I am so notorious for killing off people's favorite characters and making my readers cry.

Usually when I'm going to kill someone I really just demolish them. Overkill, you might say. Although I've watched enough crime shows and read enough mystery books to know all sorts of ways to kill. Not to mention my father is a black belt who could kill someone real quick with his bare hands (and so could I with what I've learned from him...)

I've pretty much got the killing thing covered. My trouble comes when I need to leave someone alive for a specific amount of time. In that case I'm usually more vague about the extent of the injury.



Mod's Note: This is the thread to discuss the emotion and repercussions that death wields in our novels. Have you ever killed a character, or do you have plans to in one of your WIP? Who is the doomed soul, and why? How does their death affect the story? How does their death affect you? How do you like to see death handled in books that you read? Share and exchange feedback, but try not to get too worked up.

For the science behind death, visit this thread: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1650

I refuse to read books or watch films where the main character or favourite character dies, It's just too annoying hehe! Mum and Dad don't understand me; we'll be watching a film and I'm like "oh no I can see what's going to happen here I'm not watching this" and I disappear quickly.

I can identify with you, Elanor! I don't usually mind if its the main charrie that dies, but my favourite character is always the sidekick, and they're the ones who usually die.

Anyway, back to the subject, I haven't killed a character in fiction yet, but I have a death lined up for someone. (How thoughtful of me) My sister is upset with me, because she doesn't want me to kill them, but I really need the scene to be so emotionally charged to bring out a certain outcome. Whenever I think of killing a character though, I feel rebuked by Dustfinger's comment from the movie "Inkheart":

"You think I care what you wrote? You don't control my fate, otherwise I wouldn't be here. I'm not just some, character in your book, and you- you are not my god!"

I kind of have two rules to go by if I'm going to write the death of someone:
1. Death must be worthwhile and for a good cause IF it's a main charrie or sidekick.
2. Quick pointless deaths must only be given to lesser characters, not main charries or sidekicks, or people with a significant role.

I know these are the kind of deaths I'd prefer to read about. I seriously dislike "And the bomb exploded and -main charrie- died. The end."

Those are my few random thoughts on killing characters.

If I kill a character the death must play a part in the story and some sort of good should result from it.

Ah... yes. That is the short version of my lengthy rambling post.

Hmm... Killing characters doesn't really bother me that much. Maybe that means my characters are shallow...

I do it a lot, but it does bother me. Main characters...I usually cry when I kill them. Like recently I killed the heroine of a 113,000 word novel about 25,000 words into the sequel. (The sequel has a different main character.) I LOVED that girl. She was my best character ever. And now I feel so bad I want to write a prequel or something. Short stories maybe.

My villains are so evil that when I kill them, I get all tense and angry and imagine that I'm the one stabbing them repeatedly or whatever.

That story? It's Snapshots. Starring Ruby Foxe. I've been leaking the fact that she dies in the sequel all over the place. Because I'm so sad, I guess. I wrote her death scene late one night and by the afternoon of the next day I was still tearing up whenever I thought of it.

Oh...

I better not read your book, Luke. I'll probably get so upset and mad I'll throw it at the wall or something. I don't like it when good characters die! The world is full of bad characters, I always want the good ones to live!

I've been hearing the word Iri about but I haven't the foggiest what it is.

That's because you cut off his ear tips! Elf tips! Whatever you call the difference between human and elf ears. . . How could you do that and not expect us to pity him?

Back on topic. . .
One book I have is rather high in the specific body counts (it high in the unspecific body counts, too). But hey, it's a civil war trying to break out! I even have to make my FMC kill. . . she's mad at me for that. And then there's the whole Marshka ordeal. . .
------
CHARACTER INTERRUPTION
FMC: She was a wonderful girl! Why'd you kill her?
Me: Because she was 2D.
FMC: In a FIRE??
Me: She was saving your life!
FMC: That's the problem!
END CHARACTER INTERRUPTION
------
Yes. So. I don't understand it when peeps say they cry when they kill their MCs, but then, I don't cry over death (I know, weird). In this massive series I have planned, a couple former MCs will have to die.
------
CHARACTER INTERRUPTION
FMC: Are you talking about me?
Me: I'm not sure. . .
FMC: Oh no you aren't!

Nah, you'd probably just cry and tell me you liked it anyway. Like that other person who said they hate it when nice characters die...

