: Re: Making the death of background characters sad The problem with killing off a background character is that their very modus operandi eliminates the most effective advice, because they don't have

@Berryessa137

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One thing that always works well is to have the death have long-term emotional ramifications on characters who are central to the plot. The background character's death is not the sad part. The sad, engaging part is how that death makes the more-central characters grow.

Some examples:

Show MC and his life-long friend being friends. The reader has to actually like the background character. Plot ensues some time later and friend is killed by the villain. Now the MC has logical motives (stopping the villain's evil scheme) and personal motives (finding out why his friend had to die, getting justice/vengeance) Maybe show more of their friendship in flashbacks after the character is dead. The surest way to make sure the reader DOESN'T care when a background character dies is to never mention them again. So keep bringing them up.
Have the background character killed in a way that makes the MC question himself. Perhaps the MC is a genetic researcher, and the background character is killed by another researcher researching the same things as MC but with a little less caution or empathy. MC will then question his motives and his goals.

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