#i'm probably gonna find a way to retcon some characters deaths btw

[phoebehalliwell]

I was wondering if you had a piece of writing advice for me? I've been working on kind of. A general outline of how I'd like to write a spin-off series about the next gen and I'm brainstorming an arc, but I feel like it's obvious that it would end with the character surviving and I don't really know how to fix it beyond ACTUALLY killing them off, but then I have to find a way to revive them which is. A whole mess, tbh, and not what I want, so I was wondering if you have any advice?

Okay so i did get a lil lost here in the question imma answer to the best of my ability but if i totally missed the eight ball here u can also message me thru the messaging feature But Okay so what i got here is it's a it's like you've got a protagonist and the issue is it's like Too Obvious that they're not gonna die, which kinda blows. like if u put them in positions of peril the audience yeah whatever 🙄 they'll be fine they're not gonna die and that sorta uh. ruins the suspense. & we don't want that. so ur proposing an alternative where u do kill em off like ha! gotcha! but then u wanna supernatural it and bring them back bc they are well like ur lead and u need them back. so i'm gonna ramble. listen there's this whole thing about "subverting expectations" that got everyone's head stuck up their own asses for the past couple years where you're supposed to have this like Gotcha! but like. u don't need to subvert expectations. a good story shouldn't be predictable, but there should be like. a lil trail of breadcrumbs that'll all add up in the end bc that's what feels rewarding. so to kill or not to kill. first off, just wanna say, don't like. like uhh everyone read divergent spoilers for divergent 3 tris dies as we all know but it's like. it's such a bad death. i still make fun of it to this day. tris needs to complete this super important task, but it will expose her to the death serum. now, tris logics that she's immune to every other serum, she's probably gonna be immune to the death serum. the counterargument is that it's a death serum it could literally just be like normal garden variety poison. so that's our set up; tris might die. what's our payoff? she goes, get death serumed, almost dies, then fights it off! and then an evil doctor rolls in and shoots her point blank killing her. it sucks. so what im basically saying is Don't Do That. there's no satisfaction, no pay off, in escaping the death we were prepared for only to die stupid not 90 seconds later. it sucks. so don't so that if you're gonna kill off your lead character. but you don't have to kill off your lead character! sometimes there r other ways to build suspense even if your audience knows the lead will not die. you can have them have to choose between two shitty options; what part of their moral code will your character be forced to forsake in order to save the day? if that's too much of like, a downer or a moral quandary you can also oceans eight it in which there's never really any major conflict or ethical dilemma as much as there's just a really sick ass heist. if your character's adventure is so well adventurous with a bunch of fun twist and clever saves your audience doesn't even really need to worry whether they'll live or die bc their attention is focused on how are they gonna get out of this one and what could possibly be next. for that specific type of story, reverse engineering is gonna be ur right hand man i would definitely recommend thinking about the most batshit way to solve something and then keep adding on issues that eliminate every other logics option (e.g. the character has to climb up the bookcase to reach the chandelier to swing across it to the window to break out. why can't they use the door? it's locked. why can't they pick the lock? it's magic. why do they have to climb the bookcase? can't use anything for a ladder et cetera et cetera). but back to murder. more specifically, revival. advantages of this being charmed: people die and come to life all the die the sisters even have a catalogue of how many times they've died on the wiki. the revival usually involves some time travel, so u could do that. but it's also charmed and in charmed we have magic, so we could use that to bring the protagonist back from the dead, we just need to establish that first so it doesn't feel like a retcon. since ur already mapping this story out (mad props btw) u know how it's gonna end u know how they're gonna die. so, my recommendation would be to place your deus ex machina early on in the story and something super small and inconsequential. it's best to put it in a collection of evidence we think is just you adding flavor or worldbuilding or whatever. the later you add it, the more the audience is looking for clues and foreshadowing, the easier it is to pick up on, but if you keep your breadcrumbs super tiny, they can slip by almost unnoticed until you need them at the end. so this is a lot of text i hope ive answered your question in my ramblings but once again feel free to message me or send in another ask if i indeed Did Not Answer The Question