Shaun

Enter -- that Shaun Guy.

FADE IN:

Hey. Welcome.

I'm Shaun, sometimes known as Baron Von Barger, Captain of the Universe.

I write.

Until I sell a book, or a screenplay, or get hired on as a staff writer for a show that would totally get a high five from the universe and about a billion more viewers because of my legions of fans spawned from this one blog entry (oh, it's gonna happen, you just WAIT) that means I'm a guy who uses up a lot of paper.

I'm really psyched for the Microsoft Courier, so I can stop filling boxes with notebooks. Check it out, if you're a writer (or artist, or just like journals) you might be excited too.

...Okay. So I just looked it up to find a link, and found that it's been canceled.

ARRRRGGG.










You hear that noise? It's my heart breaking. Ah, cruel universe! Leaving me with no option but that stupid iPad.


Le sigh.

Anyway, so I'm currently working at Dominican University, in the library. I love it here, love the people here, love the Bay Area, BUT...

I'm leaving it all behind. Dum dum DUM! *dramatic tune* or whatever.

At the end of this month, I'm moving into an awesome little house in Hollywood. My writing partner (@evlsushi on twitter) and I will be trying to find a manager for our original pilot, and in lieu of selling it (which is admittadly a long shot) try to get a gig working on another show, to build up cred.

I'm also querying my most recent novel around, a YA post-apocalyptic dimension tripping adventure. I just say dark YA fantasy in my queries. Never try to get fancy when telling an agent what the genre of your book is. Keep it simple, otherwise you sound like you can't decide what audience you're writing for.

I just started this new book, which was inspired by Stephan King's The Mist, 28 Days Later (sort of, also The Walking Dead) and the Wheel of Time. Yeah, it's a weird mashup, but I'm happy with how it's coming out so far.

I'm also working on a screenplay, almost near completion. Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind meets Annie Hall meets the Little Prince. And no, I will not be pitching it like that to anybody, once it's done.

Anyway, my goal with this blog is to chronicle this big, dumb adventure I'm taking trying to make it as a writer. Hopefully it's entertaining and inspiring, and not just a semi-bummer of a cautionary tale!

I'll also be doing writing advice, querying advice, and random reviews of books and whatever food or tech I'm currently obsessed with.

I'll be updating every Thursday, unless something comes up (like if I have to fight a T-rex or something).

Till then! Play me off, Epic Standing Cat.



-that Shaun guy