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All according to MY plan!
Hey!
Wait…
I died didn’t I?
I knew I shouldn’t have done that mentor episode.
Wait.
Is this the afterlife?
Is this the beyond?
Did I make it to paradise?
DEMON: Try again, JP.
Oh no!
Am I to suffer my eternal punishment for my bottomless greed, endless arrogance, two-faced
nature, and excessively long ad segments?
DEMON: Actually there’s this small, backwater church in Minnesota that is the only correct
religion, but don’t feel too bad.
I’m pretty sure even in the most lax interpretation of divine law you would still have ended up
here.
Regardless here’s your mask.
Make sure to wear it at all times and observe proper social distancing.
After a 14 day quarantine period your torment will begin!
Well I may have died in the last episode in a rare fit of continuity and destined to suffer
eternal torment for my numerous sins, but that won’t stop Terrible Writing Advice!
Death is only the beginning of my lesson on how to teach writers to properly handle the
death of their characters.
Better gather the dragon balls, because Terrible Writing Advice is going to show writers the
proper way to thin out their cast faster than you can say “That’s Xcom Baby!”
Now the most important thing to consider about killing off characters is the tone.
Specifically, how to completely ignore the tone when it comes to killing off characters.
The best approach to all story telling is to always be tone done deaf and to make sure
the tone flails about much like the central thesis of most of my videos.
Tone works best when it constantly upsets audience expectation, much like killing off
characters should.
For example.
We could establish the tone early by killing off a likable character in the prologue.
Then the best move would be to never kill anyone else again.
Will this make the prologue needlessly dark?
Of course!
That’s the point.
Will this drive away the early audience members who are after a more lighthearted story while
also disappointing those later on who want a more dark tone?
Well they can all just get over it.
Conversely, brutally murdering characters later in a lighthearted story with zero foreshadowing
will maximize the deaths’ emotion impact on the audience that will in no way be directed
at the author for such an ill advised move.
Foreshadow and transition this tone shift early?
What needless setup.
Narrative payoffs don’t need setup.
Carefully considering tone is a waste of time.
We all know the real reason that authors like me kill off characters, shock value!
Yeah.
Nothing beats the rush of shocking your audience with a sudden character death.
The audience will never see it coming because that would actually require the story be well
built enough to grant context to the events of the plot and actions of the characters.
We can’t do that because it would rob me of the smug satisfaction of pulling one over
on the audience by making character deaths come out of nowhere, you know, like the same
place where I pull my plot twists from.
And if one out of nowhere character death shocks the audience, I bet the hundredth will
be just as effective.
I can’t think of a single reason why the emotional impact of character deaths would
be subject to the law of diminishing returns.
Excessive character deaths work best when the major characters all have plot armor and
it’s the side characters that die all of the time.
In fact, authors should murder side characters off constantly and then be surprised when
the audience refuses to get invested in the new replacement side characters, that I also
intend to murder.
With the pesky tone safely ignored, a writer can now focus on which characters to kill
off and when.
While unimportant side characters may be murdered at any time, the author should consider a
little more carefully when killing off important supporting or main characters.
The best way to approach this is like a classic villain, the writer should kill off any character
who has outlived their usefulness.
This means that mentors may be killed early in the story.
Oh poor mentor.
I’m afraid you have dumped your last info.
If in an exposition heavy story, then the mentor may make it to the middle before being
offed.
Conversely, comic relief is usually useful to keep around until the dramatic climax when
comic relief is simply not needed.
Usually.
Though I can understand if you can’t wait.
Love interests may rarely die at the end of a story, and usually if the writer is going
for a tragic end or if the writer cant think of any other way to resolve the love triangle
other than murdering one of the angles.
However, more commonly love interests die in the beginning of a story in order to give
the, almost always male, protagonist a revenge motive.
In fact I highly recommend murdering off a female love interest in a way so brutal that
it will cost me ad revenue to describe in order to motivate that male protagonist and
drive his character development.
Make sure to shove her corpse into a refrigerator too.
This is even more effective if her gruesome death is presented in a titillating way.
Yeah have fun with that one in today’s cultural climate.
Since we are on the subject of “things that have mostly definitely aged well” if any
token characters were added, one way of getting rid of them so I don’t have to bother myself
with the actual legwork of research and nuanced depiction of various minority groups is to
kill off said minority character first.
See, minority audience members get their token representation and I get a free character
to kill off!
Everyone wins!
I mean if they don’t like it what are they going to do?
Get on some vast network designed for instant worldwide communication and complain about
it?
