Just asking ye guys in general, how can I make death(s) sadder, more realistic, and more heart-clenching in a story?

It's a problem I have come across a lot of time when I am writing an "emotional-rollercoaster" type fiction.

What should I do? Kill a character before he/she completes his/her goal? Kill a character who's really close and means something more to the MC?

Please do suggest, guys! It would be really kind to help me out with this!

First of all, I strongly suggest you don't kill off characters too often in a story. People generally don't react well to losing characters they like. Plus, the more characters you kill, the less impact each death has.

Second, if you want emotional impact, people have to care about the character. This applies both to readers and other characters in the story. Strong character development is necessary. This applies whether or not you kill off characters, actually, so just try to give your characters depth and unique personalities.

Third, make sure the death itself has meaning. In real life, people often die in freak accidents with little purpose, but readers don't like that in stories. Noble self-sacrifice is a standard tear-jerker. If your character's death saves the life of your MC, or eliminates a major obstacle to whatever goal is in the story, or accomplishes anything at all other than just dying, it creates a lot more emotional impact.

Fourth, make sure your dead character's presence isn't immediately forgotten. Your other characters should remember the dead characters, and most likely have permanent personality changes due to the death. If they're already laughing and joking in the next chapter, it's as if that character never existed.

Hope that helps. There are also the standard cliché death scenes where the character smiles and says goodbye while coughing blood, or admits their unrequited love to the MC right before dying, or looks completely fine after beating the bad guy but actually has this horrific wound that causes them to drop dead during the post-battle celebrations, but I don't think you really need me to describe those in much detail.

Thanks, unice5656!

Even though I'm a newbie to things like this, I will try to help as a reader.

For me if a death of a character is supposed to give me any kind of feelings, the death should be done in such a way that I wouldn't be able to predict it. It's important  to also make me care for that character, otherwise I will be like: "Oh, that guy died. Whatever, I didn't like him from the beginning." The last important thing for me is the death consequences, how it affects story, how MC respons to that etc.

For example let's say that MC's sister was very good at football. She had almost everything set for her future as a football star, however one day it is discovered that she has some sort of cancer and has battle for her life. After some time in hospital, a miracle happens and she is no longer sick. MC's family visit her and it's revealed that she still has some chance at football and she leaves the hospital and even joins a football team later on. One time when MC is back at home his parents are crying in the living room when he asks what happened, they tell him that his sister got hit by a car and died at the hospital. Secretly MC admired his sister and the after learning of her death he goes into an emotional breakdown and doesn't come to school for some time. Later on, the admiration for his sister led him to becoming a football player.

I think it's a good example of how a death of character should look like, but I'm not 100% sure.

I hope I helped you.

Your suggestion is good, BlaiseCorvin. But I must say death is a more powerful thing than life. Think about it...

What is It that gives us grief? What is It that makes us scream, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"? What is It that increase our thrist for revenge? Or our hungry for power and strength in hope that It never happens with your loved one again?

Death is a powerful thing. It can give a goal, a purpose to live for, to the MC, and also a moment of grief, sorrow, pain, realization, agnoy, depair, not only to the MC, but also to the reader. It shatters hope, and can also make us realize the consequences of just a small mistake...

And I have started this thread, this discussion to master and write the most painful deaths in my upcoming epic story (coming soon here at Royal Road in the name of "Darkstruck").
And I need help regarding how to make deaths sadder, not to make life much easier. Do you have any other suggestion? It would greatly help! Thanks for bothering to help me!

There are at least two ways to examine what makes character death sad:

1) The MC and other characters express grief when that character dies. The reader feels sympathy for their grief and feels sad together with them. Notice that in this case, it's not mandatory for the reader to care too much about the dead character itself. The reader only needs to care about how "important" was that character for the rest of the cast.

2) The reader loved the dead character and wished for a happy ending for that character. This usually means that the dead character deserved the reader's sympathy throughout the story. The character probably fought, struggled and grew up as the story went on... only to be cruelly terminated by the heartless writer.


If the character you kill is secondary, then keep (1) in mind. For example, let's say you kill the MC's mentor. Make sure to establish why the MC would genuinely care for that mentor, and how the mentor played an important role in shaping the MC's life and ideals. Of course, you could always integrate (2) into this scenario and show more of the mentor's personal life as well. But, you can usually get away with just (1) here.

