SPOILERSGiven the works I have seen so far in B. Sanderson, I have found that only in
Elantris was I affected by character's deaths.
Why?
Let us first look at the deaths in
Elantris. Saolin was the first to die, we were just getting to know him and see that he was probably going to be severely injured, but I thought "hey he'd be brought back by the end -- every Elantris citizen would come back -- just you watch!." So, when he died and they led him to the lake, and Rao mourned over him so bitterly, I was touched.
The head of the military and Raoil died, but for some reason I didn't feel much connection to them. Maybe I felt some for Raoil, but
I did not sense anything especially noteworthy about him.
Katara was killed next (as far as I recall, maybe there were some minor characters I don't recall), but for her the death was really quite quick -- in the self proclaimed Brandon Avalanche, if I recall, and I did not mourn her.
Hrathren, while I didn't feel any grief over his death, per se, was the character I best knew of the set of dead characters, but he was a villain -- shockingly his death touched me the most of all. Having turned from logic and obedience to faith and morality, from a villain to a hero and being Eulogized for it in his own words -- well even now writing about it -- I am moved.
In
Warbreaker the princess's sidekick is killed by the three mercs, but the shocking realization that the mercs were possibly the only villians per se in the whole book and the whole speed of the scene kept me from feeling his death there. Furthermore, the death occurred off screen. Finally the side-kick was just beginning to maybe become a character in my mind with his bitterness about being taken for granted, but I don't think that he had become "real" in my eyes.
As for
Mistborn, I felt that Kelsier would die from very early on in the book -- there were two Mistborn, one we got the whole view of, and one we didn't, Kelsier was obsessed about "powerful religions" -- which told me of his martyr streak and finally, I knew there was a sequel forthcoming and Kelsier had no place in that sequel because as Vin wonders, "Would any man be able to relinquish that kind of power?" Furthermore Kelsier's death was in the middle of the action with little time given to mourning.
So, given B. Sanderson's books as a model for understanding my emotions in the place of literature, a death of a character to have an affect on a reader ought to take into account these things:
- The reader must be famillar with and like the character
- The death should happen on screen enough for it to fully register
- The death should be mourned by the other characters or at least be given its own time for mourning
- Forshadowing can be used to heighten or detract from the power of the death
Given thought on those principles an author can more able to decide how to make the deaths that they want to be mourned more potent.