How many deaths is too many?

My suggestion is that you treat each body you show the reader as a major character. Each time you show a body in detail, make yourself write 2,000-3,000 words of background research into that character's life. You should get two benefits:

1. The people around the character will react genuinely to the death. The victim will have friends, family, loved ones, enemies, co-workers...; and
2. You won't be tempted to show 20 distinct bodies because you won't want to write 40,000-60,000 words of character background.

A story requires as many bodies as there are people who need to die.

I've read books with body counts that number easily into the twenties and thirties (no wars, just bad guys getting taken out, run over, shot.) Sometimes the book is good, sometimes not. What's more important is whether the story needs those people to die, or not. I prefer a reason for them to die, and not just because it's fun to write.

Does every one you're killing need to die... as in on page? Or can you move some of it to the implied category (if you're worried about killing too many.) And would everyone who you're killing really die from their wounds?

(And a note on what Ruv Draba said-- do NOT include those backstory words into your story. Stay focused on the tale your telling and don't get sidetracked telling the reader about the dead folks' histories.)

Three. You're not allowed to have more than three people die in any one book.

Well, poot. I have tens of thousands of deaths in my books.

Of course, I'm refighting the Trojan War so that makes it okay.

The point is that death for death's sake isn't very helpful. Each death has to impact the plot, have an effect upon the characters and either increase or resolve some of the conflict. If you're killing people off just for the hell of killing them, then you're not accomplishing anything. Just like a superfluous sex scene, a superfluous death can muddy the plot and in some cases stall it out completely. You need to ascertain that the death is going to forward the plot in some way before you commit to it.

If you do that, then you can have as many deaths as you want to--even species exterminations if you like.

My only advice is to be wary of desensitizing the reader - a sure way to lose them with 'another death, so what?'

gothicangel said:

My only advice is to be wary of desensitizing the reader - a sure way to lose them with 'another death, so what?'

Click to expand...

Well, you could also pile on deaths of minor characters and desensitize the reader that way . . . and then kill a character that the reader has come to care deeply about (if you've done your job right). Or at least one that the main character readers identify with cares deeply about and that readers have already met. That would bring home the real cost of the situation that is leading to all these deaths.

Although I remember reading a book about WWII that alternated among 10 or 12 main characters. When the one I liked best got killed off 2/3 of the way through, I kind of lost interest in finishing the book. So don't go for this effect by killing off your most interesting character!

As for total body count . . . how dark a tone do you want your work to have?


Edited to add: Another way to counteract the desensitization would be to have the main point of view character end up having to kill for the first time, if it's a character who wouldn't have had to so before. Or for the first time killing someone he or she actually cared about.

Read Agatha Christie's "And then there were none" or "Ten little Indians" (same book, two titles). She kills off ten out of ten people stranded on an island. Yep, every one of them. She then has to import some detectives to determine who the murderer was on an island of completely murdered people. Of course, the idea behind the book was to solve the mystery rather than to identify with the characters. But it shows, there really is no limit to the number of murders you can have.

Marie