[NoCat]

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 )

 

[Guest]

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.

 

[Guest]

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!

 

[cinisajoy]

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

 

[Guest]

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.

 

[jonathanmoeller]

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.

 

[joyceharmon]

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

Okay, bear in mind that I haven't read the book, I've only read this thread. But from my understanding of the situation, your protagonist has a love interest. And he's developing and has essentially outgrown her. Not only that, but you're bringing in a new character to be the new love interest. If my understanding of the situation is correct, then the killing of love interest #1 becomes mighty darn convenient. Yeah, her death can cause him to grieve and grow and all that good stuff, but still - he was basically over her. If a person is over a relationship, why not just have them break up? That's what happens in real life. And growth happens from breakups as well as from deaths.

 

[Guest]

Okay, bear in mind that I haven't read the book, I've only read this thread. But from my understanding of the situation, your protagonist has a love interest. And he's developing and has essentially outgrown her. Not only that, but you're bringing in a new character to be the new love interest. If my understanding of the situation is correct, then the killing of love interest #1 becomes mighty darn convenient. Yeah, her death can cause him to grieve and grow and all that good stuff, but still - he was basically over her. If a person is over a relationship, why not just have them break up? That's what happens in real life. And growth happens from breakups as well as from deaths.

I can see how that would be good advice for some stories, perhaps even most, but for this one I'm not sure that would really work. It's a space opera / military SF, and I feel that the main character really needs to lose someone close to him in order to really grow. Otherwise, if he's just winning all the time, or if the losses lack the finality of death (especially when he is willing to sacrifice his own life), then it wouldn't work. It's not so much about losing the relationship, if that makes sense, but losing friends and loved ones to things outside your control (like war, for example).

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.

That's kind of what I've done: the love interest dies while they're both in cryosleep, and right before they go under she has this dream where everyone who went into the cryotanks is a decaying skeleton. That makes her write a contingency note in the case that he survives and she passes, but when that happens, he's so devastated that he can't bring himself to read it. The second half of the book is largely about him bringing himself to do that and learning to let go.

You bring up a good point about the characters considering their morality during wartime, though. Maybe a good way to hint/foreshadow that this character isn't going to stick around is to have her and the main character get into an argument early on about the book about who is willing to die. He could be like "every time I climb into that cockpit, I'm willing to put my life on the line," and she could be like "just because I'm a diplomat, that doesn't mean I'm any less ready to die than you are." Or something like that.

 

[UnicornEmily]

Maybe a good way to hint/foreshadow that this character isn't going to stick around is to have her and the main character get into an argument early on about the book about who is willing to die. He could be like "every time I climb into that cockpit, I'm willing to put her life on the line," and she could be like "just because I'm a diplomat, that doesn't mean I'm any less ready to die than you are." Or something like that.

Yes, that's good. I like that.

 

[AltMe]

I really hate it when a character I like is killed off just for plot development.

I've even stopped reading a series because people were killed off through sheer stupidity, just to demonstrate how dangerous the situation was. Talk about red shirts - that got really old, really fast.

There is one double episode in Stargate SG1 I refuse to watch, and another in Atlantis. Both episodes killed minor characters, and left me so devastated I almost stopped watching the series. The main character death towards the end of the 3rd season of Galactica, stopped me cold for 3 days, and I mean I did nothing of consequence for 3 days, as if someone close to me had died. I did start watching again, but only because I bought the entire series at once, and there was still 1 season to go. There is also the major character death towards the end of Trek NextGen season 1, which also will never be watched again. In fact, I never forgave them for that.

I believe one has to be careful with major characters. Killing them off just for plot or character development can be a major bombshell in the readers life.

If you intend such a thing to happen, because your MC needs it, then you need to make very sure that the trigger is a minor and forgettable character, who is built specially for the task, with no real reader engagement. Or that character has such a major character flaw, that everyone but the MC breathes a sigh of relief when gone.

I cant see why a love interest cant be written in a way where the reader actually wonders why the MC is with this person anyway. So when the person dies, the reader is more than happy to see them gone.

On the other hand, what is this obsession with killing characters? Yes, its a war, people die. But when your readers love your characters, killing them is dangerous. Why cant they simply be promoted and transferred unexpectedly, and then a reason put in place why they cant communicate.

In the case where 2 people go into stasis, and you need to remove one of them, why not have something change in the person which ruins the relationship rapidly. The one you dont want walks away, and leaves the MC with the exact same emotional state of a death. At least the option then exists to bring the loved character back later on in a different role.

A character who leaves is easier to handle than a character dead.

From what's been said, I think I'd fall into the group who would have a hard time getting past the death of a loved character. Even a damned good reason, which there rarely is, doesn't go down well. It always comes over as being a writer killing someone because that's the easiest way of doing something.

The challenge is to induce the same effect in your MC as the death does, without killing anyone.

Edit: Elizabeth Moon did this in the Vatta series. In one paragraph, she kills the majority of the minor characters she had spent 4 books building up, just to provide a reason for moving the MC. And that one scene in the series, destroys the series, imo. Sure, its the last book, its a war, people die, but it was so gratuitously done, it was devastating to the reader. Given half an hour to think about what she was trying to set up, I could have provided several ways of doing it where no-one had to die. Killing was the easy way out for a writer locked into a thought pattern.

 

[Guest]

We have very different tastes. I'm a huge fan of David Gemmell, who routinely kills about half the characters in his books. But I love it, because most of those deaths are epic heroic sacrifices. When an author kills of a character without any meaning or purpose to it, I hate it. But when the death accomplishes something or has some higher meaning to it, I absolutely love it.

When it comes to characters, I play by the following rules:

1) Every person is the hero of their own story.
2) Every story has a beginning, middle, and end.

If I love a character, I don't just keep them around forever (unless functional immortality is a major plot point). I make sure that when they die, it ends the story of their life in a way that makes the story worth telling. It's like that Braveheart quote: "everyone dies, but not everyone really lives."

 

[Nice]

You can't.

If you kill my ship, I'll burn your book.

There is no alternative.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

On the other hand, what is this obsession with killing characters? Yes, its a war, people die. But when your readers love your characters, killing them is dangerous. Why cant they simply be promoted and transferred unexpectedly, and then a reason put in place why they cant communicate.

I write a series about a freelance assassin, who doesn't believe in killings as a last option - in fact, her partner thinks she devolving into someone who sees killing as a first option and is trying to wean her from her habit - but I rarely get complains from (beta-)readers about the murders (not even when she sets up a young hitchhiker to be the fall guy for a crime she commits).

However, in one of the novels, a burly giant in the 'enemy camp' follows orders from his leader to kidnap the ex of her partner (a single girl), and the giant (who is loyal and goodhearted but keeps the wrong company) is smitten by the kidnapped girl. I've had several readers bemoan the fact that he gets killed together with a bunch of his friends, mainly because he had a hidden sweetness and many readers wanted the kidnapped girl to reciprocate (she doesn't, mostly because she's injured and intimidated). To me, that's fine, since their grief over his death makes it more poignant and it shows I imbued an antagonistic minor character with enough verisimilitude to make him lovable.

 

[geronl]

killing is a final option for the dead person, either way

 

[AltMe]

killing is a final option for the dead person, either way

Not in science fiction its not.

 

[geronl]

Not in science fiction its not.

lol