In one of my WIPs (a multiple books series) I created a team of six MCs, five of which become the progenitors of different races in a following book. So I was wondering; How do you kill off an MC, while avoiding the Heroic Sacrifice cliche/trope? Or should I do something else with this character?
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Avoiding the Heroic Sacrifice Trope
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Well, George RR Martin certainly does this. Lots of death among important characters in his books, and it's usually for naught.
Well, the obvious answer would be to kill them under non-heroic circumstances. Corrupt them, in other words, so their own friends have to kill him.
Or have this person not create a race. Maybe they don't want to become a progenitor - if humans are any indication, it might be more trouble than it's worth to spawn a sapient race. Maybe they choose to remain a "neutral party": creating a race implies immortality, to me, so there may be a benefit in having a member of the pantheon without a horse in the race, so to speak. Or maybe they simply can't.
You might also reconsider whether this character is necessary, if you can't think of what to do with them.
In other words, I don't believe I have enough information to be really helpful...
Or have this person not create a race. Maybe they don't want to become a progenitor - if humans are any indication, it might be more trouble than it's worth to spawn a sapient race. Maybe they choose to remain a "neutral party": creating a race implies immortality, to me, so there may be a benefit in having a member of the pantheon without a horse in the race, so to speak. Or maybe they simply can't.
You might also reconsider whether this character is necessary, if you can't think of what to do with them.
In other words, I don't believe I have enough information to be really helpful...
Having him not create a race might be a good option, as would be reconsidering his importance, I mean now that I think of it I might not actually need a sixth character.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll consider your ideas but I would still like to wait for more answers... maybe someone else has another idea that might fit better into my series
The death doesn't have to be deliberate. People die in accidents all the time. Maybe he gets the plague, maybe he gets drunk and trips down a mountainside. Maybe he gets knifed in the back because some random stranger mistook him for the guy sleeping with his wife.
The world is full of unheroic deaths.
The world is full of unheroic deaths.
It can be as simple as writing a heroic sacrifice scene and removing the part where the death is necessary.
Say you got a "character destroys doomsday wotzit by jumping in the thing to make it explode" maybe he thinks better of it and drops something else on it, he tries to make a daring escape, but the explosion kills him anyway.
Say you got a "character destroys doomsday wotzit by jumping in the thing to make it explode" maybe he thinks better of it and drops something else on it, he tries to make a daring escape, but the explosion kills him anyway.
Actually I do have a character die heroically at the end for a few of the books. The problem I don't know how to make it really count for the reader. I'm worry they'll expect it and it'll won't care that they've lost the character. Any ideas?
Re: Phantasy's dilemma
If you make the character someone real, readers will care whether he/she lives or dies. People only lack empathy when you don't give them a person worth caring for.
Re: The Original Post.
Assuming you want the character to die in some kind of tragic/heroic circumstance, why not play with the Sacrifice Trope rather than avoid it? If he's the beginning of a race, what stories do they associate his sacrifice with? How has his work in the first book turned into a mythology or a system of beliefs among his descendants?
I would point to 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure' as an example of this. They're idiots in our time, but heroes and philosophers in the future. You obviously don't have to go to that extreme, but there's a lot to mine there. Maybe he's corrupted but is held as a hero. Maybe his sacrifice is used to justify a war that the character himself would have abhorred. Maybe outright falsehoods are attached to his name.
TL;DR: You can't avoid every trope. If a character is sacrificed you're going to smack into the Sacrifice Trope. Why not play with it rather than tip-toe around it?
If you make the character someone real, readers will care whether he/she lives or dies. People only lack empathy when you don't give them a person worth caring for.
Re: The Original Post.
Assuming you want the character to die in some kind of tragic/heroic circumstance, why not play with the Sacrifice Trope rather than avoid it? If he's the beginning of a race, what stories do they associate his sacrifice with? How has his work in the first book turned into a mythology or a system of beliefs among his descendants?
I would point to 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure' as an example of this. They're idiots in our time, but heroes and philosophers in the future. You obviously don't have to go to that extreme, but there's a lot to mine there. Maybe he's corrupted but is held as a hero. Maybe his sacrifice is used to justify a war that the character himself would have abhorred. Maybe outright falsehoods are attached to his name.
TL;DR: You can't avoid every trope. If a character is sacrificed you're going to smack into the Sacrifice Trope. Why not play with it rather than tip-toe around it?
The heroes save the day and everyone lives.
The next morning the character drops dead from a brain aneurysm, heart attack, or gets hit by a car. You could even go the MASH route and have them killed off screen randomly. You can have an ex-lover or someone else they have a grudge with introduced early on and they pop up again just to commit murder.
