That Impacts Readers the Right Way
As many of you know, I’m about twenty minutes (ok… maybe a week) from sending my manuscript off to the editor. I’ve written and [extensively] rewritten it and am in draft number six, right around the 90% point. This is smack dab in the middle of the story’s showdown. It’s rolling at full speed straight into the end of the story (and has been since the 75% mark). But there’s one scene I’m agonizing about. A death scene. I’m asking myself if it’s all that it could and should be. To that end, I’ve been revisiting all the wisdom I can find about how to write a death scene.
If you’ve ever written a very emotionally-charged scene, you probably understand why I’m hesitant to move on without a meticulous examination of this event. When it comes to emotional scenes, it’s very hard to get it right. Too much focus on the event and it loses its impact. Too little and readers gloss over it. Too much of an emphasis on the tragedy and the character’s response to it and it reeks of melodrama. Too little and the character comes across as cold and heartless.
Getting it right is hard.
[I love non-writers who think we’re just playing. Let’s see them try to write a book and do it well!]
So how do we write such a significant moment in the character’s life without over- or under-doing it?
The Obvious
Lots of websites will highlight the obvious things such as:
- Readers should care about the character who dies
- The protagonist and the character-to-die should have a good relationship so that readers can relate to the sense of loss she’s feeling
- Or the protagonist and the character-to-die should have a terrible relationship so that readers feel vindicated and/or relieved when the character dies
- Writers shouldn’t kill characters merely for shock value
- The character’s death should serve a purpose in the plot
- The death should tie into the story’s theme, illustrating or supporting the moral lesson from another angle.
- The death should happen at the right point in the story (the point at which it furthers the plot, character, and theme or acts as an end cap to that advancement.)
But what about other situations such those in which the protagonist and the character-to-die had a complex relationship – both good and bad? And how do we actually write the scene? Should we just stick to the actual events? Should we highlight the protagonist’s internal response? Should we do something else entirely?
Perspective
Part of the answer depends on the perspective of the scene. And there’s more than one. Even if the scene only includes your protagonist (or another character) and the character-to-die, the scene can be written from either angle. An example of the unexpected comes from Stephen King’s book Doctor Sleep. In this passage, the young boy Danny from The Shining has grown up and still has his ability to look into and sense the paranormal. He’s sitting with a man, Charlie, who is dying.
Charlie has lived a long and happy life. As he’s dying, his mind plays back over all of the images of joy and fulfillment that he experienced in his life. Dan is able to see these due to his gift, so while the story is told from Dan’s perspective, this scene is really from the perspective of Charlie, the dying man. Notice some of the things King includes:
[Dan] saw Charlie’s twin sons at four, on swings. He saw Charlie’s wife pulling down a shade in the bedroom, wearing nothing but the slip of Belgian lace he’d bought her for their first anniversary…He smelled bacon and heard Frank Sinatra singing “Come Fly with Me” from a cracked Motorola radio sitting on a worktable littered with tools…He tasted blueberries and gutted a deer and fished in some distant lake whose surface was dappled by steady autumn rain. He was sixty, dancing with his wife in the American Legion hall.
Stephen King
This scene is powerful and brilliant because it doesn’t focus on Charlie’s death. It focuses on his life. Death scenes can be powerful in either case, but since this is a scene from Charlie’s perspective and Charlie is greeting death from a resigned point of view that basks in all that was better about life, it makes sense for his memories to take center stage.
Readers feel a poignant beauty in the summation of all that Charlie experienced. We feel the weight of his death by seeing all the beauty that his life entailed and, by extension, what he loses as he passes away.
Purpose of the Death
It’s essential in determining how to write the death scene that we ask ourselves what readers should feel beyond just the surface answers – sad, angry, free? How should they view the character’s death? Is it a tragic loss that shouldn’t have happened (Romeo and Juliet or Pet Cemetery)? Is it a sad relief after a long battle with difficulty and suffering (The Fault in Our Stars or Frodo in Lord of the Rings)? Is it celebratory relief such as the death of a terrible antagonist (Dracula or Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca)? Or is it complicated?
