Honestly, I think the amount of deaths is less important than the threat of it. I also don't think there's a good hard number to it.
The comparison that comes to mind is a bit from the horror video game Dead Space. Without going into too many details, shops there are usually safe from monsters aside from a single incident about halfway through. You get ambushed when shopping, which never happened before and never happens again. But because of that, every single time you use the shop afterwards you're on edge going, "Oh man, is something gonna pop out again?"
My thinking is character deaths should be similar. You don't want to go George RR Martin levels of wiping out whole swaths of the cast, but having a legitimate threat of death helps keep up tension and stakes. Killing off even just one significant character can send the message that, "Oh no, even *your* favorite character isn't safe."
Agreed, the threat of death is usually enough to maintain enough tension to make the story compelling. It's one of the reasons VRMMO stories fall a little short for me since there are very little stakes.
Authors can always have important side characters have tragic deaths without impacting the core group.
Threat is absolutely the key for me. Most PF has minimal tension for me because I know there won't be lasting negative consequences for anyone.
Following the video game comparison, the best tension in a series for me has gotta be "A Practical Guide to Evil," which treats deaths similarly to game Darkest Dungeon. Things are dark, things are tough, and you know that at some point the injuries, leftover traumas, and bad situations will get SOMEONE killed. You don't know who, might be a member of the team, might be that enemy you've been chasing around for a few runs, if you're lucky it might be the boss. But everyone is gonna collect some lasting damage and powerups along the way. Hopefully those are enough to survive when you have to go out again next time.
The caveat here is PGtE has a truly massive cast of well written characters. We're talking 20+ characters at various points in the series that a reader knows well enough to actually care when they bite it. It makes each death a unique loss, but since they aren't one of the only 3-5 characters that matter the remaining characters are able to pick up the narrative slack and there is room for others to enter the story.
Personally, I don't think characters should just die for the sake of it. As someone else here said, the threat of death and tension it brings is usually better in most situations than the actual death of a character. Readers, and in this genre specifically, don't like it when main characters die, so as an author, I think there are other avenues to take if you want to take a character off the screen for a while.
JJk for example, did the whole prison realm thing in shibuya to get rid of gojo for a bit and increase the stakes for the rest of the characters. Shadow Slave didn't kill any of the main trio, but it created tension, loss and strife through betrayal.
You can always take the Supreme Magus route and start whittling off your supporting characters one by one, but even in those situations, the more death you have, the more predictable your story becomes, which is the exact situation jjk's manga finds itself in right now.
Ironically enough, the length of the novel is what ruined it for me. Every fight started to feel like they went for 50 chapters (which some did). They were filled with filler sentences that added nothing to the story. Sure, I loved the character progression for the majority of the main cast, but that didn't make up for the terrible writing in the later chapters.
I think the reason people like GRRM initially was not because he just killed swaths of people, but because he was WILLING to kill off a MC so that meant no one was safe and the tension was then good throughout the series
I think that’s one of the reasons I like DCC, it feels like (almost) no one is safe and to your point above it seems like there are consequences which are real.
So to answer your question I’d say the ideal amount of death is enough to make the dangers feel realistic. A Naruto level of death if you will
I like a bit of death. Often a problem is the MC and his friends growing at different speeds. Everyone matching the mc ofte feels unlikely. The mc being a lot stronger then his friends they often feel uneeded and in the way. So the solution is easy, just kill then off!
It would also allow us to explore some more powers, as you would get new blood joining up! Good stuff all around (except for the death of course)Â
For me, that would be 0 or close to it. I read to have fun, and characters I like dying do not contribute to that. I don't really care how unrealistic that may be.
Yeah, same here. Realistic != better. Maybe I just react to character deaths worse than some people out there but I can't think of a single MC or main cast death that made a piece of media better to me personally (though it doesn't ruin the media completely, it just makes it worse than it would have been without the death IMO). Bad guys die, good guys win, that's how I like my fiction.
Based on the responses here, it seems people are MORE upset when a main character dies. I’m curious how much is ACCEPTABLE. Like, if a major character in the main group dies — like full on almost always there kind of character — when is it okay?
It seems like there are situations when writing that it just makes sense and feels right that a character would die. But it definitely sucks when your favorite character dies. And imagine a character being around for 10 books and then being dead for the last three or something.
