I'll be honest, killing characters has always been one of the hardest things for me to do. But since I tend to write screenplays chock full of guns, government conspiracies, aliens, monsters, every kind of end-of-the-world, and really spicy peppers... well, someone's gonna kick the bucket sooner or later.
And if you write in the sci-fi / horror / action / war / or high fantasy genres -- or any combination of the previous -- there is a built-in expected death toll.
The audience knows people are going to die. You know people are going to die. But who? How? And does it impact the plot, or is it just an impact to the head? (Blunt force trauma ain't no joke...)
So you already know that you're gonna have to knock off some characters, how many being mostly reliant on your genre -- if you're straight up horror you'll be lucky to have one person make it out alive. (And not infected with something horrible)
Yeah, it's easier for us to write the characters that we know are going to die as more two dimensional than our heroic leads, and often with glaring character flaws -- like being a sleazy self-serving jerk who steals office supplies -- so that you don't feel quite as bad when you have to write that scene with the mutant bunny chewing his face off.
But a character's death can -- and should -- have an emotional payoff of some sort.
In my latest script, I knew that I would need to kill a few characters. But I also knew that I didn't want to cheat myself -- or my future audience -- out of experiencing some sort of emotional response. That's why we go to movies in the first place, isn't it?
How To Make A Death Worth It
Unless it's the villain -- or if you're really crafty, even if it's the villain -- you probably intend to evoke sadness and loss when a character dies. There are several ways to do this.
One: As above, make your character likable -- even if they aren't.
Hey, nobody's perfect -- and maybe being an insensitive lout is part of their personality. But as for my advice when I talked about giving Romantic Interests' other interests than romancing, the same goes for your doomed character -- he had a life and probably a dog. He wasn't born just to be cannon fodder or something's lunch.
Two: Make it purposeful.
"It is serving a purpose," You might be tempted to say, "I need to fill my quota."
Yes, in some genres death is actually reduced to a requirement, a box to check off. But don't skate through the class with a B- when you could easily score an A.
The standard ways of increasing impact are self-sacrifice, a death that must be avenged, or a mentor passing on the torch by dying in front of his apprentice. (If anyone ever decides I'm a mentor, I'm packing my bags and moving to Switzerland.)
But an even better way to add purpose is to have that death directly affect the plot. Usually by making things harder for those left behind with both a win and a loss.
Ex: a solider kamikazes a zombie and saves everyone -- except they're on a space station and he's just blown a hole in the hull and they'll have to find another way around to their shuttle. (win: dead zombie / loss: dead friend, structural damage)
Three: Irony.
Isn't there just something oddly satisfying about someone getting exactly what they deserve? (As long as it's not us, of course...)
Usually reserved for the antagonists of your story, an ironic death can add that little extra something or another that just kind of makes you happy. (I know, we Writers are disturbed... but so are you, Audience!)
Just like any good joke, for something to be ironic it requires a bit of set up. Plant something early on that will hint at their upcoming demise, whether it being them proclaiming that they are the best at something -- "I can stop arrows with my sword!" -- that they will later fail at, or some kind of turnaround, where the creatures or other minions they had "total control over" decide to take out their master.
While subtlety is always a good thing to practice, sometimes it's fine to just Chekhov's Gun the thing by showing us something terribly dangerous and then making use of it. (Remember the first moment you saw those moving propellors on the plane that Indiana Jones and Bad Guy #12 were dancing around? Yeah, I was wincing too...)
IN CLOSING
Sometimes you have to take out of this world what you brought into this world, but if you do it with intention and respect, they won't have made their sacrifice for nothing.
