Character death

As an author, at times it is very easy to predict the goings on of stories. I see things coming from a mile away that many other people are completely blindsided by. I don't say this as some kind of brag. I'm not trying to show off how intelligent I am, or how oblivious other people are. I'm just saying that this is the world I have placed myself in. Thinking about what comes next is what I do for a living, and so when I watch movies or tv shows, or when I'm reading a book, I can't help but think a couple steps ahead. So one of the things I catch myself saying most often is: "It's the main character - they won't die."

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Death is a terrifying topic. We don't want to subject ourselves to it, and so we don't subject our subjects to it either. And when we do, especially in fantasy or science fiction, we find some way around it, saying "but don't worry, they're not really dead." This is so common place that most people accept it as undeniable fact. The main character of a story is not going to die. They can't. That would defeat the purpose of everything they have gone through. But sometimes I don't like that this is so easily predictable, especially in said fantasy and science fiction stories, where so often the threat of death looms around every corner, and that's the whole point.

It's a bit hypocritical of me to say all of this, of course, given how much I hate Game of Thrones and the fact that everyone in that story is susceptible to death, no matter who they are. I don't want to see the main character die. What is sacred in our world if the main character of a story can't even see their story out to the end?

So I'm ok with the character making it out in the end. But their still has to be some threat. Some fear that, even if they are going to make it out, they're not going to make it out ok. The threat of a story has to be real, or else there's no climax, nothing to build toward.

Sometimes this is hard to handle as a writer. It is of course entirely personal preference where the line lies, but there is a line between going too far and not going far enough. Again, in Game of Thrones, one of the things that pissed me off more than anything else was when a character lived, but had everything they ever loved stripped away from them. Living out their life in constant agony and sadness - it would almost be better to just let them die, so as not to cloud the story with a shroud of darkness that can't be solved.

I don't really have an answer for this one. A lot of the things I write about like this, I have a personal idea about how to fix the problem. But not this one. I'm still tip toeing around it, trying to find the line and how to stand on it. Lost limbs, close calls, fake deaths... I just don't know. But it's something I intend to keep pushing at. To try and figure out how to put the right levels of tension in my stories to make it pull at the reader's heart strings, make them fear at what is coming, let them feel the consequences of a character's choice, but also give them relief that those choices didn't also lack meaning. I expect it will be a line I will continue to search for my entire life. But hopefully with practice I will draw closer to it.