June 28, 2019
[This guide was copied, as is, from Wattpad. At the time, I had no intention of posting it here. Please excuse any discrepancies.]
This is a section about making your character deaths have more meaning in your stories. It does not go over how specifically to kill, nor does it cover how to write drama into a death. It also does not cover death as a broad concept or theme, sticking specifically with character death and its significance on a plot.
Death is commonplace in Warriors; with a cast of 200+ named characters, you expect many of them to die given they are rarely significant. But that is what this section is for. Fictional works with large casts like Warriors tend to kill off many. Some of these characters are written just to die, which I would not recommend. When a character is killed incorrectly, your audience notices. You have seen enough fiction to notice when a character is done dirty with a haisty or ill-timed death. Here, we will help you avoid this in your own fanfictions.
CHARACTER DEATH IN WARRIORS
Warriors uses the trope "Anyone Can Die" throughout its arcs (term from TvTropes). It means that, at any given moment in the story, you feel as though any character can die. The main character, background characters, plot devices, supporting cast, no one is safe from this trope.
Cats have died for obvious reasons, like Tigerstar versus Firestar. One of them had to die, and we knew and accepted this. There are dependant characters, like kits, who have died as a result of their parent's actions. Strong warriors have been felled by diseases like greencough, and healthy queens have died giving birth. Stuff has fallen on cats (somehow). They have drowned, burned, been poisoned, and murdered. One of the better deaths was Tigerstar at the hands of Scourge; all nine lives, one swipe. Down goes villain #1 for good (we thought). However, they have also been written in and killed for nothing but shock value. They have died to sate the fandom's bloodlust and appease fanfiction writers. They have been written off to prevent problems from being solved, or murdered as plot fuel. They get things wrong, but Warriors is one of the few series out there that uses "Anyone Can Die" well.
So how do you guys fare against the Erins? As much as I hate to give broad criticism, not so well. Characters in fanfics often die for the sake of plot fuel, character motivation, or regret in writing them. Dying for plot fuel or character motivation is not the worst thing you can do, but it has no impact for readers. They never get to know these characters, so their death does not mean much to them. They have to pretend they do, though, because your main character cares about that death that your readers do not. As far as regret goes, I have read some author notes at the end of chapters stating they were glad they killed off certain characters because they did not like how they turned out. Some have even asked which characters they would like to see die next! What? You do not take requests from your audience here. This is not a role-play. Obviously, I cannot sit here and berate you forever. We are all amateurs here. Our AU ShadowClan fanfic is not exactly meant to be shelf-ready. But we can at least make our use of death as a plot device that much more impactful by giving meaning to its use.
Here are some examples of how I have seen character death done in Warriors fanfics. These are actual deaths from different fanfics here on Wattpad; name changes courtesy of our nonexistent fanfic (no calling out authors here):
- Catstar and Otherleaf are walking along in the forest, when WindClan cats jump and assassinate her, life by life, while Otherleaf watches. Otherleaf goes mad with bloodlust and orchestrates a revenge plan from her ShadowClan. WindClan's leader and Catstar's assassins are killed the same way she was.
- An apprentice that Catstar had when he was Catclaw died during the final battle. Readers saw very little of this apprentice, but Catstar comforts her in her final moments. He feels it was his fault for sending her into battle so young. He vows revenge on her killer, which he swiftly gets.
- Catstar encounters a cat from the enemy side during the final battle. The cat reveals itself as the mother of a cat from Catstar's clan. The mother rejects Catstar's request to join her clan. She asks for death, eventually forcing Catstar to kill her.
- Catclaw is giving birth to healthy kits. Otherleaf, the medicine cat, is unable to stop her slow and peaceful death from blood loss. After Catclaw dies, her kits are divided among nursing queens and never told of what happened.
- The leader, Otherstar, is attacked in a raid from EnemyClan. She tells her deputy and old apprentice, Catclaw, that he must become leader and fulfil his prophecy. When asked about it, Otherstar states she had lied about how many lives she had; it is the first anyone (including the reader) is hearing of it. She whispers something (almost) romantically intimate and then dies; words that he does not catch onto until his leader ceremony.
