Death, just like in life, is a key element of every story. It shapes heroes and villains alike, brings people together and pushes them apart. Honestly I think it is outright essential.
However I don't really think there is a good time to kill a character, except when the plot calls for it of course. And even then it is important to keep in mind how or why the character in question dies. To simplify things I will divide the ways you can kill off a character in two ways: you can give them an abrupt and unexpected death or an expected one.
To me, both of these categories shine in different ways.
The expected death often occurs when a character dies of old age, disease (often the chronic kind), a long foreseen natural disaster or even by an assassination of some kind (if the reader was in on the plot). A little side note though, while they are "expected" that does not mean they can't be bloody and abrupt, it can take a long time for someone to finally succomb to a disease but it often takes but a fraction of a second to get killed by a natural disaster.
What I most appreciate of this kind of deaths is that they tend to be more moving, inciting feelings like sadness and to a certain degree despair. But also how they allow the reader to accompany the character in question or an observer in the preparation of death. See their denial, their sadness, their hope, their despair and eventually how they pass on, or not. I myself recently came to the conclusion that my grandparents were getting old, while it may seem stupid it just kinda hit me in the face some day and that revelation was horrifying. Sometimes knowing that someone dies can be far more horrifying than to be taken by surprise. And I honestly would love to portray that in a way that it does the feeling justice.
The abrupt death can be a part of a plot twist, a slight change of advantages in battle, a stupid cabbage-cart accident, or tumbling down a mountain upon hitting a stray bone with your great toe (sounds familiar anyone?). As long as there is little way to foresee it, it fits into the category. Yet again, it does not mean it has to be bloody, I believe it might just be far more impactful to see someone collapse without any apparent reason.
What is important to keep in mind about this kind of death is that it brings up a whole different set of feelings than an expected death, an abrupt end incites denial, anger, or despair into the observer (or of course joy depending on your point of view, ASOI&F does that like a charm). But most importantly, it pushes more obvious feelings to the background if even for the space of seconds, sadness is reserved for the aftermath.
The next thing we will reach onto is why you kill off characters. Let's first make one important thing clear: killing a character just for the sake of it tends to not be a good idea.
The most obvious choice would be to advance the plot, but if you decide to go with this be sure the death has conséquences. Or show some character progression.
The death of someone dear to a character can make a powerful, if perhaps a somewhat overused, motive to push the story forwards, and sometimes the dead of a character can bring up important questions or on the opposite answer said questions. If there is one thing to avoid it would probably be something similar to what Sildriel mentioned:
"There was no tactical reason for the enemy to kill the main character's friend, but he did it anyway to waste resources"
While this is just one example of a "bad" death, there are many more but most of the time even a somewhat cliché or overall bad death can be incorporated into the rest of the story like a true miracle, so I would say it depends on the skill of the writer.
There are many ways to incorporate a death in a story to make it impactful and/or important. I would personnaly say that any death that has a lasting impact on a character's psyche can be considered to be at the very least mildly good, especially if it's not directly visibile in what way that death will influence the character further down the line. A good trick to make your readers feel like the death was important is to make them have a connection with the deceased, be it in a good or bad way, if they bond with the character they will be frustrated or tearing at least (Yes, I speak of experience as a reader, what of it?)
However my absolute favourite is to leave a complete void after a sacrifice if the dead character was the only observer the reader gets to know. After all the hero doesn't get to see if his sacrifice was worth it.
As an amateur writer, I do in fact plan the deaths of most of my characters, it's an important fact of life that one eventually dies, that does however not mean that they die while the story unfolds. They could die in the midst of a turning battle or die peacefully in their beds once the danger is avoided. Even if I'm afraid I might not take it very well if a character I put a lot of attention in does indeed die, after all I've grown to see them as close friend-ish people(?) and have really grown attached to the characters from my WIP(on hiatus) novel. They would need to have a good death if I were to accept it.
Now that I answered the given questions, I would like to ask one for myself:
What do you guys think of the concept of immortality (or a very long life span) when writing? How do your characters cope with such a thing and what are the pros and cons of writing such a character?
