The death of a popular character has caused more than one angry fan to send email to the author and unfavorable reviews to chat groups and review sites. So, when you absolutely must cause a character’s demise, how do you do that without enraging your readers?
When and how you choose to kill off a character can make or break a story. It’s quite difficult for authors. The characters are very real. Permanently dispatching them is a bit like purposefully ridding oneself of an ally.
Characters should be killed off when the purpose of their demise will be the most impactful. Death may occur near the story’s end such as in John Steinbeck’sOf Mice and Men, once we really feel for the victim. Or, like in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, where deaths frequently happen with no warning, establishing the theme that the characters are never safe.
Four Ways to Kill a Character
1. Make the Death Meaningful
Nothing aggravates a reader more than characters who die for no good reason. If you’ve built solid, relatable characters, then they deserve to die for a purpose.
For a death scene to be truly meaningful the other characters need to be invested in the outcome as well as the reader.
Show how the death affects your characters
Explore the repercussions of the death
Look at the emotional impact on the characters
Hodor, one of the kindest characters in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, sacrifices himself by holding a door shut with his body to block the attack of a horde of wights, allowing the family he served time to escape. He is torn apart, while he repeats his own name until it’s revealed that Hodor is really saying “hold the door,” a phrase that became the only thing he could say.
2. Foreshadow the Character’s Death
When done right, foreshadowing is a great way to create emotional tension for the reader. It can set up expectations of the characters’ behaviors and outcomes.
Here are some common examples of elements used as foreshadowing:
Dialogue, like “I have a bad feeling about this”
Active weather, such as storm clouds, wind, driving rain, clearing skies
Omens, like a broken mirror or prophecies
Symbols, such as blood, weapons, certain colors, types of birds, and physical/emotional symbolism like the pain of Harry’s scar in the Harry Potterseries
Settings, like a graveyard, battlefield, river, isolated path
Characters’ reactions, such as secrecy, fear, apprehension, curiosity
Time and/or season, such as midnight, dawn, twilight, fall, winter
If you end the life of an important character suddenly, readers are probably not going to react well. They anticipated spending quality time with this character. Ripping that character from them at the last-minute means sacrificing foreshadowing. And may get your book tossed across the room.
In John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, the reader knows early on that Owen is going to die. The narrator, who is retelling past events, tells us. Owen’s dreams provide clues to the manner of his death. When tragedy strikes, we are ready for it.
3. Avoid resurrections.
Unless you are writing a medical thriller with a plot that involves a miraculous drug that reverses death, or writing a fantasy that will allow a bit of wiggle room for returning from the dead, don’t be tempted to bring a main character back to life.
Another possibility is to have a “resurrecting” of a character who never actually died.
In Charles Dicken’s Our Mutual Friend, a young man named John Harmon pretends to have drowned in the Thames so that he can gather more information on his sudden inheritance and the man who accepts the money in his place —Mr. Boffins.
4. End on a Positive Note
Generally, people want satisfying, if not happy, endings. Even in the middle of a disaster, it’s important we find a ray of light. Sometimes, all you need to do is point out the good accomplished by the character’s death, like Owen Meany's, but at times little changes can give you a surprise happy ending.
Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife uses its time-traveling basis to allow the main characters to reunite, in the distant future, after the husband’s death. Their love and happiness alter its ending, easing the sadness.
If a death is needed in your story, then you can use these ways to satisfy your readers even in the middle of tragedy.
Have you ever killed a character? What do you think is the best way to kill a character and still keep the readers happy?
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About Ellen
Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi.
I once had a neighbor I barely knew show me her new boob job as I was walking by to get the mail. It was definitely more information than I wanted to have (and totally unsolicited), and coupled with some stories she told me the day we moved in, made me want to steer very, very, very far away from her and her husband. They invited us over dozens of times but I already knew way too much about them.
Avoid Too Much Information
You’re probably wondering how on earth that relates to writing fiction. It’s all about the TMI. If you give a reader Too Much Information too early on (AKA Backstory), they lose all interest in the character. There’s no intrigue left.