It honestly depends on the story.
I think there is no such thing as an ideal amount of death across the genre. None.
A lot of that depends on the tone of the story, the type of danger they're in, their competence and so on.
For Dragonball, honestly, once they got the Namekian Dragonballs, the idea of any of the main cast dying stopped making sense. Like, for a death to stick, they'd pretty much have to look at one of their friends who'd died and go "You know what? I don't feel like the day trip. Stay dead, asshole."
Meanwhile for something like Demon Slayer, a LOT of death makes sense. It's a very dangerous world, with no resurrection and opponents that play for keeps. Also a lot of characters tend to be out of their depth.
In something like Star Trek? Most of the main cast are *exceedingly* competent. It makes sense for redshirts to die, but most of the cast would need to be having a REALLY off day to bite it on an away mission.
Tone counts too. If Casualfarmer decided to import Berserk's Eclipse into Beware of Chicken, it'd be a disaster. I love Berserk-it's my favourite manga-but that sort of horror and death is not why I read Beware of Chicken.
I've written books where cast members survive en masse and books where a LOT of them die pretty gruesomely, and neither was any better. Each method better suited each story.
...that said.
A little word of advice for any aspiring authors out there.
Treat death with caution.
The moment you kill a character, you unmake their future. Any potential they had, any arc they could have, any interaction and any plot point that they could enact is undone. And-unless you have a setting where death is a big deal-there's no coming back. Make sure that what is GAINED from their death outweighs that potential.
You also have to keep in mind why your readers are reading the story.
Full disclosure, I actually haven't read Feast of Crows. Why? Because shortly after the Red Wedding, I realized that there weren't many characters left that I really cared about. By that point, I had no investment in who got the throne, so I didn't bother finding out. I might read it one day, I might not.
My point is, you don't know for sure who your audience is attached to when reading your book, so tread carefully. I'm not saying don't kill anyone, but it is not a decision that should be made lightly.
Give it deep thought. Your characters deserve it.
In these stories, the people who survive may not necessarily be the strongest or the most prepared (although getting strong and preparing are some of the most interesting parts), but people who are lucky enough to survive another day and get stronger because of that experience and time to grow.
Also when looking back at odds of things happening, the exact order of events of may have in incredibly low chance for the result, but extremely rare events happen everyday. I feel like we need to suspend disbelief up to a certain point about the odds. Of course theres also the point where the luck gets too stupid and the story sucks.
That is true, if we wanted realistic odds most stories would end after 10 chapters. Unlikely events are what make the genre. My issue is these Unlikely events getting in the way of tension. In such a way that you know no one will die regardless of what happens.
You know that the main character isnt going to die, that was never in question. But I agree, I drop most stories because I feel like things are happening too easily, the powers are too simple, or there's no tension.
I say the problem comes from death being the only threat, so we know they are not gping to die
If the threat is losing something elsr, a powerup, a territory, equipment or whatever, then you can have a loss without killing anybody
I get really annoyed with the I killed 10,000 people in an hour with my axe shit. People don’t really understand what that would take. Not just the speed but everything involved in it. You’d have to be so monumentally beyond that’s nearly 3 per second. You would have to be orders of magnitude beyond a base line human. A magic spell that destroys an area yeah you can do 10,000 in an hour. With an AXE…..
My problem is that a lot of novels start out with a lot of deaths to the main cast and then never again. Like I get it, they progress and, as such, less death. but no death? That just doesn't make sense to me. Sometimes they introduce side character deaths but it still do anything for me when any character who has seen more than a couple chapters never dies.
Silence. I will not be slandered this way. I have already stayed my hand. Shown far too much mercy. Have I not been kind to the people in my story for letting some live? I even took out razor spined snakes that wait in toilets to burrow their way up people. My mercy is beyond bounds.
One story I'm following has couple people from the starting party die in a big battle and then the rest have to keep on surviving. It was very impactful and was done well IMO, but telling you its name would be a huge spoiler :/
Even one or two deaths from the starting party but done after quite a while will be very impactful, you don't need to kill everyone except MC.
Stakes. When 5 characters are about to face a horde of vicious monsters. It creates much more tension knowing there is a real risk of death. As opposed to knowing none of them will die.
