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Q&A Why is character lifetime proportional to character development so often?

Hollywood movies are a good example of this, but also many books feature the rule. When the plot revolves around life and death situations, the first to die are the characters with least developme...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Vorac‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:43:25Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/35862
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Vorac‭ · 2019-12-08T08:43:25Z (almost 5 years ago)
Hollywood movies are a good example of this, but also many books feature the rule.

When the plot revolves around life and death situations, the first to die are the characters with least development. Those are the Non Player Characters in role playing games, the guy without a family name, introduced 20 pages ago in books, or the evil and dumb antagonist henchman, who lacks depth.

I can't figure why this rule is used so often. It destroys any uncertainty of the reader for the conclusion of an extreme situation. It is known that The Protagonist survives.

Some authors even go as far as telling the story as a series of memories of the protagonist. The reader, knowing that they are reading the first book of a trilogy, knows the main character survives.

Why is this so? Why aren't multiple characters developed simultaneously, randomly being killed off, with just a random dude from the neighbouring village surviving the carnage?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-05-03T21:39:22Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 13