Red shirt?

 

I don't think foreshadowing is what you need. Make her death motivate the main character. Or maybe make her death somewhat mysterious so your audience has to keep reading to find out what happened to her, who did it, why it happened...

 

There's nothing that says characters have to live. I wouldn't leave any hints at all (and I wouldn't want someone 'ruining' the story by sharing the death before I got the chance to read it)  I'd let readers feel the pain and loss.  Some of us like a story that makes us cry.

I guess the problem is that she is a big enough character that your test readers are reading the book FOR her and when she dies, you might lose that segment of audience (even if you do foreshadow her death). That's something to consider...

 

How does she die? Is it doing something heroic and meaningful? Or is she just dying as a motivation and plot device for the hero?

 

Something like that is going to happen in one of my future stories, but it's the male who dies and this results in a mental breakdown and a mutiny on the ship. lol

 

Perhaps your readers are on to something.

Maybe she is the main character, and your guy is the one who should die.

 

If the death of the love interest leads to lack of motivation, that implies that the focus of your story was the relationship. That would seem to be the primary story with whatever else is going on, running second.

Perhaps re-read what you have and see if that is the case? If it is not a romance but readers focus on the relationship then the story needs work because something isnt working.

 

Character growth and relationships are almost always my favorite part of any book, so I can see myself falling in the camp of stopping reading if the main love interest dies. Why might I keep reading? If there's another character-related thread that sucked me in as much as the romance and gave me hope that growth would continue to occur. For example, if her death made him tap into a deeper part of himself and come out stronger after the requisite amount of angst. Or if she died to help people who I came to care about because she cared about them, and they're going to be a larger part of the second half of the book.

 

Kinda tricky. I think some readers expect happy endings if there's any romance involved. Sure there are exceptions, like if it's supposed to be sad, but most  romantic subplots end on a high note.

And don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like that subplot is more interesting than the main one. There's a problem if they're ready to stop reading because of that IMHO. Or maybe you just have the wrong readers. Is foreshadowing the problem or do they just feel cheated? I don't think deaths have to be foreshadowed all the time because it can get unrealistic. People just die sometimes. That's the beauty of life. It can all end at any moment without warning.

Anyway, good luck

 

Joe -- may I ask why you're killing off the character? What purpose does her death serve?

It sounds like your readers really enjoyed what she added to the story. Maybe they're not even looking for an HEA, but were horribly disappointed to lose that particular character. (I mean, they completely lost interest after she died? No offense, but that's a pretty strong reaction...Or maybe those particular readers prefer romance?)

 

Yeah, don't foreshadow it.  Make it necessary (the main character could, for some reason, never have won if this hadn't happened) and meaningful (so that she doesn't feel like just a red shirt).  That's how you keep readers from becoming angry and cheated.

Also, I like Rocket's comment a lot.  That's a really good point: make sure your romantic interest isn't the most interesting character in the book.  If she's the one you're rooting for most, all romance aside, OF COURSE readers are going to lose interest after she dies.

I once read a series with a character I absolutely, absolutely loved.  Fascinating, weird, interesting, and I was totally rooting for him.  Halfway through the series (fantasy / mystery), this character died.  (This was not a romantic interest.  It was actually an antagonist.)  It was shocking, it was meaningful, it was completely well-done -- and yet, I hated the rest of the series.  Why?  Because I no longer had a character I LOVED to root for.  The rest of the series just seemed blah in comparison.

 

Yeah, this is a slippery slope. Are you killing her to provide motivation for the male lead? That can be distasteful because it could fall into the "women in refrigerators" category. I had something like that planned for one of my stories, and then I watched this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DInYaHVSLr8

And realized that it wasn't the best idea. Now I make deaths more meaningful, and never use them as a way to motivate someone. But that's just me. Death as a motivator can be pulled off effectively, though. Take John Wick for example, he went on a killing spree because someone murdered his dog, a present from his late wife.

 

I give up.

How did Love Story handle it?

Or A Farewell To Arms by Hemingway?

 

I'm assuming that you need her to die and that there's a reason you've built up a character your audience likes enough that they are sad she died.

Honestly, as long as you aren't marketing this as romance, you should be able to pull it off. Try and make sure you aren't giving the readers false clues about the focus of the story.

I will say, some readers just won't go for it if they like the characters. I've read some pretty outstanding books where characters are killed off for absolutely necessary reasons and it still pissed readers off.

So - it's your book. Do you want to please all the readers all the time?

Also, you might ask yourself a different question. Maybe the problem isn't that you killed her. Maybe the problem is that she (or the romance) was the most interesting part of your book.  Maybe you need to kick the rest of it up a level to maintain reader interest.

 

If there's another character-related thread that sucked me in as much as the romance and gave me hope that growth would continue to occur.

Yeah... there's another love interest that the main character doesn't even meet until more than halfway through the book, which introduces a whole 'nother set of problems of itself (though she is connected, because he rescued her great-great-grandmother before he was frozen in stasis for a couple hundred years... what can I say, sci-fi can get kind of screwy)

For example, if her death made him tap into a deeper part of himself and come out stronger after the requisite amount of angst.

Yes, that is exactly what I'm trying to shoot for. So maybe I should focus more on his growth arc, and make it obvious when he gets together with the first love interest that he hasn't grown out of it yet and she isn't going to help him become what he needs to be?

Joe -- may I ask why you're killing off the character? What purpose does her death serve?