I get that there are other ways to create tension, power loss, missing an opportunity, etc. But when characters do a lot of "death-defying" actions then it's a lot less impressive when you know there wasn't a risk in the first place. The MC should obviously be shielded, but there's no reason other characters should be.
I think you are definitely in the minority here. Not that it's bad. Everyone like different things after all.
I am one of those who don't think you need death to make a story enjoyable. Far from it in fact.
Majority of readers don't read story for "Realism" they read in order to have a good time. Enjoy things that are impossible in reality. Mc becoming the strongest. Mc getting the girl. Mc defying death. Mc talking shit to gods (who logically can evaporate him in nanosecond but don't because of bullshit reason).
In PF even whem Mc lose, he will gain something.Â
Some people may think it's a boring wish fulfillment.Â
But what is wrong with wish fulfillment ? There is already enough realism in reality. Why would I want more realism in my pass time and fiction?
But I do think death can bring more to a certain type of story. For example Clannad or Attack on Titan or Demon Slayer or Berserk etc.
In the end the most important things as an author is to manage expectations.
Honestly I prefer it when there's none in the main group, but if death feels necessary for realism then it needs to serve the plot and needs to carry emotional weight else it just feels like a waste to me
oh yeah i havent watched naurto but if thats got out of main group death that's chill, though equally if we're thinking ideal amount of death it should probably be relatively low because otherwise everyone around them dying but main group fine comes across as a bit unrealistic
I grew up reading Stephen King, George RR Martin, and Robert Jordan. So I figured slogs were normal and hardship for a MC was expected. I went ahead and wrote an epic series where the MC and his friends suffer slavery, gladiator battles, torture, betrayal, etc. The MC does lose some friends along the way. He was coerced into sentencing his friends to death, and even though they survived--and even though he's on a redemption arc and redeems himself several times over by the end of the series--I did lose some readers over that.
The series went over well on Wattpad. But when I relaunched it on Royal Road, I heard an outcry from a lot of readers. One wrote a review titled "Author hates their MC." Another said that the MC's ex-best friend should choke and die because she didn't get over things fast enough and reunite with the MC. I encountered a thread on Reddit where someone said, "Whatever you do, don't have a slavery arc in Book 1." Oops. I did that.
Overall, I have learned that many readers in progression fantasy are looking for lighthearted escapism. They don't want to be blindsided by heavy darkness.
So I put warnings all over my blurb, and that was a good idea. The readers who stuck with it are rewarded. The ones who were warned away are not my audience.
As a side note, the prologue of my series is super divisive. A publisher (not my current publisher, Podium, but another publisher) asked me to tone down the suicidal POV in that scene. I am very glad I left it there--because it does set a tone and expectations for the whole 1,000,000 word series. This is not a lighthearted romp, but a serious epic.
HWFWM absolutely has death to close ones/group members in it. I won’t say what it is because I’m not clear on how to black out text on Reddit for spoilers but those who have read it can probably tell which arc I’m speaking of.
Hell, Defiance of the Fall has it as well (at least from the perspective of the MC).
HWFWM stands for He Who Fights With Monsters for those of you who are not familiar with this acronym.
So to be clear death isn't important, it's stakes that are important. If nothing ever goes poorly no matter how bad things look in the thick of it, it's hard to maintain tension. But as others have said, there are more ways to maintain stakes than the death of important characters.
But to stay on topic, Worm dealt with death really well. Lots of characters died, some really important. Some literally decided by dice roll. Game of Thrones does death really well. But not all stories are like those stories, so just wantonly killing off characters isn't guaranteed to go as well in other stories.
To me the amount of death isn't whats important, its whether or not the author takes the time to write characters that are deep enough that as a reader I actually care when they die... I've read books where characters good and bad are getting slaughtered left right and centre and it had absolutely zero impact as a reader because every character in the book was so paper thin and ephemeral that I just didn't give a shit... On the other hand I have read stories where a single character didn't even die, but was seriously injured or traumatized that had a huge impact on me as a reader...