If you kill a main character, then it's up to you whether to focus on (1) or (2). Optimally, you'd want both. A main character should  be important for other characters, and the reader himself should connect with that character. If you can combine both elements, then the reader will be sad TWICE. First time, because he loved the character and it's sad to see it die. Second time, because many other characters are hurt by this development and it's sad to see them ruined.

Keep in mind that some main characters may not fit both types. Say, a butt monkey comical character may not have what it takes to earn the reader's sympathy. But, the reader can still understand that character's importance to the team's moral and can connect with the idea that the butt moneky's death is "tragic".

I really don't recommend killing the main character.

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Through I believe in putting multiple MCs and killing some of them (mostly the ones who the reader has built a strong relationship with) will cause some amount of distress.

I think "A Song of Ice and Fire" worked out with it...

'unice5656' pid='777433' dateline='1472485425' Wrote: I really don't recommend killing the main character.

I meant main characters in general, not the specifically the protagonist himself. In many stories, killing the protagonist would logically just end the story itself anyway.

'unice5656' pid='772408' dateline='1472076231' Wrote: First of all, I strongly suggest you don't kill off characters too often in a story. People generally don't react well to losing characters they like. Plus, the more characters you kill, the less impact each death has.

I agree that saturating the deaths will make each of them have less effect, but I kinda disagree that people don't "react well". Yeah, people get upset when you kill their favourite character, but if OP wants to make sadder deaths, isn't that the exact emotional response they want? I'm not a fan of the will of the reader swaying the writer this much, but maybe I'm a bit old school on the whole artistic vision thingio. 

And also, yes deaths should meaning, but there's a double-edged sword there that we should be careful of. If you give a death too much meaning, or a too obvious meaning, the death will read more like a token plot point than a person departing from this life. There are examples of character deaths that seem meaningless but carry narrative weight for the emotional and/or political impact they have within the story. I'd name a few but I'm a mere noob who hasn't found any spoiler tag functions yet. #amlearning 

I do agree, I'm just a nitpicking nuisance.

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On the subject of offing the story's MC though, it is possible to kill off the protagonist, even in single-prot stories, if you just make that the ending, no?

'sglyhne' pid='808969' dateline='1475054384' Wrote: I'd name a few but I'm a mere noob who hasn't found any spoiler tag functions yet. #amlearning

or

'sglyhne' pid='808969' dateline='1475054384' Wrote:

'unice5656' pid='772408' dateline='1472076231' Wrote: First of all, I strongly suggest you don't kill off characters too often in a story. People generally don't react well to losing characters they like. Plus, the more characters you kill, the less impact each death has.

I agree that saturating the deaths will make each of them have less effect, but I kinda disagree that people don't "react well". Yeah, people get upset when you kill their favourite character, but if OP wants to make sadder deaths, isn't that the exact emotional response they want? I'm not a fan of the will of the reader swaying the writer this much, but maybe I'm a bit old school on the whole artistic vision thingio.

I don't know about other people, but if a character I really like gets killed off for a trivial reason, I don't get sad, I get angry. In order for a death to feel "right" in a story for me, the author basically has to foreshadow and build up to it for the whole story.

"Artistic vision", sure. You can write whatever you want. You can't, however, write whatever you want and then complain about it if it receives negative reactions.

Honestly, it's more of a challenge to portray sacrifice and create deep emotions without easy triggers like a death, just like it's more challenging to create vivid characters with emotional depth without a tragic backstory.

I was wondering... How can I make the bad guy's death sadder? I mean, instead of a "Yeah, he deserved that" reaction, I want a "He deserved better..." reaction. How can I execute it in my story?

'R. Rimil Hansdah' pid='809754' dateline='1475126159' Wrote: I was wondering... How can I make the bad guy's death sadder? I mean, instead of a "Yeah, he deserved that" reaction, I want a "He deserved better..." reaction. How can I execute it in my story?

Give him a connection to the MC, especially some sort of emotional one. If the MC can think of the villain as someone "he could be friends with", "a worthy foe" or some other kind of admiration, etc. the reader (who uses the MC as a window to your world) also have more of a connection to the villain and hence would think of it as a pity.

But to pull that off, the villain need some real work. There must be a solid basis and something that makes your reader want to connect to the villain (be it his skills, style, backstory, personality, etc.). If you don't even want to know a person in the first place, you won't make a connection to them. Same goes for fictional ones.

