Writing Advice: Surprised Character Deaths

When it comes to character deaths, none is more decisive than a surprised one. Surprised deaths are by their very nature, a way to surprise the reader. (Obviously) These deaths give us some kind of reaction, mainly in the “What the fuck!?” and “Why the fuck!?” category. Most of the time these deaths are at the cost of a secondary character, one who had lots to live for, or was just about to reach their goal in life until death came by and said hello. I’m not sure how to write these kinds of deaths, but I have some thoughts.

If you’re prepared to anger your reader by surprise killing one of your characters then step one is done. Now it’s time to mitigate the backlash and not turn the hatred for killing off a character into hating the entire story because that does happen. People have stopped reading stories and given one-star reviews because their favourite character died unexpectedly, so if you’re prepared for that, let’s continue.

Their story wasn’t complete: That’s the deal with a surprise death, their stories haven’t been finished so it sucks to see them go. Depending on what kind of story you were giving them will determine the outrage.

One of the more common stories is love stories, either the surprised death character has been trying to win the love of another, or they were stuck in a love triangle. Either way, the character dies before getting their true love kiss, (or sometimes right after).

If a character dies, before they could win the love of another, it might anger your readers because they wanted to see the romance end, (just not like that). People enjoy love stories, but seeing a romance turn into tragedy is heartbreaking. Though this normally doesn’t result in people no longer reading your book, that joy comes from the fact that there was a love triangle.

Let’s say both A and B love C, however, a fan favourite is for A and C to get together, and then suddenly, A dies leaving B with C. Those who wanted A to get with C... might be a bit upset, to put it mildly. Resolving a love triangle through death is a trope that’s not highly regarded as it seems lazy. Mainly in the fact they couldn’t figure it out and fate had to intervene. Most of the time, whoever dies in the love triangle was the one the lover was going for but now had to settle for second best.

However, if a romance subplot gets finished, and the character dies shortly after, while still shocking, this will give the reader more of a sad experience instead of anger. The character finally won their lover's heart. They kiss and they make it official. The romance is done and everyone is happy. Killing them off in the next chapter is upsetting because the reader most likely wanted to see where the relationship goes now it’s complete. This will most likely give you less backlash since the characters got what they wanted but still died shortly afterwards.

Other examples of "their story that isn’t finished" come from whatever that character's goal was. It can upset the reader if that character had something to look forward to and died before finishing it. I don’t know about every reader but from personal experience I hate it when things just end. I don’t mind deaths, but to have plot points, never get finished upsets me. And I get ya, if your story has a theme where death comes out of nowhere and that’s life, then it’s cool. However, keep in mind there will be readers who don’t like plot points not finishing, so if anything at least try to inform them, that this is a thing which might happen to their favourite character. That way while their death might still come as a surprise, the idea of “that’s life” won’t.

Most of those kinds of deaths don’t make readers put down your book depending on what the character was supposed to be completing that is. However, if you want to lower your reader's anger, I would have whatever goal your character was supposed to complete, be done by someone else. It can be a nice sendoff for the character knowing the one thing they were after is completed in honour of their name.

Why did that character die: This kind of reaction mainly came from a surprised death which had no build-up and was mainly thrown in to surprise the reader. (Remember, just because it’s called a surprised death, doesn’t mean they have to come out of nowhere.) The ones I’m talking about in this section are ones that had zero build-up and were added in as a “bet you didn’t see that coming” kind of trope.

Surprising the reader for the sake of it is the quickest way to anger your fans. Readers like to feel smart, they like to predict what’s gonna happen, and if all of a sudden their favourite character dies...for no reason. The reader might feel cheated. “Why did I care about this character if they were gonna die like that?” Some might say.

You don’t have to explain every character's death in your story, but when it comes to a surprised character's death, expect some questions your readers will want answers for and if they don’t get it in the book they might try going online or something.

That doesn’t make sense: This reaction comes from when a powerful character gets killed by a less powerful one. Mainly when this happens even the story gets confused and I think this is one of those character deaths, where as long as the story is confused, the backlash won’t be high.

If a strong character gets killed by a random and the story continues like nothing happened. That might upset your readers as they’ll start to question what’s the power level of your characters? Why did that one die? Who is next? I’m not saying only your strong can get killed by the strong, but if they were to fall and the character who killed them is not as strong as the one who died, explaining why that happened might ease some backlash.

Sacrificing themselves for the greater good: This is a pretty simple one and doesn’t get much backlash, and it’s when character A saves character B but dies in the process. It’s normally when they appear out of nowhere to push the other character out of harm's way, or to intercept the danger. These deaths aren’t really surprising especially if the character who died has been known to do this before. It only becomes surprising when the character who died probably could’ve lived but the story said it was time for them to go.

Sometimes this is used on evil characters with a change of heart just before they go. (Kind of going in the redemption through death) trope as oftentimes the characters who do this are just minor villains, betraying their master at the very end.

Too many deaths: Sometimes if you kill off too many characters in a surprising way, it’ll get numb. Readers like to read stories for the characters but if so many characters are barely staying alive throughout each book, that might deter them from liking any as they don’t know who’s gonna live and who might die. I’m not saying there needs to be a limit on the amount of murder you commit, "A Song of Ice and Fire" is a great example of killing off all of your beloved characters and still keeping people engaged in the story. But I will say, it’s hard to do.

Why are you back?: If you killed a character off in a surprising way and they get brought back to life for whatever reason, death would no longer have any meaning in your story. Any more surprised deaths won’t retain their shocked value because the last time someone died unexpectedly, they came back to life. If surprised deaths are gonna be in your story, along with resurrection, you have to make sure you only do it for the main characters because you don’t want your surprise deaths to have no impact.

That’s about it with surprised deaths. Sorry if I was a bit all over the place with this one. I don’t want to say surprised deaths can’t work. They can and they can be very impactful, but they can also lead to outrage. Depending on how you're doing this trope will determine the reaction you’ll get from your readers. Sadly, this is one of those times you can’t ask beta readers for help as this trope only works the first read-through. If someone reads your book a second time and knows a character will die, they might have one of two reactions. “Oh, that’s the foreshadowing I miss.” or “Yeah, that still makes no sense.”

It's a trial and error kind of thing and you won't truly start to know how to write a good surprised death without releasing what you have and facing the backlash that might come with it. My advice would be, does it make sense if you know it's coming or does it still feel like it came out of the blue?