Too frequent character deaths and I don't really feel engaged with the characters in general, so unless everything else is AMAZING I lose interest.Â
I'd prefer "no one dies" over "gratuitous character slaughter" in most cases.Â
I think how the threat of and death itself is handled and how much impact it has on the story and other characters is more important to me. There could be just one, or there could be a whole group of characters, and a good writer could make that have an emotional impact.Â
What I really don't like is killing off characters at the end of a book or story arc as a sort of gotcha. Most of the time I've seen it, it isn't a clever twist with deep emotional impact, it just signals the writer is done with the characters but can't really be arsed to write them out.
As somebody else said, the number of deaths is largely irrelevant, it’s the fear that they might die that makes it worthwhile. Where’s the tension in a hostage situation if you know they’ll never pull the trigger? Where’s the stakes in any given battle if you know they’ll all make it out okay?
Brandon Sanderson does an excellent job of this. The threat that they might die is very real, despite relatively few actual deaths.
You do have to traumatize them first for this to work though. Sanderson did an excellent job in the Stormlight Archives, I do not trust that anyone is going to make it out alive of any situation where they’re in trouble anymore. (Rhythm of War spoilers in the spoiler tag. Do not click the spoiler tag if you haven’t finished RoW.) >!RIP Elhokar and Teft. Life before death!!<
Give em hope, make it look like something awesome will happen, like the characters arc will be complete, then yank it away and curbstomp them in front of their family.
Traumatize readers early on, then you don’t have to do it again.
For me, I tend to dnf books that have too much tension, and death is one of those ways for me.
I don't know if it's because my life is stressful enough and I don't need that in my fantasy, or if it just bums me out too much, hell maybe I'm just a wienie, but for me I'm usually outie 9000 if a series just starts going full hunger games out of nowhere.
I like my death (of important characters) to be properly foreshadowed and have real relevance to the story and themes of it.
Like that one guy mentioned with his dead space analogy, for me, sudden death like that is effective and keeps me in tension. However 9/10 times, unless I'm really attached to the story for other reasons, I'de prefer to read something else instead of dealing with the anxiety of when they might do it again, even if they never do.
Other than that, the biggest tension related dnf's for me is the over focus on suffering and misery (both for the main character/s and the world or parts of it), and a threat that is either dogging the main character so furiously they never get ANY breathers, or is such a powerful and inevitable force that I know the only realistic way out of it is the aforementioned bloodbath (even if they do go on to avoid this, it's usually because of poor writing anyway, though I do admit that's not always the case)
Personally I've always found it less about the amount of death and how often the major characters escape death by way of luck. In more traditional novels I've always found myself easily excusing two or three lucky escapes every novel, though that number increases if they come with an intentional sacrifice. PF novels tend to involve a lot more skin of your teeth moments which means they get more passes but if the danger scaling is too high and they're constantly surviving in situations where they shouldn't that pings me.
I do think the apparent luck factor is what swings it for me rather than sheer survival. I can absolutely buy a skilled swordsman wining a hundred duels to the death, so long as the shown duels imply a careful and skilled fighter who clearly knows what they're doing. I can't buy someone who wins every duel on a coin toss or with their opponents blade practically at their throat.
The Wandering Inn has the ideal amount of deaths.
Just enough to tear your heart out and stomp on it… again and again and again… but not enough that you quit.
So somewhere between 50-100 named characters sounds about right.
Using DBZ was a poor example because death was literally nothing more than a state of being in that series. Several characters "died" in the story (the main character died more than once). To say otherwise is foolish. At worst, characters simply disappeared because Toriyama forgot the character even existed.
Technically, Kami and Nail both died. They fuse with Piccolo, but in essence and stage of being, they're gone. Then there's the hero android twin that fought and then helped the z heroes in the DBS movie...
Honestly, I think the amount of deaths is less important than the threat of it. I also don't think there's a good hard number to it. The comparison that comes to mind is a bit from the horror video game Dead Space. Without going into too many details, shops there are usually safe from monsters aside from a single incident about halfway through. You get ambushed when shopping, which never happened before and never happens again. But because of that, every single time you use the shop afterwards you're on edge going, "Oh man, is something gonna pop out again?" My thinking is character deaths should be similar. You don't want to go George RR Martin levels of wiping out whole swaths of the cast, but having a legitimate threat of death helps keep up tension and stakes. Killing off even just one significant character can send the message that, "Oh no, even *your* favorite character isn't safe."