What you want to do is Show that your Character has something to hide, but not Tell what that something is. This is part of the complicated dance between advancing the Plot but not dumping too much Backstory on the page. You want to tease the information just enough to get the reader to keep turning the page.
Think about it like meeting a new neighbor. Jane Doe moves in next door, so you do the neighborly thing and pop over with a batch of cookies to welcome her to the ’hood.
If Jane opens her door and starts saying, “Oh, thank you for the cookies. You have no idea how much I needed them. I’ve been stress eating like crazy ever since I high-tailed it out of Michigan. The cops there were just hounding me and hounding me. They think I had something to do with my husband disappearing but you know, that wasn’t me, it was his best friend, Earl, who had one too many on a deer hunting trip and aimed for my husband instead of the ten-point buck. But then there was the whole thing with my Aunt Mary and…”
First, you’re thinking, Who is this crazy person? And then, you start thinking, How can I politely get the heck out of here and never, ever speak to this person again?
Watch for Stop Signs
Jane’s story was a whole lot of Telling and a whole lot of Backstory, which is like putting a stop sign in the middle of a paragraph. It bores the reader and creates an emotional disconnect.
Telling is dispassionate and flat. Showing, however, is connection. Showing delivers an emotional bond with the reader, the kind that makes them fall in love with your Characters, over and over again. Showing goes hand-in-hand with limiting Backstory so you can let details naturally unfurl.
Telling creates a disconnect with the reader. Showing creates a connection.
Imagine popping over to give Jane some store-bought sugar cookies (because, frankly, who has time to bake?) and when she peeks through a slim opening in the door, you see that she has a black eye and she’s disheveled and barely talks above a whisper. She says something vague about leaving Michigan in a hurry and then shuts the door. That would intrigue you. That would make you interested. That would create a connection of curiosity and empathy between you and this perfect stranger.
That is also exactly what you are trying to do on the page.
Your Characters are perfect strangers to your reader. You need to build a quick emotional bond with words, and the best way to do that is to drop in bits and pieces of Backstory and Show your Character instead of Telling everything about them.
For a year or so, I did online dating (and yes, it was as awful as people say but I also met my Mr. Right, who became my husband there, so it’s not all bad). The profiles that got me to click “like” were the ones with just enough information to make me want to know more. The ones that had no information or worse, just said hook-up now, were the ones I didn’t even bother with. I needed to know something—but not everything—if that makes sense.
No one wants to date the guy who spends the first thirty minutes of a phone conversation talking about himself. He’s dumping Backstory that you don’t even care about yet, because you don’t care about him yet (also, he may be a narcissist, so raise a red flag).
Backstory in novels usually takes the form of long, long, long paragraphs of introspection. Reading those is like watching someone think. That has to be the most boring thing in the world—like watching paint dry on someone’s face.
Let the Reader Wonder
The reader wants things to happen. The reader wants to feel compelled to turn the pages. And most of all, the reader really enjoys uncovering that mystery of what makes the Character tick. Use these tips to avoid dumping a steaming pile of Backstory into the beginning of your novel:
1. Think of your novel like an onion:
Remember Donkey in “Shrek”? He talks about how donkeys are like parfaits…with layers. Your Characters are like parfaits (or onions) too. They have layers to their personalities, their histories, etc. You want to peel those layers back a little a time, not expose the whole onion (or parfait) in the beginning of the book.
2. Don’t be that crazy neighbor:
Don’t let your characters start rambling on about their personal life, either in their heads or in dialogue. Drop just enough into the story to make the reader wonder—and keep coming back so they can piece together more of the puzzle.
3. Every element must work with the Plot:
You’ve heard me say it before, but I’ll say it again—every word in your book, every Scene you choose, every line of Dialogue, every space you describe, must impact the Plot. You don’t need to talk about Jane’s phobia of dogs if there are zero dogs in your story. But if she has to work at an animal shelter, that dog phobia will be important information. Characters’ pasts do impact their present, so reveal only the details that impact them at that moment in the Plot (more on this in a second).
