forum Killing children
Started by @Paperok
tune

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@WriteOutofTime

Extremely poignant and moving if done correctly, but if done only for that purpose, morbid. For example, killing Beth in Little Women moved the plot forward, but killing Primrose in Mockingjay was only for cheap sympathy and felt forced and kinda sick.

@HighPockets group

Yeah, only kill them if there’s a meaning. I’ll kill a kid in my story because it’s to show how far lost everyone is, not for shock. And killing Prim achieved nothing at all. Same with Finnick.

@cami

yeah, don't do it for shock value (i.e. prim, max in the shadowhunter chronicles, etc.). i ended up killing a kid in my second novel and it was actually a really hard scene to write, because the main character (the queen, whom a lot of people looked up to, including children) had never seen herself as a motherly figure and saw herself as failing the people she was supposed to take care of and it really put things into perspective for her.

Deleted user

I disagree, Prim's death wasn't just to shock and upset the readers. It had a purpose in the plot and story. It motivated Katniss to do the things that she did in the end, such as killing Coin instead of presisdent Snow.

@WriteOutofTime

@Jensenbear it didn't make sense, though. The entire book series was about protecting Prim. Then she gets killed off, unexpectedly, by a coincidence. It's unrealistic. Why would she be out there among the bombs? Why would Coin send bombs on her own people when they're stretched thin to begin with? Why would Katniss see Prim in that crowd? That's convenient, isn't it? A death like that takes you out of the action. It's needless and only meant to shock you. For me, it totally detached me from the book. Why is Katniss even fighting anymore? Prim was the only reason and she's dead. Katniss wasn't some heroic rebellion leader, she was a kid who wanted to protect her kid sister. Killing her kid sister didn't motivate her, or it should have. Plus, death after death with only seconds to reflect makes for a rushed, unemotional story. IMO, anyway.

Deleted user

The entire book series was not about protecting Prim. It was about escaping the harsh and terrible rule of the Capitol, and stopping the Hunger Games. Katniss definitely wanted to protect Prim, but that's not what the entire story is about. It's a large part of it, and it is how it starts, but it's not the whole point. And it's not a coincidence. In the end, it's a bit difficult to understand, but Coin did send those bombs. It isn't said directly, but Coin bombed the children of the Capitol and the nurses, then blamed it on President Snow so that she could get the people of the Capitol on her side and accept her as a leader. That's why Katniss killed her.

@WriteOutofTime

@Jensenbear I know Coin sent the bombs, I'm just wondering why she also sent her nurses out there. That seems shortsighted, doesn't it? And I know that the entire storyline wasn't about protecting Prim, but for Katniss, it was. Katniss wasn't a brave, heroic, selfless heroine. She was just protecting Prim, making Prim the backbone of the novel. If your protagonist loses their motivation, there's nothing left of the story. Which is why in my opinion the ending felt so lukewarm. Prim's death, just like Finnick's, was just for the shock factor.

Deleted user

I do believe that Finnick's was for shock factor, but I think that Prim's death had at least some sense to it. (Also, I think she sent her nurses out there to further lead the Capitol's eyes to Snow, because Snow wouldn't kill just the Capitol children and not his enemies as well)

@Chronicle Beta Tester

I’ve never been able to write any emotional scenes. I’m terrible at those (Actually, I’m a terrible writer altogether), but killing off a child could be interesting if you do it correctly

@HighPockets group

The best example of killing a child that actually has emotional impact is when Christopher (I think that’s his name) is killed in Sons of Liberty, which is a great show. Also Philip Hamilton, Rest In Peace

Deleted user

Okay I had to give a bit of a double-take when I saw the title of this discussion, I'll admit. Killing children….eh. You have to do it right, and it has to be the right child. For example, the tiny four-year-old girl in the Studio Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies—that just broke my heart. Especially the thing where she started hallucinating before she died. Hallucinating before death always gets me, whether it's a child or an adult. So hey, if you want to break some hearts, go with hallucinations! It's so sad when they think they're somewhere else or in another time or they think dead people are with them.

I read this book A Lantern in her Hand in elementary school and the main character dies of old age at the end. She hallucinates thinking that her dead husband is with her and that her children are small and are playing out in the yard when in fact they have grown up and married and moved far away. I cried an embarrassing amount and all my friends were really concerned. XD

…I'm not talking about children anymore. Oops. Anyways, I think killing off children is like killing off a person of any other age—it's got to be the right character, and it has to be done in the right way.

@FantaPop

As someone who started a story off with a massacre of kids, I think my opinion stands for itself lmao (to be fair, it's canon, and it was the best place to start everything off sooo ^^; )

It has to be done right, I think, and not just cheaply. If your characters are killing kids, have them feel the weight of their actions, let it catch up to them in inopportune moments. If your villians are killing kids, make it count.

@AlchemistBrian

One of my stories is set in a post-apocalyptic America where survival is a matter of "kill or be killed", and it's an accepted fact among all the characters, including the children, that every moment could be their last.

One of the main characters is introduced at only 11 years old; she's emaciated, barely clothed, covered in dirt, scared out of her wits, and has spent the past 3+ weeks taking care of her 8 year old brother after their parents were killed by bandits. Both of those kids are tragically aware of how harsh the world is, especially to people as young as them. They get taken in by the protagonist and his group, and as they start to get their strength back, the girl resolves to do everything she possibly can to contribute to the group (she's barely 12 at this point).

Over the next year and a half of working her ass off, learning how to defend herself, how to handle a gun, and how to approach combat situations, she finally earns enough respect from the group to be included on their missions (she's now 13, a couple months away from 14). However, on her first mission, they get attacked by another group of survivors. She handles herself pretty damn well at first, picks up a few kills of her own, but she quickly ends up overwhelmed by it. She suffers a mental breakdown, and just as she finally starts to regain her composure, she is shot and dies in the protagonist's arms.

After that, the settlement that had been together for over a year disbands, the protagonist sticks with the surviving members of his initial group plus the girl's little brother, and travels back to the town where he grew up, setting up the final arc of the story.

@Lord_Dunconius

I would do it offscreen. You're gonna have a bunch of people on your back if you detail the killing of a child. People voted for Jason Todd to die, but DC still got hate mail.
Children dying is major character development for those who live past it. Parents will be forever changed, friends will be traumatized, and societies can be ripped apart.
Marriages will either break up or be fused together by the death of a child. If they divorce, the common trope is to have one parent go after whatever killed their son, and the other cope and continue with society. The show Leverage is a perfect example of this. One of the parents might commit suicide. Or they will be held together by their pain, and become inseparable. They might then go after whatever killed their child together. If the child is killed by accident, then the parents are unlikely to have an anyway happy ending. Without anyone to blame or anything to do, they will rip themselves apart.
The death of a friend can change a person beyond imagining. Take Sherlock from the show Sherlock. His friend's death drove him away from his sister, to the point of not remembering her. His whole life was shaped from that event.
In V For Vendetta, the revolution truly began when a Fingerman killed a little girl. The crowd literally beat him to death. Societies may rise to become better, or fall to moral depravity, after the death of a child.
Whenever a child dies, it should be a turning point of the story.

@Lord_Dunconius

I don’t know what y’all are talking about because Finnick isn’t dead. He’s living happily with my girl Annie.

Keep telling yourself that.

@Lord_Dunconius

I don’t know what y’all are talking about because Finnick isn’t dead. He’s living happily with my girl Annie.

Keep telling yourself that.