: Re: When do I successfully kill off an important secondary main character... in a series of five books? TL;DR: How much time and development is necessary for a character I intend to kill off and

@BetL639

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I hate to use Game of Thrones for all my examples involving character deaths and villains but Martin does such a great job with it that it is hard not to. We can relate in that, he presented most of the characters upfront. Whether they initially played a big or small role. He also does a great job of hiding most of their facts and backgrounds until it was needed so not to draw away attention from the characters of focus. After he would kill off a character of focus that everyone got attached to, he did a great job of bridging that death to the next important piece where he now makes a character that was in the background to the forefront and repeats the process.

We can examine Star Wars the original trilogy. Obiwan Kenobi dies in the first movie. While he didn't die until the end, we didn't.... see much of him to get attached, they didn't do much to build up his character. So even though he made a huge self sacrifice at the end, it didn't really leave much of an impact to the audience. Yoda on the other hand, had a bigger emotional impact with his death, and he simply died of old age. We spent most of the 2nd movie getting to know Yoda. He was funny, quirky, someone we can relate to.

The point I am trying to get to is that, time may not make so much a difference compared to how well the character is presented. As Lauren stated, most people struggle to be attached to characters who are killed early. You don't have that time to grow fond of them, but also, just because they died at the end of the book, doesn't mean people will be attached to them either as my example with Obiwan.

A quick study on character building and making meaningful characters may help you with this. I don't have the time right now to search through our questions, but I know recently we have had several questions about good character development. It might be worth your time to check out those questions!

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