Screenwriting : Procrastinating killing by John Garrett

Yeah....it's usually the guys who are the biggest on the outside who are usually the softest on the inside. If you can't do it - give me a call. I know people, John. I know people.

I know a good artist, pro. Great at rubbing characters out. If you have to do it, make it grand. Make the death worth it and not just for insurance money.

John. Just think of it this way. Even thought you absolutely love the character and would want a different future for him/her, as long as it furthers the story, it will be fulfilling it's greater purpose.

Thanks for the levity guys :) Glen Kim, that is it. Without the death, the story doesn't really happen. What happens after is only possible if the character dies. But I still don't really want to do it. I will, and I am working my way through it. But it is much more difficult than I would have ever imagined. After I posted this last night, I was thinking about a screenplay that I wrote that is pretty much in the form of a Greek Tragedy. Everyone is killed off. But I think that it may have been easier as each of them had something terrible about them. Even though they were not pure evil, they were characters that had been worn down and either had some terrible aspect in them that they allowed to grow or took the path of least resistance that lead to them doing something terrible. This story, the character never gives up and is vulnerable and brave and, in the end, a victim. I think that is why it is difficult for me to write. I have a natural desire to protect people like that. Since I see it so rarely in life, other than in small children, I don't write about people like that often.

I can understand your dilemma. You spend so much time with the character, writing his emotions and actions, creating his story, you just don;t want him to go. That is why I said to make his death grand. Something memorable for the story. Do it in a way you feel is honerable to the character then.

Sometimes the killing off of a character only helps the story move along. Provide inspiration or motivation to another character. I have a few TV pilots written where a character does get killed off in the series. Sometimes there needs to be a sacrificial lamb.

@John. It's only a movie. Write your screenplay and kill off a couple a character or two and move on to your next screenplay. The more screenplays you write the better you get and the less attached you'll get to your screenplays and your characters.

Also remember these important facts, Big Ex-Fighter Guy With the Heart of Mother Teresa... + According to a study from the Phillip E. Hardy Institute of Movie Characters...."characters who die have a 45% higher "Memorabilty Rating" than their still-alive -and-kicking counterparts - and the rating goes as high as 55%, depending on the "Barbaric Factor" of their death. Make them bleed, Siddartha...make them bleed. + And in reality - or at least in a metaphysical and temporal sense - your dead characters will never die. For they will live on forever and forever, plus 1, in DVD's...and in Video on Demand...and on Cable...and in Streaming Video...and in future brain chip implants in our heads that will allow us to access all art forms and NFL football by the year 2018...in saecula saeculorum...plus 1! Hope that makes you feel better, Mr. Gandhi!

Geez Bill! Posting about Phillip in a thread when he is not even here to defend himself from your sarcastic, humorous actions. I like it!

It must be the harder to kill a main character of a well running tv show like for instance Grey's Anatomy - just because the actor doesn't want to continue. I mention this because I just watched the episode in which Patrick Dempsey has to die. So, enjoy the killing, I think it's a good exercise. If you like the character do it in a nice way. I liked the mentioned episode because the character first becomes a hero by rescuing some accident victims, then makes a mistake which could have happened to all of us and dies as a terrific brain surgeon because of a brain injury in full consciousness of what is wrong and which mistakes his doctors make. He is unable to talk but speaks to them in a voice over. You see, it is dramatic, it is sad, it's irony that it is a brain injury that kills him and by this it is how life goes. I hope this firstly inspires you a little for how to kill your character in a "good way" and secondly shows you that this even happens to very popular main characters. Good luck for your scene!

David - one of the good things about Phillip is that because he's always so busy writing two scripts at once.... literally, the guy sits there with two PC's and is typing two scripts simultaneously.....his memory has eroded to nearly nothing. So even if he reads this, he'll forget it just as quickly. It doesn't help him when he's got something in the oven, but it sure helps me when I borrow 200 bucks from him, like I have every day for the last four years. I can certainly live with the trade-off. And besides...I'm just trying to help my friend John "the Octagon Mauler" Garrett see the errors of his ways...and to get him in my stable of fighters on the Underground Fight to the Finish circuit. He's a natural...and January was a bad month for my guys. RIP, guys.

And in between writing those scripts he has time to read one of mine. I feel so blessed. $200 a day, huh? Nice trade off.

John - I can vouch for Peter - and he'll even show you the pictures. He's what I'd call a consummate professional in the Character Justification business.

lol. So, Peter just created a new job description - the Killer-Writer. Killing writer sounds boring, Killer-Writer is like a shark biting everybody away who's in the story's way. You know Peter that with every closed door or killed character a new one will appear?

Peter - I'm just trying to give the title a positive and new-agey spin, Mr. Hard-Boiled. And besides, it will look better on your business card, too.

John - it may help to write the character's obituary first. Rejoice at their life, remember their contributions (to your story), laugh about their faults, and put the emotional lid on them. Then kill them is a most dastardly way.

Due to the nature of the story it has to be a grisly painful death with a great deal of blood. As unavoidable as the impending death. I do have a fear of distancing myself from the character during the writing of the scene. I want to make sure that all of that emotion is there in the writing. But I do like the idea of the obituary.

Kill him, and then bring him back as a zombie-problem solved.

John, to answer intelligently to you burning question, I would need to have more information. I was in a similar situation, I had to kill someone's mother in childbirth. It was part of the story and, I had great difficulty writing it, and when I did, It felt forced. After several trials, I faced this challenge, by alluding rather than brutally showing her death. What I showed was her husband and young son at the funeral. Many of my readers said they choked reading the scene. I don't know if this solution could apply to you. I'm not sure either why it is unavoidable that the death of your character has to be so graphically painful and gory. Often what we don't see is far more POWERFUL than what we see. What genre is your screenplay?

Annie Mac, it would fall into drama although it seems a dark comedy. This is one of those things where you write an outline and either your intuition or subconscious or, as I believe more and more, the muse hands you a story that is complex in ways that you don't see at first. When you think you might change things, you realize you cannot change certain aspects without changing the entire story. This is because I see connections I did not see during the outline. She will be murdered. Nothing I can do about it. If I skip the actual murder, which is rather short, I am not writing the story that I have been given. I have already seen the scene in my mind. I know what happens and what needs to be written. I just don't want to do it. I have also found out that I really do NOT enjoy writing the character that will kill her. I don't like his head space and I don't like where I have to go to write that. But that is not really all that extreme, I just don't like it. I am at a point where I just sit down and work at it. I am not going to get it written any other way. So I sit down and write on that project daily, as much as I can. I have some local commercial work due at the end of the week, so I have distractions and other writing I need to do, but I spend time on this project every day and plan to continue until that first draft is done.

Great advice and ideas all around. Bill's suggestion, 2 weeks ago made me somehow think of Braveheart's death and Gladiator's. And for a fee, Peter volunteers with gusto to write it for you, WOW, I'm blown away. However, your genre is NOT EPIC, so I have trouble buying the inevitability of such a brutal and gory death, and at the hand of such unsavory character. Without the need to psychoanalyze your deeper motivations, I'd say that if you have such aversion to write whatever your "subconscious" dictates, there must be a good reason, and it's not that you're just a BIG GUY with a MUSHY HEART. In any case, I'm sure there is more than one way to kill a character, in a powerful, memorable, and affecting manner. Don't underestimate the power of suggestion.

In The Blue Lamp a significant character PC Dixon is shot and killed. He was however resurrected for a very successful police TV series Dixon of Dock Green. So perhaps start by telling yourself you are killing your character in a film, but that if the audience buy in to him then maybe he could be resurrected in a future project.