The Death of a Character

Every living thing in this universe shares at least one thing in common. We will all die. Most of us likely heard 'death is part of life' or 'death is a fact of life' as we were growing up. Most of us have been touched by the deaths of loved ones. 

So when someone asks if it's absolutely necessary for characters to die in my novels, the answer is 'of course'. But.

BUT. 

Anyone I kill off in a story must die for cause. The death(s) need to mean something to the characters left behind, or they need to augment reality. Any time you're writing military SFR, if people aren't dying when you shoot at them, you're writing parody. You need to apply a cost to everything characters do. Or don't do. You need consequences. 

Sure, I can make the consequences impact the character directly, but consider the psychological impact of your poor decision destroying an innocent's life. That's some heavy guilt and it's hard to get rid of. Am I fond of fridging girlfriends, boyfriends, or anyone else? I'd like to say no, but I have a lot of dead people who are driving a hero in the current WIP. I think that's the textbook definition of 'fridging'. That sucks. I didn't want to be that author. Forth book in a series, tho. So it's not like I can change it now or make it somehow okay. I don't want it to be okay. I want it to be raw. And hard. And haunting. 

Anyway. We're off track. Death must mean something. If it doesn't, then killing off a character becomes a toss off. These are the character deaths in books, TV, and movies where a writer just kills the character. It's almost an accident. Oops. I dodged when I should have parried and now I'm dead. I understand that this is, in fact, reality. All too well I know this. But you know who handles what could have been a toss off death so adeptly that it carried a boat load of weight and emotion? Peter Jackson. Lord of the Rings. Battle of Helm's Deep. The elf Haldir leads a troop to bolster the defenders. Heroic! Hopeful, even.

Then Haldir takes an enemy arrow between the eyes while defending the battlements. It's almost accidental (and never happened in the books). It's a brilliant piece of theater - a full few seconds to watch realization cross his face, then that face go slack, and the slow motion fall. It's also amazing emotional manipulation - just as the audience is cheering the heroic elves riding to the rescue, they're toppled from their emotional perch by the arrow of Haldir's death. I totally see why Peter Jackson put it in the film when it isn't in the books.

The hero. Fallen. Lovely imagery. Sledgehammer of 'aw, man, I liked him'. 

A toss off would have been 'Hey! Hero riding in with reinforcements! Oops. He's dead. Oh well.' It would have been a quick pan. Or someone who deserved a better, weightier death accidentally falling through a magic mirror. Not that I'm mentioning names of authors or books here.

Summary:

• If I kill named characters on the page, I want them to have earned their deaths as much as other characters have to earn their HEAs. I don't often kill named characters.
  
• If I kill people off stage, it's to drive named characters into the character arc they've been avoiding.
• If I kill people off stage, it's also set that stage for stakes and/or ticking clocks and because there are no wars without atrocities. I just don't have to enumerate them or dwell on them. Often.
• If I kill NPCs in large number, I always mean to include the stories of heroism that never actually make it into the darned novels. There may someday be a short story anthology of those depressing heroic-unto-death stories collected and published.

And now, a bit of new life. The monarch caterpillar I brought in to save from the red wasps cocooned in a nursery on my front porch. It emerged and flew off into the world on Tuesday. 

 

Political World Building

Political world building, next on Nov. . .no. Wait. I'm not PBS. Sorry. Still. We are examining the merits and deficits of governmental bodies in our world building.

The original question was president or monarch - I'd like to think that from a SF standpoint there are more options than that, but you wouldn't know it based on my work. My answer to the question is: Both. At the very least. Because in my main SFR series, I have at least four separate populations vying for territory and resources, I have more than one option for structuring governments.

Confession time. Never, ever in my life did I aspire to write political stories. At. All. Yet here I am, having painted myself into a corner because you can't write military-ish SFR without talking about the governments that send people into battle in the first place and the philosophies for which they're fighting. Whether for good or for ill.

Tagreth Federated Council - this is a presidential government and several chamber council system that knits a group of planets together into a pooled resource. It has draw backs because the seat of government shifts world every few years so that no one world gets all the economic advantage or becomes the seat of power. Until a ruthless, power-hungry man who thinks he's the only one with all the right answers gets hold of the reins. Things go bad fast. My heroes and heroines have to claw their way back up from the debris pile before they can do anything like damage control.

The Claugh nib Dovyyth Empire - this is a monarchy. The queen has her nobles council and her elected council of the people to which she's beholden, but she has very broad latitude, especially when it comes to serving the people. So you don't often see her cowering in a corner while the bad guys are attacking. She's usually out there on the front lines. She's more than a figurehead, less than a living god. If that makes any sense. She's young and open-minded about how a royal ought to go about ending a war. So she's willing to make alliances no one else would consider. It's earned her a few enemies. Some of them roost close to home.

The other three governments that I can think of in the books all operate based on councils. There may be a single leader at the front of that council. Or a trio. Or some number. But the point is that in SFR having just one person standing up in front saying, "This is how it's gonna be just because I say so." is only going to last as long as someone showing up with a laser pistol and really good aim. But give a population the feeling that they're represented and at least partially heard? They'll wait for someone else to rise against the government.

The only thing I wonder is whether the people in my made up worlds avoid answering the phone during election cycles the same way that I do.