How to KILL OFF A CHARACTER

4.2K 161 22
                                    

Before killing off one of your characters, you MUST watch this video review of the ending of The Amazing Spiderman 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sQeqSOxpD8 "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 ENDING - Why It Doesn't Work". (also featured in the sidebar and linked to in the EXTERNAL LINK)

If you're too lazy to search it up (and seriously, DON'T be too lazy for this. It's a critical piece of storytelling knowledge that you need to know to write a satisfying and impacting character death), here are the main points:

If a character dies, it should:

1. have consequences for the protagonist(s) or another big character that hinders one of their goals. Maybe the two characters were working on some scheme against the antagonist, and having that character die means they can't finish. She could've been a hacker, the only hacker of the group, and without her hacking skills, their scheme won't work.

2. teach the protaonist a lesson. Maybe they were becoming arrogant with their superpowers and think they're invincible. Having someone die on their watch is humbling and shows them that they're not infallible. Maybe the protagonist was warned against being reckless and they didn't listen, and that resulted in the death of another important character.

Note: these don't apply to killing the antagonist. These are for killing off characters your protagonist cared about such as friends, family, mentors, love interests, etc.

So go watch the video. He explains it much better than I did.


Yuffie's Writing How-To'sWhere stories live. Discover now