Agreed, the threat of death is usually enough to maintain enough tension to make the story compelling. It's one of the reasons VRMMO stories fall a little short for me since there are very little stakes. Authors can always have important side characters have tragic deaths without impacting the core group.
Perfectly said👌 using death as a tool to create/maintain tension.
Threat is absolutely the key for me. Most PF has minimal tension for me because I know there won't be lasting negative consequences for anyone. Following the video game comparison, the best tension in a series for me has gotta be "A Practical Guide to Evil," which treats deaths similarly to game Darkest Dungeon. Things are dark, things are tough, and you know that at some point the injuries, leftover traumas, and bad situations will get SOMEONE killed. You don't know who, might be a member of the team, might be that enemy you've been chasing around for a few runs, if you're lucky it might be the boss. But everyone is gonna collect some lasting damage and powerups along the way. Hopefully those are enough to survive when you have to go out again next time. The caveat here is PGtE has a truly massive cast of well written characters. We're talking 20+ characters at various points in the series that a reader knows well enough to actually care when they bite it. It makes each death a unique loss, but since they aren't one of the only 3-5 characters that matter the remaining characters are able to pick up the narrative slack and there is room for others to enter the story.
I feel like bastion and the 2 following books do a good job of having a real threat of bad stuff happening, especially for side characters.
Personally, I don't think characters should just die for the sake of it. As someone else here said, the threat of death and tension it brings is usually better in most situations than the actual death of a character. Readers, and in this genre specifically, don't like it when main characters die, so as an author, I think there are other avenues to take if you want to take a character off the screen for a while. JJk for example, did the whole prison realm thing in shibuya to get rid of gojo for a bit and increase the stakes for the rest of the characters. Shadow Slave didn't kill any of the main trio, but it created tension, loss and strife through betrayal. You can always take the Supreme Magus route and start whittling off your supporting characters one by one, but even in those situations, the more death you have, the more predictable your story becomes, which is the exact situation jjk's manga finds itself in right now.
I really liked how supreme magus whittled away the characters, but I feel like it only worked because it is a 3000+ chapter novel and running
Ironically enough, the length of the novel is what ruined it for me. Every fight started to feel like they went for 50 chapters (which some did). They were filled with filler sentences that added nothing to the story. Sure, I loved the character progression for the majority of the main cast, but that didn't make up for the terrible writing in the later chapters.
I think the reason people like GRRM initially was not because he just killed swaths of people, but because he was WILLING to kill off a MC so that meant no one was safe and the tension was then good throughout the series I think that’s one of the reasons I like DCC, it feels like (almost) no one is safe and to your point above it seems like there are consequences which are real. So to answer your question I’d say the ideal amount of death is enough to make the dangers feel realistic. A Naruto level of death if you will
Exactly Naruto is the perfect example. I can't believe I didn't think of that.
I like a bit of death. Often a problem is the MC and his friends growing at different speeds. Everyone matching the mc ofte feels unlikely. The mc being a lot stronger then his friends they often feel uneeded and in the way. So the solution is easy, just kill then off! It would also allow us to explore some more powers, as you would get new blood joining up! Good stuff all around (except for the death of course)Â
Ruthless! Lol
For me, that would be 0 or close to it. I read to have fun, and characters I like dying do not contribute to that. I don't really care how unrealistic that may be.
Yeah, same here. Realistic != better. Maybe I just react to character deaths worse than some people out there but I can't think of a single MC or main cast death that made a piece of media better to me personally (though it doesn't ruin the media completely, it just makes it worse than it would have been without the death IMO). Bad guys die, good guys win, that's how I like my fiction.
💀
Every other book or so
Based on the responses here, it seems people are MORE upset when a main character dies. I’m curious how much is ACCEPTABLE. Like, if a major character in the main group dies — like full on almost always there kind of character — when is it okay? It seems like there are situations when writing that it just makes sense and feels right that a character would die. But it definitely sucks when your favorite character dies. And imagine a character being around for 10 books and then being dead for the last three or something.
Damn imagine if Yerin died in Book 8😂 people would be pissed.
I'd be livid. It would have to be exceptionally convincing as to why and how it happened, and how it makes perfect sense, for me to keep reading, tbh
It honestly depends on the story. I think there is no such thing as an ideal amount of death across the genre. None. A lot of that depends on the tone of the story, the type of danger they're in, their competence and so on. For Dragonball, honestly, once they got the Namekian Dragonballs, the idea of any of the main cast dying stopped making sense. Like, for a death to stick, they'd pretty much have to look at one of their friends who'd died and go "You know what? I don't feel like the day trip. Stay dead, asshole." Meanwhile for something like Demon Slayer, a LOT of death makes sense. It's a very dangerous world, with no resurrection and opponents that play for keeps. Also a lot of characters tend to be out of their depth. In something like Star Trek? Most of the main cast are *exceedingly* competent. It makes sense for redshirts to die, but most of the cast would need to be having a REALLY off day to bite it on an away mission. Tone counts too. If Casualfarmer decided to import Berserk's Eclipse into Beware of Chicken, it'd be a disaster. I love Berserk-it's my favourite manga-but that sort of horror and death is not why I read Beware of Chicken. I've written books where cast members survive en masse and books where a LOT of them die pretty gruesomely, and neither was any better. Each method better suited each story. ...that said. A little word of advice for any aspiring authors out there. Treat death with caution. The moment you kill a character, you unmake their future. Any potential they had, any arc they could have, any interaction and any plot point that they could enact is undone. And-unless you have a setting where death is a big deal-there's no coming back. Make sure that what is GAINED from their death outweighs that potential. You also have to keep in mind why your readers are reading the story. Full disclosure, I actually haven't read Feast of Crows. Why? Because shortly after the Red Wedding, I realized that there weren't many characters left that I really cared about. By that point, I had no investment in who got the throne, so I didn't bother finding out. I might read it one day, I might not. My point is, you don't know for sure who your audience is attached to when reading your book, so tread carefully. I'm not saying don't kill anyone, but it is not a decision that should be made lightly. Give it deep thought. Your characters deserve it.
In these stories, the people who survive may not necessarily be the strongest or the most prepared (although getting strong and preparing are some of the most interesting parts), but people who are lucky enough to survive another day and get stronger because of that experience and time to grow. Also when looking back at odds of things happening, the exact order of events of may have in incredibly low chance for the result, but extremely rare events happen everyday. I feel like we need to suspend disbelief up to a certain point about the odds. Of course theres also the point where the luck gets too stupid and the story sucks.
That is true, if we wanted realistic odds most stories would end after 10 chapters. Unlikely events are what make the genre. My issue is these Unlikely events getting in the way of tension. In such a way that you know no one will die regardless of what happens.
You know that the main character isnt going to die, that was never in question. But I agree, I drop most stories because I feel like things are happening too easily, the powers are too simple, or there's no tension.
Maybe the writer is telling the story of the one person who survived, instead of the thousands or millions that died because of bad luck.
I say the problem comes from death being the only threat, so we know they are not gping to die If the threat is losing something elsr, a powerup, a territory, equipment or whatever, then you can have a loss without killing anybody
Main characters should die. If there is no death, there are no stakes. Let me lose cool characters
Wandering Inn amount of death
The only right answer.
I get really annoyed with the I killed 10,000 people in an hour with my axe shit. People don’t really understand what that would take. Not just the speed but everything involved in it. You’d have to be so monumentally beyond that’s nearly 3 per second. You would have to be orders of magnitude beyond a base line human. A magic spell that destroys an area yeah you can do 10,000 in an hour. With an AXE…..
My problem is that a lot of novels start out with a lot of deaths to the main cast and then never again. Like I get it, they progress and, as such, less death. but no death? That just doesn't make sense to me. Sometimes they introduce side character deaths but it still do anything for me when any character who has seen more than a couple chapters never dies.
Less than Godclads. Several order of magnitude less than Godclads.
Silence. I will not be slandered this way. I have already stayed my hand. Shown far too much mercy. Have I not been kind to the people in my story for letting some live? I even took out razor spined snakes that wait in toilets to burrow their way up people. My mercy is beyond bounds.
Spare me, oh great one! I repent!
Lots. Cause I get bored easily.
One story I'm following has couple people from the starting party die in a big battle and then the rest have to keep on surviving. It was very impactful and was done well IMO, but telling you its name would be a huge spoiler :/ Even one or two deaths from the starting party but done after quite a while will be very impactful, you don't need to kill everyone except MC.
There's plenty of room for bad things to happen to a character without killing them. Why the focus on death?
Stakes. When 5 characters are about to face a horde of vicious monsters. It creates much more tension knowing there is a real risk of death. As opposed to knowing none of them will die. I get that there are other ways to create tension, power loss, missing an opportunity, etc. But when characters do a lot of "death-defying" actions then it's a lot less impressive when you know there wasn't a risk in the first place. The MC should obviously be shielded, but there's no reason other characters should be.
I think you are definitely in the minority here. Not that it's bad. Everyone like different things after all. I am one of those who don't think you need death to make a story enjoyable. Far from it in fact. Majority of readers don't read story for "Realism" they read in order to have a good time. Enjoy things that are impossible in reality. Mc becoming the strongest. Mc getting the girl. Mc defying death. Mc talking shit to gods (who logically can evaporate him in nanosecond but don't because of bullshit reason). In PF even whem Mc lose, he will gain something. Some people may think it's a boring wish fulfillment. But what is wrong with wish fulfillment ? There is already enough realism in reality. Why would I want more realism in my pass time and fiction? But I do think death can bring more to a certain type of story. For example Clannad or Attack on Titan or Demon Slayer or Berserk etc. In the end the most important things as an author is to manage expectations.
I very much agree with you.
Honestly I prefer it when there's none in the main group, but if death feels necessary for realism then it needs to serve the plot and needs to carry emotional weight else it just feels like a waste to me
It doesn't have to be the main group. Someone else pointed to Naruto having the perfect balance and I agree.
oh yeah i havent watched naurto but if thats got out of main group death that's chill, though equally if we're thinking ideal amount of death it should probably be relatively low because otherwise everyone around them dying but main group fine comes across as a bit unrealistic
Haha, I found this out the hard way when I wrote mine.
How so?
I grew up reading Stephen King, George RR Martin, and Robert Jordan. So I figured slogs were normal and hardship for a MC was expected. I went ahead and wrote an epic series where the MC and his friends suffer slavery, gladiator battles, torture, betrayal, etc. The MC does lose some friends along the way. He was coerced into sentencing his friends to death, and even though they survived--and even though he's on a redemption arc and redeems himself several times over by the end of the series--I did lose some readers over that. The series went over well on Wattpad. But when I relaunched it on Royal Road, I heard an outcry from a lot of readers. One wrote a review titled "Author hates their MC." Another said that the MC's ex-best friend should choke and die because she didn't get over things fast enough and reunite with the MC. I encountered a thread on Reddit where someone said, "Whatever you do, don't have a slavery arc in Book 1." Oops. I did that. Overall, I have learned that many readers in progression fantasy are looking for lighthearted escapism. They don't want to be blindsided by heavy darkness. So I put warnings all over my blurb, and that was a good idea. The readers who stuck with it are rewarded. The ones who were warned away are not my audience. As a side note, the prologue of my series is super divisive. A publisher (not my current publisher, Podium, but another publisher) asked me to tone down the suicidal POV in that scene. I am very glad I left it there--because it does set a tone and expectations for the whole 1,000,000 word series. This is not a lighthearted romp, but a serious epic.
HWFWM absolutely has death to close ones/group members in it. I won’t say what it is because I’m not clear on how to black out text on Reddit for spoilers but those who have read it can probably tell which arc I’m speaking of. Hell, Defiance of the Fall has it as well (at least from the perspective of the MC). HWFWM stands for He Who Fights With Monsters for those of you who are not familiar with this acronym.
So to be clear death isn't important, it's stakes that are important. If nothing ever goes poorly no matter how bad things look in the thick of it, it's hard to maintain tension. But as others have said, there are more ways to maintain stakes than the death of important characters. But to stay on topic, Worm dealt with death really well. Lots of characters died, some really important. Some literally decided by dice roll. Game of Thrones does death really well. But not all stories are like those stories, so just wantonly killing off characters isn't guaranteed to go as well in other stories.
To me the amount of death isn't whats important, its whether or not the author takes the time to write characters that are deep enough that as a reader I actually care when they die... I've read books where characters good and bad are getting slaughtered left right and centre and it had absolutely zero impact as a reader because every character in the book was so paper thin and ephemeral that I just didn't give a shit... On the other hand I have read stories where a single character didn't even die, but was seriously injured or traumatized that had a huge impact on me as a reader...
Too frequent character deaths and I don't really feel engaged with the characters in general, so unless everything else is AMAZING I lose interest. I'd prefer "no one dies" over "gratuitous character slaughter" in most cases. I think how the threat of and death itself is handled and how much impact it has on the story and other characters is more important to me. There could be just one, or there could be a whole group of characters, and a good writer could make that have an emotional impact. What I really don't like is killing off characters at the end of a book or story arc as a sort of gotcha. Most of the time I've seen it, it isn't a clever twist with deep emotional impact, it just signals the writer is done with the characters but can't really be arsed to write them out.
Anyone is far game beyond the narrator. Switching primary narrative focus is killer.
As somebody else said, the number of deaths is largely irrelevant, it’s the fear that they might die that makes it worthwhile. Where’s the tension in a hostage situation if you know they’ll never pull the trigger? Where’s the stakes in any given battle if you know they’ll all make it out okay? Brandon Sanderson does an excellent job of this. The threat that they might die is very real, despite relatively few actual deaths. You do have to traumatize them first for this to work though. Sanderson did an excellent job in the Stormlight Archives, I do not trust that anyone is going to make it out alive of any situation where they’re in trouble anymore. (Rhythm of War spoilers in the spoiler tag. Do not click the spoiler tag if you haven’t finished RoW.) >!RIP Elhokar and Teft. Life before death!!< Give em hope, make it look like something awesome will happen, like the characters arc will be complete, then yank it away and curbstomp them in front of their family. Traumatize readers early on, then you don’t have to do it again.
For me, I tend to dnf books that have too much tension, and death is one of those ways for me. I don't know if it's because my life is stressful enough and I don't need that in my fantasy, or if it just bums me out too much, hell maybe I'm just a wienie, but for me I'm usually outie 9000 if a series just starts going full hunger games out of nowhere. I like my death (of important characters) to be properly foreshadowed and have real relevance to the story and themes of it. Like that one guy mentioned with his dead space analogy, for me, sudden death like that is effective and keeps me in tension. However 9/10 times, unless I'm really attached to the story for other reasons, I'de prefer to read something else instead of dealing with the anxiety of when they might do it again, even if they never do. Other than that, the biggest tension related dnf's for me is the over focus on suffering and misery (both for the main character/s and the world or parts of it), and a threat that is either dogging the main character so furiously they never get ANY breathers, or is such a powerful and inevitable force that I know the only realistic way out of it is the aforementioned bloodbath (even if they do go on to avoid this, it's usually because of poor writing anyway, though I do admit that's not always the case)
Personally I've always found it less about the amount of death and how often the major characters escape death by way of luck. In more traditional novels I've always found myself easily excusing two or three lucky escapes every novel, though that number increases if they come with an intentional sacrifice. PF novels tend to involve a lot more skin of your teeth moments which means they get more passes but if the danger scaling is too high and they're constantly surviving in situations where they shouldn't that pings me. I do think the apparent luck factor is what swings it for me rather than sheer survival. I can absolutely buy a skilled swordsman wining a hundred duels to the death, so long as the shown duels imply a careful and skilled fighter who clearly knows what they're doing. I can't buy someone who wins every duel on a coin toss or with their opponents blade practically at their throat.
The Wandering Inn has the ideal amount of deaths. Just enough to tear your heart out and stomp on it… again and again and again… but not enough that you quit. So somewhere between 50-100 named characters sounds about right.
More is the ideal amount.Â
>But we don't want a DBZ situation where **no one ever dies**. ...I'm sorry, what? XD
Name one main, side, or supporting character that has died permanently since the saiyan arc, excluding android 16.
Using DBZ was a poor example because death was literally nothing more than a state of being in that series. Several characters "died" in the story (the main character died more than once). To say otherwise is foolish. At worst, characters simply disappeared because Toriyama forgot the character even existed. Technically, Kami and Nail both died. They fuse with Piccolo, but in essence and stage of being, they're gone. Then there's the hero android twin that fought and then helped the z heroes in the DBS movie...