In a world at war, main characters need to die.

[Smoky.5348]

I think the problem is less about important characters not dying, but moreso that our Mary Sue magics away all the negative consequences. I knew exactly how EoD was gonna end and was disappointedly proved right. The big bad didn't feel threatening at all because l knew it wouldn't damage anything significant. For me, clever dialogue can't absolve a predictable story l can't take seriously.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Smoky.5348

[Ultramex.1506]

No, not really. Original personal story tried to do this, but i dont feel anything since they dont have much personality nor do they get explored further, you can kill as much as you want but if i dont have connection with the people around me, i dont feel anything in your supposedly "depressing world"

I only feel depression in your attemps

[Labjax.2465]

3 hours ago, Ehecatl.9172 said:

It's actually almost never a better idea to kill a character off than it is to keep them alive. This is because a living character can be used to create more narrative while a dead one generally can't. When choosing to kill a character you have to weigh how much drama and motivation you get from their single death against a potentially limitless amount of drama and story telling you could've gotten out of them alive.

 

For example I think killing Trahearne was a mistake. His death was shocking but didn't actually DO anything to advance the story. All it resulted in was Logan replacing him. Meanwhile we lost one of the more developed characters and the Sylvari's single most important character to their race short of the Pale Tree herself. The Sylvari lost a lot and gained very little. Just a lackluster funeral and a broken sword that never got narratively replaced.

 

The early seasons of GoT worked so well because every major character death was masterfully constructed to push the story of every other character forward or to make the entire cast pivot in response to the unexpected. Robb's death wasn't just shock value, it had a massive impact on Jon's story, more or less ended the War of Five Kings, set up the fall of the North as a major player in the story, forced Arya's story to change trajectory, and in the books kicked off Lady Stoneheart.

 

A good writer needs to be selective in what characters they kill off and why. Every character is a pool of resources at the writer's disposal that can be used to create more story. If you burn through it fast for shock value or to breed a nihilistic dread in your audience you run the risk of ending up like The Walking Dead where 70% of your cast are new characters barely anyone cares about.

Well said. And as much as I have some problems with Trahearne's character and arc prior to that, I agree and I suspect that was more of a response to people hating him than anything else. It makes me think of this sketch somebody did, you can find it on youtube, called "When the writers REALLY want to write off a character." Like it was kinda contrived the way they maneuvered him into that spot and got rid of him.

[Kalavier.1097]

On 6/30/2022 at 2:03 AM, Ehecatl.9172 said:

It's actually almost never a better idea to kill a character off than it is to keep them alive. This is because a living character can be used to create more narrative while a dead one generally can't. When choosing to kill a character you have to weigh how much drama and motivation you get from their single death against a potentially limitless amount of drama and story telling you could've gotten out of them alive.

Yep. You can easily fall into trap of "Oh kitten, this would've been perfect for X character... but they are dead."

On 6/30/2022 at 2:58 AM, Smoky.5348 said:

I think the problem is less about important characters not dying, but moreso that our Mary Sue magics away all the negative consequences. I knew exactly how EoD was gonna end and was disappointedly proved right. The big bad didn't feel threatening at all because l knew it wouldn't damage anything significant. For me, clever dialogue can't absolve a predictable story l can't take seriously.

I mean, the science of what happened with dragon deaths evolved.

We went from "Kill them all!" to "Oh shoot, we can't kill anymore." to "Wait, we actually do have something to replace the dragons and not make things go super terrible, but we have to be careful."

The dragon arc is over. So things are going to be different going forward.