: Re: Would it be appropriate to end a side story as soon as a character is killed off? I am currently writing a war story written from different perspectives on both sides of the conflict. Every

@Ann1701686

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This depends on which aspects of the war you want to look at. For your example with the child and the family in general it might be better to take the already explained path: explore the implications of his death by showing what the people who loved him have to go through afterwards. You can show that it's not just one death - it's a horrible spiral where a multitude of people have to suffer. Everyone who cared about him is affected in some way. The details have been explained in this answer from Thomo.

But: you could take a different route. If you want to show the sudden death then make it sudden. Show the reader that after a bit more than one page of "screentime" one of your characters is suddenly killed. The chapter stops and never returns to this one person. Maybe he sees a bullet kill one of his fellow soldiers before the chapter just stops midway through his thought.

Don't make great plans for this character. No "I promised to go home" or "In a few weeks everything will be over" or "Tomorrow I will switch to a place that is a bit safer" - off the character before he is even fully introduced. Show the reader that war can be over faster than you would expect and that they will never know whether the character they are currently following will stay alive until the end of the book - or only for a couple more paragraphs. Make the turning of the page feel important and risky.

By combining this approach with others, such as showing the tragedy from the family's point of view, you can create a richer world for your readers. There are more aspects to war, more aspects to the book, every character is unique and they may never know the full story of a soldier's death.

It's a promising idea that has potential to be very interesting for your readers - but you should neither rely solely on the family, nor on the sudden death. Try to vary to show the many ways in which a war is a tragedy.

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