Can you spot the problems? We have cats going crazy with bloodlust and altering their intelligence and personality around a death for plot convenience. We have a sad apprentice death inserted into a final battle for nothing more than shock value. There is a suicidal mother who, for no given reason, just has to die. We have death during birth and a subsequent scrubbing from history about said death for no reason (a popular choice in the fandom). And we have a leader who miraculously loses her last life in a raid, maybe confessing her love for our main character right before her passing; how convenient she should only have one life right at this moment. Right when we need to make a -star out of our main character.
All of those were examples that I found from three different fanfics around Wattpad. They are fairly common across others; there is definitely no shortage of character death examples in this fandom. But those deaths lack meaning. They are usually written in at the last minute to advance our main character or for the sake of making a death 'sad'. But these deaths are not sad. Nor are they impactful… well, a few have some redeeming qualities. We should bring those out.
ADDING IMPACT TO OUR CHARACTER DEATH
The Klingons would have gawked at most of the deaths in Warriors. Because of the use of an all-is-fair-in-death trope, characters die for many different reasons other than in battle. One thing that is different here than in other genre fiction is that Warriors deaths are not always good. They are rarely heroic. They usually do not get time to say last words. But many also lack meaning to the greater plot or event the localized story. Fanfiction deaths even more so.
One thing you should always make sure of, no matter who you are killing, is that the death must have meaning. Does it impact the plot, even a little? Will it change the outlook of a main character, even if just temporarily? Does this death change certain events around? Whether you kill a background character or your protagonist, the death must mean something to something else in your story. This is where most fanfics falter using this trope. Writers often mistake the Erin's open door policy to death as a challenge of bloodlust or a challenge to kill characters our readers love and hate. While many deaths in canon lack reason, they manage to resonate in some way, shape, or form for the overall story. Even Firestar, a character that lacked any depth whatsoever, died in a way that impacted ThunderClan's legacy in the seventh arc (even if his lives were taken away for seemingly stupid reasons just to give one inevitable moment impact). If a character's death has meaning to the story or other characters, it will mean something to the readers. A shallow death is better than a pointless one in literature.
That being said, here is another thing that fanfic writers do wrong: believing they must have the heroic sacrifice. Characters do not always have to die for their morals, past sins, or in lopsided combat. Some of the more common deaths, like death giving birth or kits dying, do not follow this idea. It is usually reserved for our main characters and our protagonist. Most of these deaths are vapid because they only reinforce the idea that the death was to rattle our audience, or that we are building them up to be heroically sacrificed. Worse yet it often happens to good friends of the lead, and the deaths often mean nothing to anyone but said lead, and only for a few chapters before they are swiftly forgotten. Why are they forgotten? Because the death of that good friend had no reason to happen. Given the natural order of events presented, or a twist gone wrong, that character would still be alive. Death to make the audience feel bittersweet about a character dying for their beliefs or after seeing an error in their ways is a trope best saved for books like Divergent. We, with a canon series that uses a death trope well, can do better than Divergent. That is not to say it should never be used, just that it is not the only way to end the lives of your major characters.
My final tip for you, on that note, is that minor and background character death can also have meaning. Often times, we are caught up in what main characters to kill that we forget all about our background characters and our supporting cast. We just use them as plot fuel when we want to kill them, and that is just not right. It is the same thing the Erins do in later arcs, one of the few mistakes they make with the "Anyone Can Die" trope. But the death of background characters does not just have to be for shock value or to stick a violence warning on our description page. They can mean more than that. The easiest example to take is from war in real life. How many people in the 1930s moved to enlist at the word of Nazi Germany's atroceties? How many more have been compelled to end a war when they hear nothing was gained in losing hundreds for a hill somewhere in Vietnam? Many have their opinion on war and what it is fought for. Those whose lives may have been impacted did not know those who died but it resonated with them enough to take action. In that person's life, the unknown soldier a continent away was a background character. They themselves are the main character. And they were compelled to act, in some way, by the death of that background character. You will be surprised on how many good examples of background character deaths you can find in history. Your stories can do this. It can give most of your character's deaths meaning.
IN CONCLUSION…
Character death is one of the few tropes Warriors uses well. Many characters die in canon and it is only natural that many more die in our derivative fanfics as well. But all we need to really make those deaths resonate is to have them mean something, even something small. Have them change the plot or a character even a little and the death of said character now invests your audience. Keep in mind that character death and death are not the same trope. While character death is common in Warriors, death as a concept is used poorly after the first arc. It is not the same as what you have just read.
You want your fans to outpour their support for your dead fictional characters. All it needs is a bit of influence over your story.
- Tyto