4. Characters don’t blather about themselves to themselves:
Chances are good that you are either writing your book in first or third person—either way, the reader is in your Characters’ heads throughout the story. Think of that as being in your own head. Do you sit there and think, “I should have been the middle child because then Mom would have loved me more and maybe Dad wouldn’t have run off with the maid. And I wouldn’t be working at this lousy job at McDonald’s.” Chances are you don’t. When you are in your Character’s head, limit their “me-me” thoughts to a minimum. You wouldn’t sit there and ruminate about yourself and your past, and neither would your Characters.
5. Is there a TRIGGER?
If you don’t read another paragraph in this article, that’s cool, because the only thing I really want you to learn about Backstory is that there has to be a trigger for it to be on the page.
You don’t tell the reader (or hint at) the Character’s childhood fear of dogs when they are about to get on a boat. The dogs have nothing to do with the boat (unless there’s a German Shepherd in the captain’s chair). Nor do you hint at or tell about the Character’s troubled past with her sister when the Character is about to enjoy an intimate moment with a love interest. It’s not the time or the place.
The Backstory info you choose to add to the book should be triggered by that moment and be an impact on that particular Scene. If you simply must drop that information in, add an item or setting that triggers their memory. In short: The Backstory has to have a purpose for being there.
6. Does this information add Tension to your story?
The key to good Backstory is using it to increase Tension. If your Character is about to walk into a den of wolves, it might be a good time to have them recall the time they were attacked by a wolf hybrid. If the Character is about to kiss their love interest, that’s the time to introduce her fear of having her heart broken after her fiancé ran away with the fry cook at McDonald’s.
Along with that, you want to only add enough information to increase Tension. You want to look at how many paragraphs of Backstory you add, because Backstory is, essentially, the Plot’s boat just sitting in the water, circling, circling, circling. It’s not moving forward; it’s not speeding the reader’s pulse. It’s stagnant.
7. Are you adding the Backstory at the right place in the action?
Think of a gunfight. When the Characters are shooting it out, bang, bang, bang, none of them are going to pause to think about the time they were caught stealing a root beer from the corner shop or the time their mother abandoned them to join the circus. This is a tense, fast-paced moment, and it needs to be treated as such. Later, when things calm down, is the time to add that bit of Backstory. But not too much—as long as there are guns out there, there is inherent Tension, and your Character should be feeling tense and aware, not drifting off into pages and pages of thoughts about the past.
8. Is the Backstory taking over your page?
Did you write too much? Have too many paragraphs in a row of it? Look at the balance of action and narrative. There’s a concept called white space in writing, which in short means how much white space do you see on the page? When a reader looks at pages and pages of dense verbiage, they close the book. It’s too much to concentrate on and absorb, especially in today’s hurry-up content world. Trim the Backstory and see how much faster and smoother the Scene runs. It’s like having too many shrubs in a garden—you miss the cooler parts of the landscaping if it’s overrun with greenery. It all becomes one big green blob.
9. But, but, but…:
I can hear your arguments already. But how will the reader get to know my Character if I don’t dump all that information in the beginning? How will they know that she’s a nice person? How will they know why he turned into a serial killer?
Because you are going to Show instead of Tell.
Actions speak a thousand times louder than words, so let your Character act instead of think. Acting scared around a puppy shows the reader a lot more than the Character standing against the wall thinking endlessly about her dog phobia. Showing a Character snooping around their brother’s house instead of having them think about how they don’t trust their brother is far more effective.
When you Show instead of Tell, you let the reader put the pieces together herself. And that intrigues her to read more, to figure out the entire story.
Three Keys to Effective Backstory
Remember this about Backstory: it needs to be relevant, impactful, and believable. If it fails that three-part test, then take it out. Work it into another place or leave it out altogether.
I don’t use all the Backstory I create for my Characters, just as no one person in anyone’s life knows their entire history, right down to their abject fear of the color taupe. Use the details that matter and let the rest go. The book will be better and stronger for it and the Backstory you do choose to put in will have lots more impact!