Yeah, probably. I'm not too bad if they have a noble, useful, good cause worth it death. But a pointless death, or one in shame is one I can't stand.

*refuses to participate in Iri discussion, no matter how sorely she is tempted. MUST. NOT. DERAIL. THREAD!*

To avoid further derailing... Try this linkie for a start.

I always try to make the deaths of the good characters honorable or otherwise useful to the story.

I can't figure out if always giving good characters honorable and heroic deaths is good writing or not. On one hand, it's unrealistic. On the other hand, I don't want readers throwing my book at me.

And, for yet another death conversation topic, does anyone else have a habit of working in the death of their 2D characters? I realized what I was doing when the only two hard-core good guys to die in the whole story (Honor System) were my (hopefully) only 2D good guys. And so, I have deaths that are crucial to the story, but happen to characters the audience won't care about since they're 2D. Must fix. I just want to know if anyone else has had/is in this situation.

Not always 'heroic' deaths. For example, my latest main character to die was trying to get to her daughter so they could flee together. She was shot in the back in the process. So she was doing the right thing, but it wasn't necessarily heroic.

Well, I think that's still heroic. She wasn't walking down the street and some random gunman shot her in the back. I'd cry over what happened in your story, I'd throw the book if it was the latter.

I agree. That sounds heroic to me.

I try to keep protagonist deaths rare. Not non-existent, just rare. I prefer that they come very close to death, but manage to survive.

Yes, to that. Escaping death has much more thrill. You're exhilarated after reading it, now down and sad.

Ack, so often-superior-in-some-way bad guys get killed, and no good guys do? I like thrill as much as the next person - and my MC hates me for it - but that's quite unrealistic. To do anything, there is sacrifice, and when that anything involves fighting, it's lives.

I just want to know if killing heroes heroically (and I don't mean half the book circling around it heroically, I mean getting killed while doing the right thing heroically) is a chronic disease or not.

Yeah, when you start doing it, you can't stop. I have to write really dark short stories to get it out of my system so I don't kill all my main characters.

Appropriate posts from the "Science of Death" thread have been semi-successfully split to this topic. I apologize for any confusion.

Continue sharing your tales of death, mates!

The first two characters I killed was because it was a big part of the plot. They had to go, or else the book wouldn't make sense. The next one I killed because I was done with him. His purpose was served, and if I kept him in, it would have been hard to avoid his marriage to another character without getting the reader upset. Sometimes I regret his death. All the others are bad guys. Didn't really mind killing them.

* tries to decide whether or not to drop major spoilers for the sake of the conversation *

My first novel was a true Shakesperian tradgedy. I had characters that existed just so I could kill them. My last chapter looked like a scene from Hamlet. I started with over thirty characters and ended with less than a dozen.

Later on I realized I wrote it this way because I'd been greatly influenced by Shakespeare. I figured out who had to die, and which ones were simply for Shakesperian effect, and rewrote the plot to leave most of them alive. There is one character, however, who still has to die simply to close a plot hole.

(Oh dear... I can't remember this particular part of that book... how do I get that to work??)

So my siblings tell me I kill too many characters. I am very fond of a well written tradgedy, but I never kill a character without a very specific purpose. Usually some kind of sacrifical purpose. The MC dies so everyone else can live, that kind of thing. I love books with that element.

And yes, I do confess to getting teary eyed over my character's demise. Some of them. The special ones. The ones I spent two years working on... and I cried over all three drafts of that book too.

I will not hesitate to kill a character if the death has some use in the book. I dislike needless death, though I realize some books (war, for instance) require a large amount of death in the background. I think the gory details of death should be handled carefully, but I like to wield the emotional power of death to its full extent. I don't mind being torn to bits over a death in a book, though I usually don't get too worked up by my own writing. (Sorry, all the sentences in that paragraph were the same boring length! )

I usually don't kill the primary MC, just given the type of books that I write, but it's not unusual for me to kill pivotal secondary characters. A lot of my tales have death in the backstory (or as the inciting incident) as well. Death is a powerful motivator and can start events ticking like nothing else!

Orphans are not uncommon in my books, for instance. I seem to have a lot of girls that get stuck with their loving uncles... Also, I have a fair amount of single-parent homes brought on by tragedy.

