Busting Writer Myths: The Mentor Has to Die

Mentors in fiction always die. And I mean ALWAYS. Every single time, without fail. Never ever and I mean ever do they- Okay, I'm exaggerating. Occasionally a mentor will escape the slaughter, but 99.9% of the time they keel over dead.

In short, the writers are like this:

And yes, I did completely pause writing this post to make a meme to prove my point, but hey, who's pointing that out?

But I'm not kidding. Gandalf, Brom, Tadashi, Batman, Grandma Tala, many, many parents *sob*... why did they have to die??

Short answer: They get in the way of the main character. I'm sorry.

Slightly longer answer: The mentor is always more skilled than the main character in one way or another. Their ability to teach the main character is what makes them the mentor. So, anytime anything is too hard for the hero, BAM! you can hand all the heavy lifting to the mentor. It makes it too easy. So the mentor dies. How unfortunate.

Another reason could be that the mentor eventually gets useless. Raise your hand if you've seen the TV series Power Rangers: Dino Charge. Their mentor is a super old alien named Keeper, his only use to the show was to give these magic gems to a bunch of dinosaurs (a terrible decision, really). After that, his role should have been cut.

But noooooooo. His role extended to present day, where he had no purpose. He only appeared when he had some kind of sagely advice that they would have thought of anyway, and then he would disappear as soon as the action picked up. Essentially, he was a glorified fortune cookie. (forgive me, I hoped he would die the time he got kidnapped, but he survived. Dang it.)

In fiction, the mentors tend to have only three fates awaiting them, which I shall call the three D's:

yeah, not these fates. You know, like actual turnouts.

1. Death is the most common one, and it's becoming a problem because it's becoming the default way to get rid of the mentor. 
2. Mysterious Disappearance. You know, when the mentor just sort of vaporizes. They do their job, then they're gone from the story for no reason whatsoever. This is inconsistent writing.
3. And Detachment. how many times have you heard this from the mentor: "I can help you no longer. You must do the rest of the world-saving on your own." Or something along those lines. They seem to do it right when the world is ending on the inexperienced hero, too. Would it kill them to wait to let the hero handle it on their own? At least until an opportunity with lower stakes arises?

Okay, but now that I've pointed out what really shouldn't be done (or at least, not without some amount of tact), allow me to make a few suggestions on less conventional things to do with the mentor after his purpose has been served. Instead of dying, he/she could:

• Be incapacitated (for instance, put into a coma or have their magic taken away) so that they can't help the MC with the final battle.
• Be kidnapped for a little while.
• Cut out of communication. Maybe your mentor is thousands of miles away from your MC, and their means of communication is put out of communication. That way your MC would have to do it on their own, but the mentor wouldn't be dead. Or maybe your mentor is a magic-mirror type situation, and the magic mirror gets turned off.
• Be injured. Like the incapacitated option, this would temporarily remove the mentor from the picture.
• Retire. No one said this mentoring thing had to be a lifetime gig (yeah, I'm misquoting Metroman, sue me). The mentor can retire from the business.

• Become the hero's enemy. I don't think I've ever seen this in fiction. The mentor could into the MC's enemy before the end, for any number of reasons. Let your imagination run wild.

See? The mentor doesn't have to die. But don't let him become useless either. I will literally go through the entire book/movie actually yelling at any character that is useless. That's how bad it is. Just don't make them die if they don't have to. Save the mentors! That would make a good t-shirt. Someone make a t-shirt.

That's it for my rambling about mentors. You know, until I write another post about mentors. Let me know if you liked the post, or if you have any thoughts I missed or other myths I should bust, let me know in the comments. You can also visit me on Twitter and Instagram for writing humor on a regular basis.