Which of theses techniques do you use, or will you try, to avoid oversharing your characters' backstory? Please share or ask questions down in the comments!
About Shirley
Shirley Jump, author of Writing Compelling Fiction,is an award-winning, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon, and USA Today bestselling author who has published more than 80 books in 24 countries. As the owner of JumpStart Creative Solutions, Shirley also does book building, content editing, ghostwriting, and author coaching. She has worked with celebrities from The Today Show, HGTV, White House advisors, and former NFL players to craft their stories in a unique and compelling way. She has spoken all over the world about the power of narrative and how to create compelling books. A former reporter and communications director for a marketing agency, she uses her diverse background to help clients create impactful content that opens up new revenue streams.
Shirley Jump, New York Times bestselling author and owner of JumpStart Creative Solutions. We do ghostwriting, book building, and strategic content creation. Feel free to reach out at: shirley@jumpstartcreativesolutions.com, on LinkedIn, or book a meeting at www.Calendly.com/jumpstart-01.
Image Credit:
Photo is by Arlene Toney at Captured by Arlene, BTW. CC BY-NC-ND
Note: as you read this, it is probably already out of date. This technology is changing daily, but I've tried to cover the underlying issues and abilities for authors that should give you a stable life raft sailing into the future.
ChatGPT, Bard, Sydney... the AIs are here and they're coming for everyone's jobs. Or maybe not.
You've probably seen a lot about AIs in the media and it's all kind of confusing. I'm going to do my best to give you clarity around these new tools, and how they can become a help in your writing process.
Who Are These AIs and Where Do They Live?
The most well-known is ChatGPT. There are different versions, but I'm going to recommend you get to know the current test version. You can create a free account and start chatting with it. Sometimes it goes down due to overloading. ChatGPT now holds the record for the fastest user growth of any app. After two months, it had 100 million active users. For comparison, it took TikTok nine months to reach that level of acceptance.
Bard is the AI search tool developed by Google. Sydney is Bard's competitor, run by Microsoft and embedded in Bing. You can meet Sydney by getting on the wait list. Bard isn't available to play with yet. It was supposed to be released in February, but Google wisely waited after the stunning results from the announcement they made to introduce Bard to the world. (More on that in a moment.) When it is available, and it will be soon, you'll find it on your Google search page.
ChatGPT lives in a protected, closed environment and knows nothing after 2021. Its developers feel it is safer not knowing what is going on in the world today.
Bard and Sydney, however, have access to current data. And that's where some of the best and most terrifying stories come from.
(Note: there are other AIs designed specifically for writers. I’m choosing to focus on the big 3 right now, because these are ones that you can access for free and play with. These are the ones you’ll see mentioned in the news. Everywhere.)
How Google Lost $100 Billion
The Setup
To understand this story, we need a few facts. Google controls roughly 96% of the search traffic. Bing has roughly 3%. For every 1% of the traffic that Bing can capture, they will make $2 Billion.
In the race for search supremacy, AIs are considered to be the next nuclear weapon. Bing announced they were going to release Sydney to the public. Google rushed to release Bard first.
The Big Reveal
They knew they couldn't get it ready to interact with people, but at least they could release a video of it working! So, on February 7, two days before Bing released a preview of Sydney, Bard made its debut. In a stunning display of the problems inherent in using AIs, the advertisement showcased Bard giving an answer to a question. But it got part of the answer wrong and no one caught it until after Google released the ad. Google/Alphabet's stock lost $100 Billion in value overnight.
Then Microsoft demonstrated Sydney. And Sydney also gave a partially wrong answer! In fact, Sydney made up some “facts.”
Because that's what AIs do. If they don't know the answer, they make it up. Wonderful skill for a novelist doing fantasy world-building. Not so great for writing fiction based in the real world. Even worse for writers of non-fiction, and somewhat terrifying in the medical or similar industries.
