Death of a Character

In 2019, I started playing a mobile game based on a major franchise (which I won't name to avoid spoilers). A few months after I started playing, I learned through a Facebook group devoted to the game that one of the characters would die at a certain point. (The group allows spoilers, and many players experienced the character death at the same time since it had just been added as part of a new chapter. I was nowhere near that chapter at the time.) Since then, I've tried not to progress through the game too quickly. I know of some players who have stayed at that chapter for a long time, refusing to play the final scene. However, I have kept on moving through the game, and now I'm very close to the point where the character dies. I like this particular character a lot and don't want to lose her, but I don't want to be stuck at this point either. I'm not sure yet if I will rush through this point to get it over with or keep stalling for a while.

Character deaths are an important part of fiction. They may be used to motivate other characters to react (especially in murder mysteries), as punishment or a redemptive act, as a sacrifice, or as the climax of the story. The one thing they have to do is evoke emotion. The game designers have made this character close to main character, but the sacrificed character doesn't appear in the story as much as you might expect. I think the game designers may have blunted the impact of this character's death more than intended. Of course, with everything else going on in the world, a fictional character's death is trivial. On the other hand, fiction can help us make sense of reality--or escape it for a while.

I've had at least one character die in each of my series. The hardest one to write occurred in Twinned Universes. I've killed off major and minor characters, ones I've liked and ones that I was glad to let die. It's definitely easier to kill characters in mysteries than in other genres, especially since the victims are "designed to die." Most deaths happen "on stage," though some are revealed to the reader afterwards.

How do you feel about reading/writing character deaths? Have you ever had a spoiler change how you feel about a story (or whether you finish it)? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.