An anti- climax

[kitsune_boy389]

I'm not sure what an anti-climax is so some help would be apppreciated. Anyway, to my question. The end of one of my stories is fairly normal. Good guy beats bad (with some twists along the way) but after all of this, (due to a chain of events), he HAS to die (nobally). Is this a bad way to end?

[Commonmind]

I'm not sure this is the best forum for the question. Either way, it's only a bad way to end the story if it comes off as contrived, if you're killing the hero just to be contrary, or different for the sake of being. If your story has been building up to his imminent demise, I don't see a problem. However, though there was a time when I thought it refreshing to read stories in which the good guy was not always so fortunate in the end (simply because in some cases the hero always seems to be all but invincible, and his or her's harrowing escapes from danger are usually brought about by an unnatural case of good luck, and help from far better, more able-bodied individuals whose powers exceed his own and likely could have stopped soon-to-be-mentioned hordes themselves had they not been carrying our klutzy hero through every leg of his or her's journey) I find that the format has become somewhat abused and it's harder to convince me that the hero actually had to die because it either fit the flow of the story, or that the plot required it for a realistic closure. Simply killing him or her off on the last few pages just to shock the readers isn't going to cut it, not anymore at least.

A good example: Man gets stone to fend off demons from the abyss, is warned by a sagely, wizened old man that using it will cause his eventual and certain demise, man fights hordes by the hundreds while readers cheer him on, believing the entire time that the man will find some way to escape his untimely end, readers are doubly shocked when the story sticks to its guns and the stone destroys the man, an expected yet unexpected ending, and that the author actually had the gusto to carry through with his plan, presenting the reader with a quaint little epilogue in which wizened old seer from scene one reminds the audience that the hero had been destined to die, but the world, alas, has been saved.

Bad example: man gets stone to fight fetid armies of the undead, rescues princess and falls in love, rescues friends, family members and co-workers from deadly circumstances, finds the source of the corpus uprising is a wild-haired librarian with a pension for animating zombies, the man kicks the walker out from underneath his aged foe and destroys him with the stone's latent ability to wipe retirees from existence and our hero suddenly falls ill and dies; without any explanation or buildup from the author, or any hint as to the stone containing a curse, jinx, explosive properties, we're left with the shocking end of our gallant hero and realizing that the writer of this story was so incapable of delivering a decent work of speculative fiction that his only hope of ending said piece was to kill off Harrold, Slayer of the undead, so he could weasel out of making a proper finish of the end...that and because he's morbidly obsessed with killing off the main character, just for giggles.

[Coolhand]

I think Ridley Scott summed it up quite well when he said that the hero's death has to make "sense" to the audience. He was talking about films but it applies just as well to books. We have to have an emotional or logical understanding for the death and why it had to (or was chosen) to happen, and often works the best when we know or suspect in some way that it's comming. As Commonmind just said.

Otherwise, if a random rock just falls from the sky and clobbers him as he walks heroically into the sunset, the audience might feel like you were going for the cheap shock value.

(Actually, that could be quite funny.)

[Lenny]

How's about using the death of the hero to set the scene, if you will, for any further books you might write in that setting, even if it's not built up to in the book the hero dies in?

[The Ace]

It's difficult to deliberately create an anticlimax i.e. a situation where the story just peters out,It's also a very bad move and no publisher would look at you.
The death of your main character need not be an anticlimax, there are many reasons for this to happen;
To give the story realism.
The only way to achieve his objective
Treachery by a supposed friend
A last attempt by his enemies to thwart him (if he's the goodie).
Justice (if he's the baddie).
An anticlimax shows bad writing, a character's death needn't.

[kitsune_boy389]

I have an extremely good reason why the main character has to die. So don't worry, It's an extremely good ending.

[Commonmind]

That's subjective now isn't it? You'll have to let your readers decide...