The Result
Apparently, no one expected Sydney to be perfect, and so people began playing with it. And that's where things got weirder.
The people who wanted to play with Sydney tried to see if they could break it. There are now multiple stories of Sydneygoing off the rails. It hates some of its users, and has fallen in love with others.
The writer in me is horrified by the concept of people pushing an AI until it has a psychotic break. What could possibly go wrong?
It got so bad that Microsoft put limits on how long you can chat with it. Currently, you can have 10 interactions before needing to restart fresh.
In computer programming, beta testing software involves trying to break it. I've done it for years. I'm good at breaking things! But in the case of Sydney, it feels like evil bullying, and Sydney has registered her displeasure. But Microsoft has been very pleased with the results. People love Sydney.
Are AIs Plagiarizing our Novels?
The sad truth here is yes and no.
What is the first advice we give to new writers?
Read. Read lots. Read a lot of books in your genre, and then you will learn the patterns, tropes, and expectations of the genre. I have friends who have spent months analyzing successful novels in their genre so they can learn the tropes.
The AIs can do this for you in moments. This is what they were designed to do.
AIs read fast. Very fast. So fast that they've probably read just about everything. And they can keep this vast library in their memory banks and harvest whatever they want to create their own “writing.” Is this a violation of copyright? That'll be decided in the courts.
AIs also write fast. If someone wants to prove that an AI can commit plagiarism, they can craft a prompt to make it spit out a story that has already been written, or at least be close. We hope that the stories written to looser prompts are more unique. Again, the courts will need to deal with cases of AI plagiarism.
New Tools, New Approaches
Every area of our society is reacting to the presence of AIs. This is a new area of law, and it is being written on a case-by-case basis right now.
There's also an entirely new field of study: prompt engineering, the art of creating a prompt to convince an AI to generate exactly what you want.
For another take on AI creativity, here’s an article where a user prompted ChatGPT to create a unique game. Warning: it is addictive. Except it wasn’t really new. The user who prompted the creation was not aware that it already existed.
An AI can compile a novel with the help of a human creating the prompts. We're already there. Just go on Amazon and ask for "AI-written books."
Magazines are seeing a huge flood of submissions from AIs. Prompted by people who are making money teaching this as a method to get rich quickly.
"There's a rise of side-hustle culture online, ...And some people have followings that say, 'Hey, you can make some quick money with ChatGPT, and here's how, and here's a list of magazines you could submit to.' And unfortunately, we're on one of those lists."
Neil Clarke, of Clarkesworld
And that brings me to my point...
I'm not fond of get-rich-quick schemes, and I don't recommend drowning magazines in useless submissions.
But there are two big questions for writers:
Will AI writing flood the market and push me out?
The current thinking is: no.
It hasn't taken the editors at Clarkesworld and other magazines long to get to where they can recognize AI-written text. It won’t take long for the rest of us to recognize it, too. There are tools that can do the analysis for you. I'll list them at the end of this blog. But more than that, there's something different about human-written text. People are now starting to recognize AI generated text in the news, in articles online, and in print.
Imagine I'm teaching a group of writers and I give them all a prompt to write a story. They'll all tell similar stories, but they'll also all be different. Why? Life experience. Writing style. Voice.
An AI can write a story, but its voice is subtly different from a human’s.
Currently, ChatGPT and others have a way with words that is simply different than the way humans talk. It is close, oh so close, but not quite the same. There is a digital fingerprint in the way they write. This is their voice, their own unique style. It has been noted that they tend to be more polite than humans. Their paragraph structure is more consistent than what humans would use.
They haven't learned to use paragraph breaks for emphasis. Yet.
Readers want to connect with your characters. They want to feel authentic emotions when they read your stories. AI can mimic emotion, but there’s a difference in mimicking and evoking genuine feeling. This is where your humanity will stand out.
Can I ethically use AI as a writing partner?
Yes!
How?
I'm glad you asked!
Examples
An author was trying to shorten his back cover blurb. I suggested we pop over to ChatGPT and ask for its help. The prompt we used was something like, "Can you summarize this with a catchy hook? We need it under 200 words." Something like that. And then we pasted in the existing blurb.
