Coming Back From The Dead

     Gandalf.  Roy Greenhilt.  Harry Potter.  Most of the characters in Homestuck.  Every superhero in the history of ever.  What do they all have in common?
     They're revenants.
     The word "revenant," in case you haven't been paying attention to that hot new movie I probably won't ever see (because as a broke college student I have neither time nor money to go to the theater, and who knows when it'll be on Netflix), means one who has returned from the dead, or seems to be returning from the dead.  All those characters up there?  They're that.
     The writing community can be pretty polarized on whether or not it's acceptable to bring characters back from the dead; if you've been keeping up with my blog, then you've probably realized by now that I'm rarely polarized when it comes to writing, and that I tend to go on a case-by-case basis.
     That being said, there are definitely times you don't want to kill your character, and even more ways to revive them in such a way that will leave your audience clambering for the door.  Talking about how not to kill-and-revive might be a good article for later, but for now I'm going to focus on the positives; the building blocks, if you will.

Note--this article assumes that the period of time passing between death and revival is at least a period of several weeks.


1.  Be Wary of the Revolving Door

     The Revolving Door of Death (also known as the "Death is Cheap" trope, or a Comic Book Death) is a system set up in which characters who die rarely stay dead--in fact, they're more likely to come back than not.  Every god damn superhero in the history of ever is subject to this trope, and if you've ever had a conversation with a superhero nerd you know how little respect a large portion of the audience has for the practice.
     The Revolving Door cheapens death--it makes it just another plot construct, and usually the storyline plays out the same.  The hero dies, everyone mourns them, they make a deal with the devil for the .000007% of their soul they still have left (they die a lot, is what I'm saying), and come back just in the nick of time, saving the day as everyone gasps and is surprised for the three millionth time and maybe the girlfriend comedically tries to beat him up for dying on her, blah blah blah we've all seen it before.
     If your universe is predicated on a Revolving Door system, that's fine, there are ways to make it work--in Homestuck, most of the characters die and come back at least once (instantaneously, even!), and you'll rarely see a fan complain, but that's likely due to the structured nature of the die-and-revive system (see below)--but if death is seen as a normal facet of life which can be easily returned from, then you need to realize that it will not mean as much to kill someone.  You can't try to make the audience cry if one of your characters dies, because they know he's going to come back.  Unless, of course, it's a special case, and it's very very clear that she's never coming back--like with Gwen Stacy in Spiderman.  In this case, a permanent death will pack more of a punch, but the audience may still be wary of the character's return.
   

2.  How Do They Come Back?

     Rules.  Your system of resurrection needs rules. The system in comic books, well-hated as they are (at least in the circles I run in; your mileage may vary), don't seem to have any.  Correct me if I'm wrong of course, I'm not a comic expert, I grew up in a small town that didn't have so much as a proper store, let alone a comic shop, but from what I've read online and the conversations I've held with my compatriots, sometimes people come back from the dead and sometimes they don't and that's that.
     And that's not enough.
     There needs to be a method to the madness.  Is it magic?  Is it science?  Is it some combination of the two?  Did Gods do it, mortals, something greater or lesser than either?  Was it a bacteria, a virus, a special parasite?  Why?  Why did this happen, how did it happen?  What are the rules?  What are the limitations?
     If it's magic, they might need to get into contact with a special, high-level cleric and pay a lot of money, a la Greenhilt, or perhaps undertake a special ritual that can only be performed at a certain place at a certain time after gathering certain items and fighting certain guard creatures.  If it has to do with God or Gods, there should be a damn good reason for the God to listen to your character, and it shouldn't be done without some form of sacrifice.
     If it's science, you should do some research on the modern quest for immortality (trust me, it's amazing.  or maybe terrifying.  again, your mileage will probably vary) to make sure that your science-fiction is in line with current findings--or, if you deviate from modern findings, that you at least have some scientific basis on which to formulate your methodology.
      The less cheap you want death to be, the harder it should be to bring someone back from the dead--the more years, the more studying, the greater magic, the more complex the scientific methods.  If you want death to really be worth something, then you can't pull this trick out of your hat for any old thing; in fact, you can only really use it once before death starts to cheapen.  Once is a miraculous resurrection, twice is a fluke of nature, and at three times it starts to become just another system within the system.
     Structure, sacrifice, and limitation are key in making your system of death-and-revival believable and not-groan-worthy.

3.  Consequences, Consequences, Consequences

      When someone dies, there are consequences.
     People mourn, cry, self-destruct, move on with their lives, start to forget; jobs are lost, objects inherited by survivors, homes sold; bodies moulder, graves are dug, papers are filed.
     When someone dies, there are consequences.  Seems kind of obvious, but it's easy to forget, when you start dipping into the fantasy realm or creating worlds from scratch, that those consequences extend beyond the period of death.
     Legally, there's a precedent that's been set and upheld in America which disallows people from returning from the dead.  At least, at the state level--on a federal level, the nation wants to bring people back from the dead so they can force the families to repay all the support received.  Whether you agree with the rulings or not, there's a lot of legal ramifications you'll want to think through when bringing someone back from the dead--the longer they've been dead (and the more publicly they died) the more hoops they'll have to jump through to rejoin society, if they can even accomplish that at all.
     If you're making up your own world, the legal ramifications may be different, but there's likely to be something in place to make life difficult.  There's also the social repercussions--depending on how long your character has been dead, different people will have different reactions to their return; some will be ecstatic, especially those who worked to make it happen, but others will be less receptive.  People who have moved on may feel as though old wounds are being ripped open, people who have created new lives without them may feel guilty for doing so, or resentful that this person has come back to destroy the new status quo.
     Some of your character's loved ones might be angry at them for dying, or leaving things unsaid, or something else that had to do with their death or life before it.  Some are likely to be frightened--it's not every day you see a dead woman walk, after all.  They might even try to attack, thinking them a zombie, or else assume them to be a hallucination or figment of their imagination.
     Point is: there's a lot of room for things to go wrong.
     Even if your characters are excited about the return of another, the relationships they have will have to be reestablished, and depending on what the consequences of your revenant's return is, it could be difficult.  Certainly, their relationships won't be exactly the same--watching someone die, or even just going through the mourning process, changes things, and there will be periods of your characters' lives that your revenant just didn't exist during.
     Which brings me to the physiological and emotional changes that your character will face.
     Dying is an experience most people don't come back from; the few who do are dead only for a couple minutes at most, and it's a very life-changing, often traumatizing experience.  Unless your method of revival necessitates or facilitates wiping out the revenant's memories of what's happened to them, they'll likely come back changed--the more so if they've spent some time in an afterlife.  They may suffer from PTSD, or feel disconnected and isolated from their friends and family--if they made friends in the afterlife, they may miss them; they may, depending on your system for resurrection, not even feel fully human anymore.  What the effects of resurrection are in your world are totally up to you, but make decisions and stick to them.
   

     Death is tricky; life is even trickier.  Trying to come back to life from the dead--that's a shenanigan right there.  A straight up shenanigan that deserves your total dedication and a sharp eye for nuance and cliches.
     Keep killing it, comrades.  And then revive it, because murder is still illegal in most countries.