To Kill or Not to Kill...

Okay, so i'm presented with a tiny issue and two ways to handle it.... At the moment I have a secondary character who is pretty important or to say her son is important. But we have just met her in the previous scene and in this one she makes a speech and during it gets struck with an arrow....

Now, To Kill her or not to Kill her....

I like the idea of Killing her, but we just meet her and I fear the trope since she has just been reunited with her son after about eight years, believing he had been killed during a coupe by her Husband's brother. Her husband was killed in the coupe and she was taken as a bride by the brother.

But, if I keep her alive, I know a few things she can do but the reset is unseen till I write it.

Well I guess either way tropes are hard to avoid, i'm just wondering which one would be better.

 

What's the point of killing her?

 

Hell of an arrow to outright kill someone outside of battle. How long does it take to die? She get double-lunged by a warbow or something?

 

The is the question I am trying to answer...Story Wise, what would be the point... so far, i'm pretty much leaning to keeping her alive, Story Wise. Plot wise, she served her main purpose, there are other things she could do but that could easily be handled by someone else. Keeping her alive would be more out of sentiment, which I have a tendency to get attached to characters. I have so many characters who were meant to die and didn't. . But again, if I keep her alive it could lead to other ideas I haven't thought of yet.


I think I just need to shout into the rain to help push through my thought process more than anything. . (It's suppose to be wind, but I like rain better. ) and justifications as to why I should keep her alive.

No, LOL. She isn't instantly killed, it takes a while for her to actually die (If she dies, though the tide is going the other way, though through a very stringent filter)

 

If you kill her off, then it was pointless to introduce her character in the first place, regardless how important she is to the son. Might as well get rid of her character entirely.

 

"The world is full of chaos and anarchy so yes it's true to life for characters to die randomly, but genre is called fantasy, it's meant to be unrealistic"

 

Unless the character's death makes a pivotal change in the son's life and thus the story, there is nothing to be gained.
You say the husband's been killed already and she thought the son was dead. So it might be more productive to have a scene wherein the son thinks his mother is dead, but soon discovers she's still alive. Then you can either pass it by and go to another scene, or make something of the response of witnesses and the saving.
Live people are interesting and can do something for the plot. Dead ones are useless.
I find too many killings, especially violent ones, tediously repetitive: one is much like another.

 

I feel like the character's mother being killed in front of him would be of such dramatic importance that it would take over the story.

 

There's too much death in literature.

 

I would have said there is too much undeath in literature. In the real world everyone dies.

Is there a good reason for the arrow? Is there a reason for her coming back into the MC's life? How does her death move the story on?


(ans at the risk of being the resident pedant, all these people die in a coupe? It must have been a bad crash.
coupe -> car ; coup -> overthrow of government)

 

I sort of agree with what already appears to be the consensus, here. The fact a character's served their main purpose probably isn't reason enough to kill them, even in fantasy... To me she should be killed only if that death actually adds something to the story, which I think you're saying you're trying to figure out. Maybe you don't need to use every character you keep alive extensively; they can just stay alive and do their thing outside your story.

 

Well, that suggests that every character that doesn’t have a specific plot purpose has to die, and if they don’t die you’re being sentimental.

But why can’t they just go home? Isn’t that more likely?

 

To add to what the last two posts are saying, I don't know if it's a mistake or not to only think of the characters in terms of their service to the plot, because that can only go so far.

If all your characters are about something, you can imagine them as "the heroes of their own stories." Say a guard turns a blind eye to your hero so he can sneak by after they became friends at dinner. You don't want the MC to benefit from the guard in the future, and you aren't going to have them pal around anymore, so he goes on the short list of people to red-shirt later. What if he just gets posted to some other position, or has to go back to his farm for three weeks for harvest, or whatever. Getting promoted or tending his farm is probably more important to him than helping your MC anyway.

Stories where that kind of stuff is layered in always seem more alive and believable to me.

 

... Or "coup d'etat".

 

Merciless writer here
I think that if you kill her, you need to make sure it has a big effect on the story in some form or another. As said above, what's the point in including her if she doesn't serve a purpose? And that falls under if you leave her alive, as well. If you leave her alive, you have to give her a reason to stay alive. Ultimately, provided that she has a purpose, I think it comes down to weighing your options and deciding what you as the writer likes better.

 

Is she more use to you alive or dead? I think if there is a reason why she should be killed then go for it. If the death is going to have a major impact on either the main character or if it will impact or spark other events in the story then go for it. If she is a secondary character she is expendable.
Never shy away from killing a character because you like them.

"Kill your darlings. " - Stephen King

 

Thanks everyone, enjoyed the read. . So got through the part and decided to keep her alive, since a living character is more useful then a dead one. Also after some character development, I've discovered she's a pretty pissed off woman, which is understandable after losing almost 8 years of her own life not to mention her sons.

I think this just justified my tendency to keep characters alive. .

 

I'm not sure that King's quote is meant to be taken so literally.

 

That's what I thought, too.

 

I kind of worry that you've got yet another female character who is only introduced to die, and her death is solely used to propel the male lead character forward in his arc. I would say, don't kill her, and have her become a mentor to her son.

 

lol. You're correct I just felt that phrase was fitting given OP was unsure to kill a character he liked. It was a poor attempt to use a well known quote to back up my own point which in hindsight has merely made my point seem pretty poor now !

 

Pst... the MC is female. . also she lives, and i'm glad I had her live, I have a feeling she'll be much more important later on.