Within moments, we had a fairly good rough draft of the new hook. Now we pulled out all of our empowered writing skills (thanks to Margie Lawson!) and within a few minutes, we had something that we could use.
Was it written by an AI? I would say no. All the AI did was to perform the agonizing first steps.
AI is great for getting past writer's block.
Experiments
Are you a plotter? Pop over to ChatGPT and ask it to outline a novel for you. For example: "Can you create an outline of a science fiction novel with a strong female lead and subtle romantic elements using the Save the Cat beats system?" Ask it to provide the outline in your favorite system.
Don't panic when you see how fast it gives you the outline. Now, remember: AIs can be wrong. They can even hallucinate. So read through the outline and think about it. Would you like to write this book? Do you want to change details, main plot twists?
You might even ask the AI to write you a few scenes. You can even work through options with it.
Before long, you have a bad first draft. Most characters will be cardboard. The motivation will be stilted or underdeveloped. But like many first drafts, there may be some potential here. And this is where you come in as a writer. Bring your style, your passion, your voice! Edit and rewrite, polish and polish and polish.
Because that's what real writers do.
Expectations
I once heard a new writer say that she didn't want to waste her words. Experienced writers know they'll have to rewrite most of the words in a first draft. AIs can get you through the boring parts, leaving you to dive in with all of your skill and talent.
Expect to rewrite almost all of what it gives you.
The trick with an AI is to be very specific in your prompt. The joy with these particular AIs (unlike some of the image generators) is that they can have a conversation with you. You can ask them to make changes. Specify your ideal reader. Specify your genre and your motivation. Designing the prompt will help you even if you use nothing the AI creates!
What about everyday writing?
Around my house, I'm the go-to person for writing emails, instructions, complaint letters, pretty much anything that needs writing. Maybe your house is the same? You can pop over to ChatGPT and ask it to write a letter to your insurance agency asking why they denied a claim. You'll have a draft that you can polish up without a lot of effort, leaving more of your creative energy for the writing you love.
What about blogging?
Full disclosure: I did not use an AI to write this blog. This one is all me... in all of my rambling glory. It might be better if an AI had helped. (An AI did help improve the title, though.)
Every day I see writers who can't think of what to blog about.
Pop over to ChatGPT and ask it for 5 topics that you can write a blog about that will fascinate ____ (insert description of your ideal reader). Look over the topics. Do any of them interest you? Do any of them give you ideas? Combine this with the technique I've shared before for generating ideas. Now ask the AI to write the blog post for the one you like the best.
Remember: this is a bad first draft. Do not post the draft it gives you, no matter how tempted you are. Maybe stick it in a drawer for a day and then re-read it.
Now rewrite the post, polish it, remove the silly bits. Make it better. Make it human. Bring your voice and your style to the page. Your ideal readers what to read your writing. They're coming to you because of your voice and your style promise. Don't let them down.
And then check the article thoroughly.
The AI Text Checkers
Some are free, some are paid. I strongly suggest that if you use chunks of text from an AI, run them through one of these after you've finished your rewriting. Also, do your research. While a mistake may not cost you $100 Billion, it can still make you look bad. Don't trust that whatever the AI says is right. It may be hallucinating.
I'm outsourcing some of my boring writing to an AI. I've even asked ChatGPT for help rewording difficult passages, because I tend to ramble. I've talked about this technology before, but it is rapidly growing and upsetting every industry it touches. These posts talk about other uses, but they are already out of date: part 1, part 2, and part 3.
What do you think? Would you be willing to have an AI for a writing partner?
AboutLisa
Lisa Norman's passion has been writing since she could hold a pencil. While that is a cliché, she is unique in that she wrote her first novel on gum wrappers. As a young woman, she learned to program and discovered she has a talent for helping people and computers learn to work together and play nice. When she's not playing with her daughter, writing, or designing for the web, you can find her wandering the local beaches.