Basically like Aimee stated above, the main character changes and grows from stuggling with her untimely death. Before, he was a very dominant personality who tended to force his way whenever he felt he was right. Her death takes him down a notch and helps him to realize that the kind of people who win wars aren't the best at winning the peace, if that makes sense. Also, in struggling with her death, he grows in ways that help him to heal from other wounds that were present at the beginning of the book.

Make it necessary (the main character could, for some reason, never have won if this hadn't happened) and meaningful (so that she doesn't feel like just a red shirt).

That's a very, very good point. Thanks.

Also, it's worth mentioning that the reader who had the most problems with this is not, to my knowledge, a regular reader of science fiction. There were several other beta readers who said that some of their favorite parts of the book happened after the love interest's death, but when I asked them if it was a problem, they agreed that it could have been pulled off better.

 

So her death serves the purpose of motivating the main character, but is that it? Look up fridging and see if that's what you've done without giving her any real purpose of her own. If that's her sole reason for existing, it's so cliche you're bound to have some unhappy readers.

 

Yes, that is exactly what I'm trying to shoot for. So maybe I should focus more on his growth arc, and make it obvious when he gets together with the first love interest that he hasn't grown out of it yet and she isn't going to help him become what he needs to be?

Yes, that's exactly right. Don't undermine the romance (make it seem like it could be good, and it could last, while it's happening), but hints should be there that she might not be exactly what he needs.

That way, in retrospect, when he gets the other romantic interest, make sure readers can see just how much better the new romantic interest is for him (and perhaps just how much better he is for her for having gone through the death of the other woman!).

Just a thought, but you might give the doomed woman her own personal quest, which she can only succeed in by sacrificing herself in some way (which would automatically give her death meaning). Or completing her personal quest could be the main character's motivation for the rest of the book (as long as she made significant headway on it herself, and isn't just a victim who needed somebody to save her and take care of everything for her).

 

So her death serves the purpose of motivating the main character, but is that it? Look up fridging and see if that's what you've done without giving her any real purpose of her own. If that's her sole reason for existing, it's so cliche you're bound to have some unhappy readers.

No, I definitely haven't fridged her. She accomplishes quite a lot before her untimely death and gets her own growth arc that moves the story in significant ways.

 

Maybe I'm an odd ball, but I'm okay with romance or without romance in a book. Generally, I like novels that develop character relationships over a number of books. Just feels more natural to me that way. If the romance is handled badly, (as in rushed, shallow, insta-love cliched eye-rolling etc) I'll drop the book so very, very fast.

Personally I think romance is one of those elements that's hard to get right, and easy to get wrong.

I'm not saying you've done anything cliched, and I'm not saying you can't kill her off--but you have to have the readers invested in your surviving characters/plot enough to keep them reading. I agree with the others who said her death has to have some meaning, too.

 

No, I definitely haven't fridged her. She accomplishes quite a lot before her untimely death and gets her own growth arc that moves the story in significant ways.

Sounds like you might need to slightly foreshadow it then. And definitely beef up the growth line for the protag so the readers want to find out what happens and how he deals with it. It might also be a pacing thing, since it sounds like this will come at the crisis point when everything has hit the lowest low, yeah? It might be that you need a little more before that to set up everything? It's hard to give advice without reading the book of course, but beefing up the likeability and character arc of the main might help, for sure.

(btw Joe, if you are still seeing my posts- I tried to respond to your PM and apologize for the misunderstanding since I see what you mean now (thanks for explaining) but I guess you blocked my PMs, which is weird since you messaged me. Oh well )

 

Sounds like you might need to slightly foreshadow it then. And definitely beef up the growth line for the protag so the readers want to find out what happens and how he deals with it. It might also be a pacing thing, since it sounds like this will come at the crisis point when everything has hit the lowest low, yeah? It might be that you need a little more before that to set up everything? It's hard to give advice without reading the book of course, but beefing up the likeability and character arc of the main might help, for sure.

I've foreshadowed it one or two chapters before it happened, and the readers have mentioned that that was done pretty well. I'm wondering if I ought to foreshadow it any earlier. Also, you're exactly right about it happening at the crisis point when things are at their lowest low. From what I'm reading on this thread so far, it seems that the main issue is making sure that the main character's growth arc is brought sufficiently to the fore.

 

Yes, that's exactly right. Don't undermine the romance (make it seem like it could be good, and it could last, while it's happening), but hints should be there that she might not be exactly what he needs.

That way, in retrospect, when he gets the other romantic interest, make sure readers can see just how much better the new romantic interest is for him (and perhaps just how much better he is for her for having gone through the death of the other woman!).

Excellent advice. You can tell when feedback is good when it gives you lots of new ideas that make you want to write!

 

Joe,
What percentage of your readers quit reading your book?
Was it 1/10, 1/5 or1/3? 

 

Joe,
What percentage of your readers quit reading your book?
Was it 1/10, 1/5 or1/3?

Of the five readers I shared it with, two of them didn't finish it.

 

I would suggest that an excellent way to foreshadow it would be to have the characters consider the risks of space travel - presumably it is a dangerous business with every chance that something will go wrong. If they're in a war of some kind, all the better. That is an excellent way to make the characters consider their mortality, which means any romantic partners would be well-aware that things could end in unexpected death.

I killed off a long-running love interest once, in the 9th book of a series (currently writing the 15th book of the series). The main character is a woman, and her boyfriend of the last four books died to save her life, which in turn enabled her to save a lot of people.

Some readers liked it, some didn't. Some really didn't. The first month sales for book 10 and book 11 were about 20% lower, but they built back up over time and books 13 and 14 did better than any of the previous books in the series.

I suppose sometimes it is necessary to take a creative risk in storytelling and see what happens.