Marie Dees

Lately I’ve been noticing “redshirt” characters in books I’ve been reading. Perhaps they’re excusable, even necessary in mystery but fantasy seems particularly prone to them. Or maybe some writers just don’t know they’ve created a “red shirt.”

Now, I do know people who’ve never watched the classic Star Trek series, so I’ll explain the term “redshirt.” In the original series, whenever a hapless crew member appeared wearing a redshirt, viewers knew he was probably there to be killed off. His death would prove that the mission was indeed a dangerous one. So, a redshirt is a character who exists simply to be killed off.

Is this bad? Not necessarily. Mystery novels often kill off a character simply to establish more clues and fantasy writers have to kill off characters in battle scenes. But sometimes these redshirts are created to elicit an emotional response from other characters and the reader by their death. That’s a technique that runs the risk of falling flat.
Perhaps I’m feeling the effect the most when I read fantasy novels because these novels tend to be over-stuffed with characters to begin with. Add to that the added fantasy convention of giving characters unusual and strange names, and I’m already struggling to keep up with who is who. Then suddenly one of these many and usually named characters is killed. I can tell by the reaction of the other characters, this is supposed to be deeply significant. I’ve even had authors explain to me how they envision a reader being emotionally stunned by a certain character’s death. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that often I only vaguely knew who the character was when he died.

So, are red shirt characters a bad idea? Well, not always. Sometimes the plot requires characters to die. But for me, any character created with the purpose of killing him off is a red shirt. Let him do his job and leave the scene. I may appreciate the action around it, but just don’t ask me to cry for him.