Since we can’t look at every one of these, let’s look at the last one since it’s the one I’m faced with at the moment. Sometimes the character’s death is tragic and yet the character who dies had a complex relationship with the protagonist. Clearly, the perspective of the death will be complex as well.
Since I don’t want to give away what happens in my book, let’s look at a complicated death from the Lord of the Rings movies: the death of Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring.
Minor plot spoilers ahead!
Boromir is a tricky character. He’s what we would call morally gray. In many ways he comes across as greedy and self-serving and yet the audience can relate to him. He’s driven to please his very cruel and demanding father and to protect his people. In addition, Tolkien has already established that the ring is nearly irresistible, especially to men, so it’s no surprise that Boromir isn’t strong enough to avoid its siren call. Thus his desire to take the ring from Frodo is something viewers can empathize with though, of course, we know he shouldn’t do it.
Long-story short: Boromir struggles to avoid taking the ring from Frodo and, near the end of his story, almost fails in a big way, and doesn’t only because of Frodo’s ability to outwit him. But then he feels the weight of his shame and ultimately sacrifices himself to protect Frodo from the enemy and allow him to escape.
The point of Boromir’s death is manifold:
- He serves as a warning of the ring’s power
- He demonstrates the incredibly gracious natures of both Frodo and Aragorn
- He’s a case study for many characters who might also struggle to accept a king’s authority over them
His death, though acting as a capstone for all of these, primarily demonstrates the last point. In the end, he finally acknowledges Aragorn as “my brother…my captain…my king.” Those are his dying words. Boromir’s story is one of redemption.
Silence: Is it Golden?
In Boromir’s case, it’s essential to the story that he say something at the point of his death. The audience sees his faithful defense of Frodo in his last act, but we don’t see that he has overcome his pride and submitted to the king until we hear his final words.
That’s not the case in every story though. Sometimes, the point of the death is simply to serve as a warning. Sometimes it’s to highlight a parallel experience or a deficient character trait in the protagonist. Sometimes it’s to sever the protagonist from a mentor or helper so that he has to face the ultimate battle alone, using the skills that he has [hopefully] built throughout the story.
Notice that in King’s example above, Charlie says nothing. [He says a little in the context of the scene, but the death moment is almost strictly images.] His memories give readers more of a sense of the beauty of his life and the loss of his death than any words would.
In Boromir’s case, words were essential.
Notice that in neither case does the author (or screenwriter) focus on the reaction of the living characters. No excessive sobbing. No melodrama. Why? Because readers don’t feel the weight of the death scene because your character is crying. They feel it [if they do] because they’ve entered into the moment and are experiencing the importance of the event for themselves.
That’s not to say that the protagonist should sit there mute and emotionally unaffected. Unless that’s what you want to say for one reason or another. The protagonist can and usually should react, but the focus generally shouldn’t be on the character’s emotions.
Conclusion
Without telling you anything [yet!], I know how my scene needs to change. I had already tweaked it quite a bit in prior drafts, but something about it still bothered me. And I know what that is now. Why? Because I know what the purpose of the character’s death is and I know what it needs to accomplish in my protagonist.
She needs to come away with the final pieces to the lesson that she’s been learning throughout the story. In this other character’s death, she’ll see the kind of outcome she would suffer if she – like the character who dies – doesn’t take the high road.
Words can be spoken…but don’t need to be. I can show all of this lesson coming together in her mind in the midst of this tragedy simply by showing the protagonist’s memories of her relationship with this character and all that it wasn’t…but should have been. Particularly through the lens of what the character-to-die has done wrong.
This article was tough. It’s a HUGE concept and I came away from studying for and writing it with the sense that I could write an entire book on this subject alone. But I hope this gets your mind working and helps you move forward in your writing journey. Let me know if you’ve written difficult emotional scenes in the past and what method made the event impactful for your readers!
If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends!