# To Kill or Not to Kill ...



## BWFoster78 (Nov 16, 2015)

I wanted to ratchet up the stakes, so I decided to kill off a fairly major character.  One of my developmental editors said this:



> Killing your characters always needs proper timing. It’s too early or too late to kill Amber Starr. We have no strong emotional attachment to this character. Her death doesn’t cause strong emotions and it doesn’t impress the readers. Just put her in coma, it’s the best what could be done.



This comes a little over a third of the way through the book.  Other characters who are named but not seen "on screen" will be killed off later.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

Brian


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## Russ (Nov 16, 2015)

BWFoster78 said:


> I wanted to ratchet up the stakes, so I decided to kill off a fairly major character.  One of my developmental editors said this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Without reading the book it is hard to say.  However I will say that I think comas are a poor device most of the time.


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## Miskatonic (Nov 16, 2015)

I guess I could start off by asking whether or not you agree with this statement.

It seems like the editor doesn't think the character is major enough to warrant killing off.


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## Ban (Nov 16, 2015)

I think the best way  to find out is to have someone read your story. If they cared enough about the character to state the emotional impact the death scene had on them, then the timing is correct.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 16, 2015)

Miskatonic said:


> I guess I could start off by asking whether or not you agree with this statement.
> 
> It seems like the editor doesn't think the character is major enough to warrant killing off.



It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.

I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 16, 2015)

Miskatonic said:


> I guess I could start off by asking whether or not you agree with this statement.
> 
> It seems like the editor doesn't think the character is major enough to warrant killing off.



It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.

I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.


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## Miskatonic (Nov 16, 2015)

BWFoster78 said:


> It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.
> 
> I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.



Makes sense. Their response seems to be more general guideline advice, at least from what was written. 

Maybe the death can be memorable in how spectacular it is, or something like that. Not only does the person die but the method by which they die reveals something else about another character that increases the danger for other characters.

You see people dying in a lot of scenarios simply to show how powerful the person was that killed them.


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## FifthView (Nov 16, 2015)

BWFoster78 said:


> It's a third of the way through the book, and the character has only appeared in about a quarter of the scenes thus far, and only one as the primary focus other than the protagonist.
> 
> I don't think that there's going to be a major emotional impact to killing her. The point was to raise the stakes and show that people can die.



So functionally she's a redshirt?


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## Steerpike (Nov 16, 2015)

I don't think that's a problem, personally, though I prefer it when the death means something. It could be written in a way that has emotional impact to the reader, in terms of her sacrifice, even if there hasn't been much emotional connection thus far.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 16, 2015)

FifthView said:


> So functionally she's a redshirt?



Pretty much.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 16, 2015)

Steerpike said:


> I don't think that's a problem, personally, though I prefer it when the death means something. It could be written in a way that has emotional impact to the reader, in terms of her sacrifice, even if there hasn't been much emotional connection thus far.



Given the scene in question, I'm not sure how to do that.

I'm starting to lean toward having her live, but be out of the action for the rest of the book.


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## FifthView (Nov 16, 2015)

The problem with a redshirt character is that the death is used to show the dangerousness of a situation but if the character is a cardboard cutout or stock character, the danger is minimized or at least doesn't feel personal or particularly significant.

It's about _stakes_.  If your main protagonist had a stake in that character's continuing presence, then the death would be more meaningful and the danger seem more real.


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## Ban (Nov 16, 2015)

As long as this is consistent with the rest of the book, you should go for it. Killing off a major character like this can work really well to set a nihilistic theme in your book.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 16, 2015)

Ok, this is going to be long and I apologize in advance. 

First I'm going to start with a quote: 

"As your characters walk onto the stage in the First Act, they should bring the stakes right along with them. What they _care_ about - and the antagonistic forces that _threaten_ what they care about - must be shown (or, at the very least, hinted at) in order to properly foreshadow the deepening conflicts. 

Later in the story, you're going to have to think about the worst possible thing that could happen to your character - and then make it worse. Whatever that "worst" thing ends up being, you need to set it up in the First Act. If your character's daughter is going to be kidnapped, the First Act is the place to show readers how much she means to him. You can't up the stakes later on without something first being _at_ stake." (K.M. Weiland, Structuring Your Novel Workbook) 

"*ENTERTAINMENT IS ABOUT EMOTION*.  As writers of stories, our mission is not so much to engage people's minds by presenting them with things which are interesting.  Our primary job is to stimulate them to feel something - and that's what they pay us to do.  At the end of the day, we all want to be uplifted into states of greater joy, greater passion, and greater aliveness.  We want to feel part of something we care about, relate to and feel connected with, and through that, to experience big emotions that will provide a release and escape. 

Along the way, if we are intellectually engaged and informed, that's great - but it's a side benefit.  It's not the main event.  I learned this writing for the HBO miniseries FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON - a project that originated with Tom Hanks' personal fascination with both the big achievement and the specific details of the American space program.  It came on the heels of the successful movie APOLLO 13, which took the most viscerally emotionally compelling story within that program, and turned it into a wildly entertaining movie.

But the other missions didn't have those kind of big, obvious emotional elements.  The underlying life-and-death stakes they contained usually didn't amount to real tension that could sustain a story.  They did, however, have unique details and problems differentiating them from each other, and that's where we started in turning them into one-hour scripts.  But because things didn't tend to "go wrong" in the kind of coherent and compelling fashion like they did on Apollo 13, it was sometimes a struggle to find a way to make an audience FEEL something.  I didn't initially understand the importance of this, and set about trying to communicate the most interesting details of these missions, only to be pushed by the producer who mentored me through the project to look for and mine the emotional content, as my first priority.

What was driven home for me was that we all look to movies, television, books and other art forms primarily to have an emotional experience - to be transported through story into feeling something powerful.  We may want to be interested and informed as well, but what really drives and motivates us is about emotion.  When you can deliver a compelling emotional experience that lifts people out of normal life in some way, yet feels real, then you're really onto something that can both advance your career, and be of real value to readers and audiences. " Erik Bork's 10 Key Principles Successful Writers Understand. 

Ok. So with that said, obviously I agree with your editor. And here are _my_ reasons why. 

- Killing off a 'mostly' unknown character does not raise the stakes. Yes, it makes the bad guy look 'bad' but even then it is marginal at best. Think about it. There are murderers in the news all the time. I do not feel compelled to search them out and exact revenge. Why? Because I don't know the people who are being murdered. I have no emotional attachment to them. Sure the guy is 'bad' as in 'media bad'… but do I have a strong visceral reaction to him? No. Now, on the other side, if a murderer were to hurt my child, my sister, my husband, or even a co-worker, then it is personal. Then I care. Then I'm more likely to want to hurt them back. So point #1 *In order for a death to raise the stakes it MUST be personal to the MC. *

Example: MI3. At the beginning of MI3 Ethan Hunt learns that another agent has been captured. We have not seen this agent before. We don't know who she is or have any personal connection to her. The writers of the movie knew that in order for us to care, Hunt had to care. So they make sure to make it personal for him. He was her trainer, but not only that, she was the best agent he had ever trained. He had a personal relationship with her that went beyond any other agent he had trained. She was special. It is only because of the _personal_ relationship that the stakes are raised. That he is forced to care and act. 

- Killing has a sort of finality to it. The person is dead, so what is the point? However, if they are captured, or kidnapped, then there is hope. There is still a reason to act beyond just 'revenge'. That raises the stakes. How are they going to get them back? Give it a timeline… again, like in MI3, Ethan has 48 hours to find the Rabbit's foot before his fiancÃ© is murdered. If they had simply murdered the fiancÃ© to begin with then Ethan would not have been motivated to do anything at all. It would have had the opposite effect. The stakes would have been over. 

- Using MI3 again… killing off a mostly unknown could have the opposite effect of what you want to achieve. MI3 again… Ethan is captured. They have Julie (his fiancÃ©) tied up and gagged. He has to the count of 10 to tell the bad guy where the Rabbit's foot is. Ethan tries begging, pleading, helping, swearing, threatening, everything. Finally they shoot Julie… only for Ethan to find out that it wasn't Julie at all. It was a mostly unknown character wearing a mask. What does the audience feel? Relief. Are they going "Oh, what a bad guy that bad guy is! I hope Ethan destroys him!" ? A little bit, perhaps, but they are mostly feeling relief. There is zero emotional response for the dead girl because we barely knew her. If anything, her death raises the stakes in the fact that now we know that Julie is still alive, and so again, Ethan is motivated to escape to try to find her. If she had been really killed, would he have been motivated to escape? So you have to be very careful about who you are killing, and why, and what response you are getting from your reader. 

- If you are arbitrarily killing off small characters to up the stakes then you don't have enough inherent conflict in the story. Mine the inherent conflict. Use it. Make it bigger, more important. 

I'm going to use this quote again, from an earlier post: 

"Young authors are often encouraged to begin with action. The theory is that if you throw an obvious protagonist into a harrowing situation, the reader will love him just because he’s in trouble. Not so. Someone in trouble may elicit a sympathetic response from me on a surface level. But to make me really concerned about what happens to this person, I first have to care about him.

Let’s say we pick up a story that begins in the middle of a fistfight. Probably we will be at least marginally interested in what the fight is about. But we aren’t going to particularly care who wins the fight unless we care about one of the contestants. Beginning the story with a fistfight is definitely a good idea (as opposed to, say, opening with the protagonist warming up before the fight), but unless you throw in a reason to make the reader care, you’re probably sunk." Weiland. 

This was the one criticism I had about the first chapter of your book, when you posted it in the Showcase. You got to "Hailey might die!" but we, as the reader, had no emotional connection yet to Hailey. The response, instead of "oh crap!" is mostly "So what?" Why should we care? We haven't yet seen why Hailey matters. Why she is important to the MC. Why he is risking his life to save her. So the entire scene falls flat. 

MI6 again: The opening scene is a dangerous one, yes, but we see the sadness in Ethan and Julia's eyes. The fear. Ethan speaks calm word to her. Promises her it is going to be Ok. We are shown their love and their compassion. In the next scene we are brought to their engagement party. We see the small talk and the kissing and the sneaking little romantic moments together. We learn that Ethan gave up being an agent to be a trainer so that he could settle down. He gave up his life for her. The writers built up the relationship FIRST so that they could raise the stakes later. 

Again, if you are going to raise the stakes then something must first be _at _ stake. Killing off a mostly unknown does not raise the stakes.


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## Penpilot (Nov 16, 2015)

There are many ways to raise the stakes. Part of it depends on the type of story you're telling. From my observations, two things get thrown out as raising the stakes quite often, sometimes too often and for the wrong reasons. The first is the fate of the world is suddenly at stake, and the second is killing off of a character.

Neither is a bad choice on its own, but IMHO these are things that should be thought out and set up long in advance, so they have impact, and as Helio said, personal and emotional impact to your MCs.

There are many different ways outside of a death that can raise the stakes. They don't always have to be literally earth shattering and deadly. They just have to feel that way to your MCs. Their world's can figuratively shatter and death can be a figurative death.

An Olympic sprinter spraining their ankle the night before their event can be emotionally earth shattering because it's the death of a dream and a death of years of hard work.

A child getting laryngitis and losing their voice before the big recital can be earth shattering because it's their terminally grandmother's last chance to see them sing.

Your character may be a redshirt, but to the MC, they shouldn't be, and the audience shouldn't see them that way either. Because when I see a redshirt die in Trek, I don't go "Oh my, the stakes are raised." I laugh my ass off because it's so transparent, and I know that the MCs won't die.

With that said, that doesn't mean the MCs can't be emotionally hurt and have their souls figuratively beaten to within an inch of their existence. That option is something the audience can't guard against by knowing that the MC can't die.


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## Miskatonic (Nov 16, 2015)

The scene in Aliens where the xenomorph bursts its way through the chest cavity of the female colonist that is all cocooned up and begging them to kill her, is a great use of a minor character that reveals something extremely important to the plot. 

Though we forget about her for the most part in a few minutes, what took place is one of the central plot points for the entire movie.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 16, 2015)

> Your character may be a redshirt, but to the MC, they shouldn't be, and the audience shouldn't see them that way either.



I think that my underlying problem is that, with the character only appearing in a few scenes so far, I don't have enough story space for a deep bond to be formed.  Though she's represented as my MC's only friend in his new world, that friendship, I think, is too short-lived for a deep, deep impact.

I also worry that the death will make the story darker than I'd like.

Thus, I think the editor is correct in this case; I should have the character be severely hurt and not killed.

Thanks for all the advice!

Brian


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## Miskatonic (Nov 16, 2015)

A person could always lose are severely injure a limb that would make them more of a burden to the MC, but also help to show the MC's level of compassion towards them, especially if they live in a world where something like this could mean the difference between life and death.


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## Penpilot (Nov 16, 2015)

BWFoster78 said:


> I think that my underlying problem is that, with the character only appearing in a few scenes so far, I don't have enough story space for a deep bond to be formed.  Though she's represented as my MC's only friend in his new world, that friendship, I think, is too short-lived for a deep, deep impact.



It's not the qantity of screen time that determines connection. It's the quality of it. If your redshirt shines in the time they have people will connect with them and want more. And will be hit hard when that's taken away. It's like those rock stars passing away at 27. 

For example. In Star Wars, Biggs Darklighter. Given this character is only in extended scenes, but I think it serves as a solid example. He only shows up in like three scenes. At the beginning where he says he's going to run off to join the rebellion. In the hanger before the x-wings take off for their trench run. And finally when he dies during that trench run. Probably a minute of screen time. But to me when he dies, I feel something. 

To me it's the same as quickly establishing a connection between reader and MC. You just do it with a redshirt. You make them real and the relationship real. Obviously it's not the same a the death of a character that's been on screen much more but it still can work.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 16, 2015)

> But to me when he dies, I feel something.



I don't. I barely remember the guy.



> It's not the qantity of screen time that determines connection. It's the quality of it.



This sounds good in theory, but in practice, I think screen time is important.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 16, 2015)

I agree with Penpilot. 

The girl in the red coat in Schindler's list is another example…. We don't even know her, or her name, or her history. Her significance to _us_ is that she means something to Schindler. She represents something to him… be it innocence, or vulnerability, or the culmination of the ridiculous waste of genocide… she is important to him. He sees her in one scene and she stands out to him. She matters. 

In the next scene we see her and she is dead. A simple red coat on a pile of bodies. This moment is HUGE both for the viewer and for Schindler. 

What matters is not how often we see a character, but that the moments that we do see them matter to the POV, and we understand the raw power behind what he/she is feeling.

Another example is Up, we see Ellie for the first 5 minutes of the film. Then she dies. But it matters. 

Another example is The Amazing Spider Man. In the opening scene Peter Parker is playing hide and seek with his dad. We don't ever see the dad, other then in photos. But we get the sense that his dad is important to him. He loves his dad. His dad matters to him, so he matters to the audience. The dad dies. We care for Peter. It is sad.


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## FifthView (Nov 16, 2015)

I don't think MCs need to be particularly emotionally attached to another character to make the death significant, just that the dying character's continued presence should be important to the MC in _some_ way.

For instance, the dying character may have discovered the answer to a mystery that the MC has great need to unravel.  The MC is informed of this, rushes to meet up with that character, but arrives only in time to see that character shredded by some powerful villain.  Or similarly, perhaps she is a master of some martial art, has key knowledge of how to use that art, and the MC needs that knowledge–but she dies before he gets it.

Also, if the dying character is made very sympathetic in ways that don't require a deep bond between herself and the MC, the death can still be made significant to the reader even if it's not particularly significant to the MC.  Or perhaps the emotional bond is between that character and some other character who is important to the MC; her death will affect the MC's partner, say, and cause problems for their work together.

Miskatonic mentioned earlier making the death particularly spectacular in some way.  Perhaps the method of death might itself trigger something in the MC, something more significant than whatever limited bond he has with the dying character.  This reminds me a little of Sandor Clegane in the Battle of the Blackwater:  all that wildfire paired up with his memory of being burned by his brother.  Those nameless "redshirts" dying all over the battlefield were incidental, but the manner of their deaths ripped right through him.

I think you could approach such a death in multiple ways without having to first establish a strong emotional bond between the MC and the redshirt.

Part of the problem with your character may be in the way you have actually developed her, seeming to promise more by her presence prior to her death than you ever intended.  In Star Trek, many of the redshirts never had lines or any significant interaction with the main characters.  But introducing a character, giving her a seeming non-redshirt role, and then suddenly killing her off before fleshing out her significance to the MC and/or to the plot was like breaking a promise to the reader–at the very least, leaving her role seemingly inadequately developed.


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## Incanus (Nov 16, 2015)

I don't mean to be snarky or anything.  Honestly.  But I would cease working with anyone on the spot for suggesting one of my characters go into a coma.  That's got to be one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long while.  Isn't that one old even on daytime soaps?


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## FifthView (Nov 16, 2015)

Incanus said:


> I don't mean to be snarky or anything.  Honestly.  But I would cease working with anyone on the spot for suggesting one of my characters go into a coma.  That's got to be one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long while.  Isn't that one old even on daytime soaps?



I think it's far more effective to leave a person struggling for life, but in and out of consciousness, than to dump them in a coma.  This provides so many opportunities for the other characters to visit the sick bed and see the injuries, hear the moans, for snatches of lucidity and interaction with the dying person, for secrets mumbled while in delirium, and so forth!


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## ThinkerX (Nov 16, 2015)

Hmmm...Killing characters off...

Labyrinth: Apart from the prologue/epilogue, all of Labyrinth is from a single POV.  Two characters somewhat close to the MC/POV character get offed in a messy fashion mid book. The way things were trending, well, people had to die.  Took a fair bit of skull work to justify the survival of the MC and a couple others.

Empire: Country:  People dying is part of what prompted me to write this story.  I got tired of reading stories where the hero comes across a corpse strewn town, or see's people he/she knows getting killed, then just gets over it, and a few chapters later it may as well have not happened.  In Empire: Country, I created a couple of small towns the MC's interact with throughout the first 80% of the book. Lots of secondary characters.  Some good, some bad, most developed a notch or three beyond 'name and profession.'  Almost all of them die.  The main characters almost die, and their survival is about one notch from 'fluke.'  Surviving that event haunts the main characters for a long while afterward; the massacres aftermath drives a big part of the plot for the rest of the series.


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## Amanita (Nov 17, 2015)

Another thought: Reading about a female character who dies simply to serve as motivation for the (male) main character and to get the readers' sympathies happens way too frequently. And finding out that this was her designed fate all along would be extremey disappointing for readers putting their hope in the potentially interesting female character.
I don't think this can never be done well, nothing can't but if you're already unsure about this scene it might be something else to consider. Depends on the number and importance of other female character you have as well of course.


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## Miskatonic (Nov 17, 2015)

Incanus said:


> I don't mean to be snarky or anything.  Honestly.  But I would cease working with anyone on the spot for suggesting one of my characters go into a coma.  That's got to be one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long while.  Isn't that one old even on daytime soaps?



The "when in doubt put em' in a coma" approach? lol.


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## ThinkerX (Nov 17, 2015)

Suggestion for Brian:

If the goal is to keep the character 'off stage' for a while, may I not suggest some sort of forcible outside intervention?  Aka powerful heroes/villains from 'out of town' step in and abscond with the person in question.  People powerful enough to where even this character thinks twice before saying 'no.'  

Might be a way to expand your world for the next book.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 17, 2015)

Incanus said:


> I don't mean to be snarky or anything.  Honestly.  But I would cease working with anyone on the spot for suggesting one of my characters go into a coma.  That's got to be one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long while.  Isn't that one old even on daytime soaps?



Really? You'd stop working with someone who offers up a lot of good, valuable comments because you don't like one suggestion?

Just curious, do you have a lot of experience finding people to edit your work?

In my experience, finding people who are affordable and who give good feedback is not an easy thing.  There are far more people in this world who think they can give good developmental comments than those who can give good developmental comments. 

If I agreed with everything this particular editor said, I obviously wouldn't have felt the need to make this post, but to say that I should stop working with him ignores the fact that a) a lot of what he says is spot on and b) that's much better than I get from a lot of so called editors out there. For the money, this guy is fantastic!


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## Heliotrope (Nov 17, 2015)

I remember a certain bran stark who spent a considerable amount of time in a coma, but he had some valuable information and the coma did help raise the tension.... Maybe Martin's experience as a tv writer in the 90's?


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 17, 2015)

Heliotrope said:


> I remember a certain bran stark who spent a considerable amount of time in a coma, but he had some valuable information and the coma did help raise the tension.... Maybe Martin's experience as a tv writer in the 90's?



Personally, I didn't take the comment "just put her in a coma" literally as much as I interpreted it as a guy who natively speaks Russian telling me to have her be kept out of the picture due to medical reasons.  My plan is to leave it more as, "She's in ICU battling for her life. The docs just don't know ..."


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## FifthView (Nov 17, 2015)

Beta readers in particular are best for pointing out problems—but not for offering advice on how to fix those problems.  Fixing the problems is the author's job.

Editors can add that extra layer.  However, sometimes suggestions are broad examples of a type of fix that might work, not intended to be taken as an exact suggestion—although the wording in the OP does seem to be a very specific suggestion in this case.  Even so, the targeting of a problem seems more important to me than any suggested fixes; the fixes must be more carefully weighed.

Forum commenters are neither beta readers nor editors of the work.  Too often we are given a snippet out of context, so it's hard to know the exact dimensions of a potential problem or whether it is truly a problem within the whole text.  So we are often reduced to offering generalities, absolutes informed by principles, and so forth—or at least, our predicament leads us to word our suggestions in those ways.

[Edit: was writing the above when Brian commented; didn't see his reply to Heliotrope which fits somewhat with part of mine.  )


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## Heliotrope (Nov 17, 2015)

I was more responding to the idea of comas being soap opera material. I was more joking then anything. I guess it came across wrong. Sorry.

Because Martin was a writer for the Beauty and the Beast tv series in 1987?


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## FifthView (Nov 17, 2015)

I think Bran's coma played a larger role than merely getting him off-stage or highlighting the dangerousness of the milieu.  Highlighting the dangerous milieu did play a part...but there was that secret that the reader thought he possessed:  Who did it?  This could be revealed _at any time_.  Plus, was he fully comatose?  It's been so long since I read the book, so I'm only going by the HBO show, but I thought that Bran also began to warg while in the coma.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 17, 2015)

FifthView said:


> I think Bran's coma played a larger role than merely getting him off-stage or highlighting the dangerousness of the milieu.  Highlighting the dangerous milieu did play a part...but there was that secret that the reader thought he possessed:  Who did it?  This could be revealed _at any time_.  Plus, was he fully comatose?  It's been so long since I read the book, so I'm only going by the HBO show, but I thought that Bran also began to warg while in the coma.



Yeah. It was a bigger deal. He had a secret that couldn't be figured out until the end (that was the ENTIRE first book was that the children were not the KIng's but Jamie Lannisters. And yes, he did start to warg in his coma). Icanus just made the comment that coma's were used in the 80's and 90's all the time in soap opera's, and so I was taking a jab at Martin because hew was a TV writer at that time. That is all. 

Carry on. Disregard.


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## Demesnedenoir (Nov 17, 2015)

Without having read the book... here are the problems I see.

First: The editor may be right for the wrong reasons. A character can make an attachment to the reader plenty fast and be "worth" killing quickly. I once had a character in a prologue appear to die, and readers always commented how happy they were to see that they lived, which means they made a connection to care either way.

Second: Your motivation for killing the character is a bit thin as stated, "I wanted to ratchet up the stakes". If the character's death is no more than that, then really, it means nothing. The death of a "fairly major character", however that is defined, should mean something to the story, and if not, then dying is rather pointless. 

If you are convinced that the character needs to die, go back and write to make that connection with the reader, and then it make more important than just raising the stakes, for in reality, without it being meaningful it doesn't ratchet up anything anyhow.

That's my quick take.


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## Incanus (Nov 17, 2015)

BWFoster78 said:


> Really? You'd stop working with someone who offers up a lot of good, valuable comments because you don't like one suggestion?
> 
> Just curious, do you have a lot of experience finding people to edit your work?



If I knew that an editor had such proclivities beforehand, I'd absolutely pass them over without a second thought.  If I'd worked with them a bit, a nice big red flag would be waving in my mind.  Of course this is all theoretical, context is everything, and I'm not normally given to speak in absolutes.  But I could certainly see some instances where I'd toss out the baby with the bathwater.  For me, this kind of suggestion is radically at odds with where I intend to go with my stories.

Currently, I have no experience finding editors.  If my progress keeps going as it has, I'll be looking for editors in about a year or two.


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## BWFoster78 (Nov 17, 2015)

> Currently, I have no experience finding editors. If my progress keeps going as it has, I'll be looking for editors in about a year or two.



What I've found is that copy editors are a dime a dozen.  Not hard at all to find competent ones.

Developmental editors on the other hand ... Let's just say that I plan to hold on to every one I find that can offer me any kind of value for my money.


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## psychotick (Nov 18, 2015)

Hi,

Not having read the work my thought is that you've got to go back to basics. Ask the obvious questions. And the most basic question is what does this character's death / injury do for my book? Does it advance the plot? Does it hit the reader with an emotional impact because they were becoming attached with / or identifying with the character? Does it show the MC in a new positive or negative light? Does it show the villain as a really bad guy? Does it raise the tension as the readers believe that anyone could die at any moment?

Once you can answer these questions you can work out what the best story arc should be for that character.

As for the suggestion that you should not use your editor - I disagree. The value of beta readers and editors is not that they should be right all the time and tell you what works. (Save for error checking of course.) The value is that they offer an opinion which you as the writer can agree with / disagree with. They make you think about your work, put it under the scope, shred ir and rebuild it. Often when the things they pull up are wrong, that's brilliant. It makes you go back and question things. It makes you wonder, how could they have got it wrong? Because the chances are that even if they are wrong about something, there's a reason for it contained somewhere in your book.

With my editor I probably agree with 70% of what she says. But often the 30% I don't agree with makes me rework something so that it becomes clear to the reader why I wouldn't want them to think that.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Incanus (Nov 18, 2015)

I'm very much in agreement with Mr. Tick here.



psychotick said:


> As for the suggestion that you should not use your editor - I disagree.



However, if this was a response to what I said, then I believe I was misunderstood.  The distinction may not be that apparent, but I expressed how I myself would respond.  I in no way suggested that anyone else should respond in a like manner.  A quick re-read of my original post should make that pretty clear.


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