: Re: What makes a good death scene? I'm looking specifically into the written medium (NOT screenwriting) and the death of an important friendly character. It's supposed to be a scene to make the

@LarsenBagley300

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Why do you want the audience to scream "Please, don't!"? Is it because:

we are supposed to identify with the character, or
because we think we need the character within the story for some reason?

Spoiler in The Lord of the Rings:

(When Gandalf died, I was primarily upset because it made Frodo's task that much harder, not because I identified with Gandalf.)

For case 1, if we are supposed to identify with the victim at hand, and want the victim to live because death is too bad of a fate, then be sure to set that up as Mark describes.

But, there are other reasons we might scream "Please don't," - and these might be more of the tricks that you are talking about.

For case 2, perhaps the victim has information we need, and the death loses that information. After the death, the protagonists must go through many more struggles, because that information was lost. If only that person hadn't died!! So, give the character that private information.

Or, perhaps the victim was misunderstood. I like when characters are known by the audience to be good and true but thought of as villains by some in the story. Think Snape. Perhaps the person was thought to have been a horrible person, and we learn later that no, the person had other motivations entirely, good and true.

Since this begins to feel like idea generation, I'll stop here.

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