Death, just like in life, is a key element of every story. It shapes heroes and villains alike, brings people together and pushes them apart. Honestly I think it is outright essential.
However I don't really think there is a good time to kill a character, except when the plot calls for it of course. And even then it is important to keep in mind how or why the character in question dies. To simplify things I will divide the ways you can kill off a character in two ways: you can give them an abrupt and unexpected death or an expected one.
To me, both of these categories shine in different ways.
The expected death often occurs when a character dies of old age, disease (often the chronic kind), a long foreseen natural disaster or even by an assassination of some kind (if the reader was in on the plot). A little side note though, while they are "expected" that does not mean they can't be bloody and abrupt, it can take a long time for someone to finally succomb to a disease but it often takes but a fraction of a second to get killed by a natural disaster.
What I most appreciate of this kind of deaths is that they tend to be more moving, inciting feelings like sadness and to a certain degree despair. But also how they allow the reader to accompany the character in question or an observer in the preparation of death. See their denial, their sadness, their hope, their despair and eventually how they pass on, or not. I myself recently came to the conclusion that my grandparents were getting old, while it may seem stupid it just kinda hit me in the face some day and that revelation was horrifying. Sometimes knowing that someone dies can be far more horrifying than to be taken by surprise. And I honestly would love to portray that in a way that it does the feeling justice.
The abrupt death can be a part of a plot twist, a slight change of advantages in battle, a stupid cabbage-cart accident, or tumbling down a mountain upon hitting a stray bone with your great toe (sounds familiar anyone?). As long as there is little way to foresee it, it fits into the category. Yet again, it does not mean it has to be bloody, I believe it might just be far more impactful to see someone collapse without any apparent reason.
What is important to keep in mind about this kind of death is that it brings up a whole different set of feelings than an expected death, an abrupt end incites denial, anger, or despair into the observer (or of course joy depending on your point of view, ASOI&F does that like a charm). But most importantly, it pushes more obvious feelings to the background if even for the space of seconds, sadness is reserved for the aftermath.
The next thing we will reach onto is why you kill off characters. Let's first make one important thing clear: killing a character just for the sake of it tends to not be a good idea.
The most obvious choice would be to advance the plot, but if you decide to go with this be sure the death has conséquences. Or show some character progression.
The death of someone dear to a character can make a powerful, if perhaps a somewhat overused, motive to push the story forwards, and sometimes the dead of a character can bring up important questions or on the opposite answer said questions. If there is one thing to avoid it would probably be something similar to what Sildriel mentioned:
"There was no tactical reason for the enemy to kill the main character's friend, but he did it anyway to waste resources"
While this is just one example of a "bad" death, there are many more but most of the time even a somewhat cliché or overall bad death can be incorporated into the rest of the story like a true miracle, so I would say it depends on the skill of the writer.
There are many ways to incorporate a death in a story to make it impactful and/or important. I would personnaly say that any death that has a lasting impact on a character's psyche can be considered to be at the very least mildly good, especially if it's not directly visibile in what way that death will influence the character further down the line. A good trick to make your readers feel like the death was important is to make them have a connection with the deceased, be it in a good or bad way, if they bond with the character they will be frustrated or tearing at least (Yes, I speak of experience as a reader, what of it?)
However my absolute favourite is to leave a complete void after a sacrifice if the dead character was the only observer the reader gets to know. After all the hero doesn't get to see if his sacrifice was worth it.
As an amateur writer, I do in fact plan the deaths of most of my characters, it's an important fact of life that one eventually dies, that does however not mean that they die while the story unfolds. They could die in the midst of a turning battle or die peacefully in their beds once the danger is avoided. Even if I'm afraid I might not take it very well if a character I put a lot of attention in does indeed die, after all I've grown to see them as close friend-ish people(?) and have really grown attached to the characters from my WIP(on hiatus) novel. They would need to have a good death if I were to accept it.
Now that I answered the given questions, I would like to ask one for myself:
What do you guys think of the concept of immortality (or a very long life span) when writing? How do your characters cope with such a thing and what are the pros and cons of writing such a character?