Also: If you, as the author, has the feeling of sadness of the villain's death, you'll find the better words to make it sad as well.

'unice5656' pid='809690' dateline='1475119628' Wrote:

'sglyhne' pid='808969' dateline='1475054384' Wrote:

'unice5656' pid='772408' dateline='1472076231' Wrote: First of all, I strongly suggest you don't kill off characters too often in a story. People generally don't react well to losing characters they like. Plus, the more characters you kill, the less impact each death has.

I agree that saturating the deaths will make each of them have less effect, but I kinda disagree that people don't "react well". Yeah, people get upset when you kill their favourite character, but if OP wants to make sadder deaths, isn't that the exact emotional response they want? I'm not a fan of the will of the reader swaying the writer this much, but maybe I'm a bit old school on the whole artistic vision thingio.

I don't know about other people, but if a character I really like gets killed off for a trivial reason, I don't get sad, I get angry. In order for a death to feel "right" in a story for me, the author basically has to foreshadow and build up to it for the whole story.

"Artistic vision", sure. You can write whatever you want. You can't, however, write whatever you want and then complain about it if it receives negative reactions.

Honestly, it's more of a challenge to portray sacrifice and create deep emotions without easy triggers like a death, just like it's more challenging to create vivid characters with emotional depth without a tragic backstory.

What I meant by artistic vision was that authors shouldn't take it to heart when people get sad over a character dying, if sadness was the emotion the author was trying to instill. Authors certainly should take it to heart if readers get angry of bad writing, of course. But I've seen too many instances of "We won't do that because it'll upset the fans" and that tends to tick me off just a tad. Often, what "upsets the fans" can be very good writing, and taking something away because it upsets fans could serve to weaken that. But don't get me wrong, artistic vision isn't a shield. 

You could always do something like Bruce Wayne's parents, though. They're shot by some robber, instead of dying for some cause or being the victims of some grand antagonist. The insignificance of their deaths is elaborated on as a theme, thus making their "insignificant" deaths rather significant in the end, which is a fun one. 

The last one though, man is that extremely true. It's become the easy way to tug at some heart-strings. Like all those films where a baby is introduced, and you just know that baby is going die like ten minutes later for some cheap tears. It takes a lot more to make emotional impact without death.

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'R. Rimil Hansdah' pid='809754' dateline='1475126159' Wrote: I was wondering... How can I make the bad guy's death sadder? I mean, instead of a "Yeah, he deserved that" reaction, I want a "He deserved better..." reaction. How can I execute it in my story?

You could try and make his story a tragedy? Paint him, towards the end, as someone who was misguided or misunderstood, and that behind some antagonistic shell was a sympathetic, scared little person.

[Deleted]

If you want a sappy, overused, annoyingly easy to see through way of making a villains death sad? make them one of the masked/hooded characters with face hidden, and when killed reveal it is someone close to MC (but not story relevant besides close to MC and villain) and have him spout some sappy stuff about why he did it that makes him seem not so bad. (NOT RECOMMENDED)

But if you're going to write someone dying, don't freaking just randomly bring them back, its annoying and turns me off a story, as a reader. (when I say bring them back I mean literally bring them back, or in the middle of killing them decide "NOPE" and keep the previous writing, but just make them miraculously live)

When the character is on his death bed, have a cute little puppy run up to protect him only to also die in vain.

I guarantee you the readers will have an emotional time... and probably be out for blood but hey it will be emotional.

'Quol' pid='816180' dateline='1476397317' Wrote: When the character is on his death bed, have a cute little puppy run up to protect him only to also die in vain.

I guarantee you the readers will have an emotional time... and probably be out for blood but hey it will be emotional.

LOL. Sounds a bit like my story, except it wasn't a puppy.

Anyways, Just develop good characters and whatnot. Do your best to show them being who they are and that will naturally draw some readers to them.

It has already been mentioned, but I must emphasize one primary thing; the reaction of other characters. Its how it impacts others that will lead the reader into how they should feel about the event.

This isn't just for making things sadder, and more tragic, but to improve all emotion and character development in a story. There are so many good fictions here on RRL that would basically level up their characterization if they just remembered to include the reaction of characters to any event large or small.

There is no problem doing this on a small scale, by adding small reactions. "She smile shyly in response...." Or in great detail to let the reader delver deep into the inter character. "Long paragraph with more detail..." Perhaps even a chapter or two about how everything had changed for a character or group of characters because the impact of the event.