The next morning the character drops dead from a brain aneurysm, heart attack, or gets hit by a car. You could even go the MASH route and have them killed off screen randomly. You can have an ex-lover or someone else they have a grudge with introduced early on and they pop up again just to commit murder.
A lot of tropes are tropes because they're entertaining. Tropes and cliches aren't exactly synonyms after all.
However, if you're of the opinion that the heroic sacrifice thing has crossed that line, then perhaps you can just have him die in a battle. Heroic sacrifice indicates the character opted for death because of the greater good. However, a skilled swordsman skewering him in the midst of a battle can have poignancy without actually becoming the trope. He didn't give up his life for his friends, he just lost a fight.
However, if you're of the opinion that the heroic sacrifice thing has crossed that line, then perhaps you can just have him die in a battle. Heroic sacrifice indicates the character opted for death because of the greater good. However, a skilled swordsman skewering him in the midst of a battle can have poignancy without actually becoming the trope. He didn't give up his life for his friends, he just lost a fight.
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Have him accidentally injure an innocent: a child, an elderly person, someone handicapped...
He can't deal with it. He didn't restrain his super-power-abilities. So he either just goes off, never to be seen again. (Which will bug the readers and make them want to keep reading.) Or he takes his own life. (Because he is the only one who can really do that.) It's emotional, dramatic and sure to make readers gasp or get angry or realize you're a storyteller who knows no limits and will do things that will anger and upset them. But you'll keep those same readers because you're a damn good storyteller, unafraid to toss a chunk of heavy realism into your story.
Kind of like the author of GOT. People hate that guy some times, but also love him at the same time.
He can't deal with it. He didn't restrain his super-power-abilities. So he either just goes off, never to be seen again. (Which will bug the readers and make them want to keep reading.) Or he takes his own life. (Because he is the only one who can really do that.) It's emotional, dramatic and sure to make readers gasp or get angry or realize you're a storyteller who knows no limits and will do things that will anger and upset them. But you'll keep those same readers because you're a damn good storyteller, unafraid to toss a chunk of heavy realism into your story.
Kind of like the author of GOT. People hate that guy some times, but also love him at the same time.
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Lot of good ideas here. I'll pick on this one:
OR, maybe he just isn't interested enough in sex to procreate. In that case, he doesn't have to die at all. Of course, I'm assuming the others will become progenitors in the usual way. Is this sci-fi?
but suggest this ending. The heroes save the day and everyone lives, but the character already knows he is dying of some god-awful disease. He can die off-camera, you know, between books.
OR, maybe he just isn't interested enough in sex to procreate. In that case, he doesn't have to die at all. Of course, I'm assuming the others will become progenitors in the usual way. Is this sci-fi?
Avoid ALL the tropes! ALL OF THEM. And this is what you'll come up with....
(imagine a blank space here)
The end.
(imagine a blank space here)
The end.
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Me too.
Like Tom said above, not all tropes are cliches, and it's the cliches you have to watch out for.
Could always go with the "fade into legend" trope -- IE the Chuck Cunningham / put everyone on a boat to another land (aka Tolkien). A bit of mystery might add to the flavor.
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I like this option. A year, or a month, or sometimes an hour is enough to start coloring people's memories; just imagine what happens several generations down the line. What if he doesn't die heroically at all, but goes on to live a dull-normal life? Two generations later, a great storyteller gets hold of the tale and, unsatisfied with the Samwise Gamgee ending, weaves a heroic death around the climax of the story instead. Two generations after that, the guy is a messiah, and maybe folks are pointing to the storyteller's version as counter-evidence when some naysayer tries to present the truth he's discovered in a moldy old book.
Just a thought.
HN
OR, maybe he just isn't interested enough in sex to procreate. In that case, he doesn't have to die at all. Of course, I'm assuming the others will become progenitors in the usual way. Is this sci-fi?
It's fantasy (but it might not be pure fantasy not sure yet).
I think I have figured out what to do with this character, I might use something like the fade into obscurity trope.
You see for my second book in this series I plan to somewhat change the magic system, or at least the view of my original magic system. You see I add a magic system inspired by Dragon Age: Origins and in my second book this becomes the primary or "real" magic as viewed by the people in my story, but in fact it isn't. You see sometime between book 1 and book 2 due to the actions of two of the original heroes/heroines which got corrupted the magic system from book 1 has all but faded and is now viewed as evil or "fake" magic. The character this thread is about is one of these corrupted heroes and is actually the unintentional cause of this.
As the original magic fades the world and environment starts to change which leads to the creation of the five races from prior posts.
So what do you guys think of this idea
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