Too bad for them that no so such thing exists.
So I’ve murdered off the mentor, the love interest, the comic relief, the side characters,
and the token representation.
How else can I inflate the story’s body count?
I guess there’s the villain but he only dies in the series the finale or if he finds
redemption.
The last thing a villain should want to do is try to find redemption.
If the story ends without the redeemed villain dying then that is going to make everything
like… really awkward.
I guess there’s all the villain’s minions too, but who cares if they die?
You see, that’s what it’s all about, attitude.
A real author uses death on a casual whim in order to play out this imaginary game of
one-upsmanship with the audience rather than as a calculated move based on tone, conflict,
and characterization.
Am I killing characters off because it’s best for the story?
No!
I’m killing characters off so I won’t have to actually flesh out their character.
Having a character’s death be the natural result of their actions is dumb when I can
have the character’s death be a result of the author’s inaction when it comes to actually
considering how to handle character death.
Another easy pitfall to avoid is having the other characters dwell on a character’s
death.
If they must react, be sure to have them melodramatically scream NO!
And then you are basically done!
No need to show any of the other stages of grief or have it become a central part of
the survivor's character development and characterization.
Remember, it’s all about attitude and tone.
As in the attitude towards death should always be casual and the tone should always be all
over the place.
I mean it’s not like death is a heavy subject or anything.
Now what if a writer got a little too causal with their character pruning?
Well fear not, because we can always just bring a character back from the dead!
Now there are many ways to resurrect characters but the two best are either the diet Christian
approach or the instant resurrection.
The first approach has a lot more fanfare and basically resurrects a character through
use of Christian symbolism.
Does the work make use of any other Christian themes or motifs?
Well no, I just borrowed the one I needed.
The faster method is instant resurrection when the character dies and the story makes
a big deal about it, but then the character just comes back to life with no explanation
what so ever.
You know, like I just did!
BOTH: Stop using my catchphrase!
CONSPIRACY GUY: Hey!
I was doing the whole ploty schemey thing first.
Get your own gimmick.
BARON: Oh please.
You ancient conspiracy types couldn’t pull off casual Fridays, much less a sponsor heist.
Why don’t you just admit defeat now and hand over this video’s sponsor to us and
save us all the trouble.
CONSPIRACY GUY: I’d sooner turn in my false flag before I gave House Bad Guys the satisfaction
of knowing their first victory.
BARON: Very well.
I challenge you!
To a plan off!
BARON: Foolish Ancient Conspiracy.
You think I didn’t foresee this eventually?
I’m afraid your entire misadventure infiltrating the Knights of Artistic Ineffectual was all
part of my grand design.
KNIGHT COMMANDER: Oh no!
Reinforcements!
Sir Redshirt!
Hold them back!
CONSPIRACY GUY: Please.
I anticipated your meddling and simply let you believe that.
It turns out that your intervention has played right into my hands.
KNIGHT COMMANDER: They’re eating Sir Redshirt.
And then they’re going to eat me…
Oh my God!
SOLDIER: My Baron, the battle seems to be turning against the Knights.
Perhaps we should...
BARON: Shush.
Baron Daddy’s busy putting the conspiracy wannabe in his place.
Which he is already too late to stop I’m afraid.
The wheels of my plan are already turning and soon will bear the most delicious fruit
of treachery.
CONSPIRACY GUY: Your mixed metaphor is as poorly thought out as your meager scheme for
you have already fallen right into my trap!
Enjoy your cross as I’ve upgraded to a double cross.
BARON: Oh yeah!
Well I’ve doubled your double cross to a quad cross that you’ll never see coming!
CONSPIRACY GUY: I’ll see your quad cross and quad your quad cross of the double cross
which makes it a… um...
BARON: Hang on.
I’ll pull out my betrayal flow chart.
CONSPIRACY GUY: No need.
I wrote down my master plan using this video’s sponsor, Campfire.
Campfire is a writing software program to help writers and more importantly, conspirators
organize their notes.
From character detail pages for backstories, relationships, character arcs, and magic systems
to a detailed timeline so I can keep track of how well my foolproof plot is going with
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See.
Here it is, the master plan.
Our ultimate goal is too… um… well that stands for...
World Integration Population.
BARON: Oh I’m sure.
And it mostly definitely doesn’t stand for Work in progress.
CONSPIRACY GUY: Fine.
Point out one critical detail that my master plan has forgotten?
BOTH: Gah!
HAND MONSTER: The endless greed comes!