In Alaidia, for instance, Nathan's parents die in the prologue, which passes the crown to him and sets the stage for the novel. In some of the previous versions, Nathan's adopted mother dies in the first few chapters, but I'm not sure I'll need that in this new version. Two important people will die later (which I will not reveal at this time), plus two bad guys are exterminated. I'm usually more prone to sending my bad guys to jail rather than killing them, but sometimes death is inevitable.

I kill someone if the story needs it. Otherwise I've found you don't really need to kill anyone off unless it's a big impact in a story...
In my first draft I killed 4 main characters out of 8 and it served a purpose, but I rewrote that...

Sending your bad guy to jail guarantees a sequel in which he escapes.

THIS. And sometimes you can blow a bad guy up and in the sequel he informs you he is still alive.

That was NOT in the original outline. He's not even major, but he's my MC's arch-nemesis or something, always managing to stay alive. He's been handed over to someone who had no reason to keep him alive and a good many to kill him, been shot by my MC (who thought she'd killed him), and been blown up in a ship. In space. And yes he's still alive to cause trouble in the next book. head/desk I've yet to plan his final death. I'll need to chop off his head or something.

Um, resilient bad guys, anyone?

I think readers will forgive you for resilient bad guys if it's a serial work, especially TV or comics...

I like to convert my bad guys, too, because I dislike letting them go unsaved... In Alaidia, there is one traitorous half-bad-guy (you know, a confused Iri-type character) whom I save at the end and then kill. I wasn't planning to kill him, but as I was writing the very scene it all snapped into place. It's very fulfilling, because he goes as a hero, and it ties things up nicely.

I can't remember if I've actually successfully killed off a character before... I'm more of the 'nearly dead is not the same as all the way dead' kind of writer.

There is a character who I let the other characters think I killed off for most of a book...but I couldn't bear to let him really die because I loved him so much.

Yup, that sounds weird...but he is my favorite of all my characters, and one of the first and most memorable. <grin>

At the end of Bonesword I kill the primary villain. Not traditionally, though.

The hero, Bonesword (who has renamed himself at this point) is about to kill the villain out of vengeance, when he realizes that doing so would be denying his new found faith.

He banishes the villain from his country (an appropriate punishment when all is considered). The villain, after cursing God and rejecting one last offer of forgiveness from the hero, goes into the wilderness, where he is (literally) struck by lighting after cursing God again.

I'm not sure why I originally wanted to kill this villain, but I want the book to end with a high emotional climax, but also end somewhat darkly. So I felt that some poetic justice would be appropriate.

You would be in BIG trouble Lizzie, if you did such a despicable thing! Don't even think it! Or I'll... tickle you till you faint

Ooh, scary Airi!

I kill tons of characters. Often I write war stories, and in war, everyone can die. The greats, the littles, the random kitchen boys, everyone can die, and I want to bring that across. I want people to believe my main character can die. Usually I don't kill my main character, but I want people to be scared that I might. Because that's just realistic. I have a character in my head that I absolutely love, but I know that I'm going to kill her. I'm sad, but it just has to happen. I at least like her and I hope other people will, and it needs to be brought home that in war beloved people do die. It's not really war if only the "Red shirts" die. To me, it seems dishonest and disprespectful to portray war as somehow "safe."
As for the emotional effects on me? I'm not sure. I haven't been with these characters for very long, and while I like them they're not "family." I know when JK Rowling was writing sometimes she would have to kill a favorite character of hers, and her husband would find her huddled over the page at two in the morning, sobbing. But in her words, "In children's fiction you have to be a ruthless killer." People die. That reality shouldn't be hidden from people just because it's fiction. Then it is pretty escapist, this perfect world. I don't like books like that. Especially if they're war books.
I won't, however, kill a character just because I don't know what to do with them. That is lazy, and red-shirt-y. I'll carry them as far as I can with the standards I'm used to, then I'll push them off on the next commander. But I won't kill them.
I try to have "What would've beens" for the characters I do kill and even for the characters I transfer, future careers and families and things they would've done. It gives them a more real-ness, and makes me sadder to kill them.

I am, aren't I Aussie. * waggles eyebrows *

That is a very good idea, admittedly one I usually overlook. I also agree that war should be painted realistically (if your intent is a semi-realistic book).

Agreed. Completely.

I agree too. I love to play alternate history with my stories. In fact, I think that's why I know Darlene so well. (a dead character from Prince of Yen.) I went through that story so many times, changing just one small detail each time. Many of them involved Darlene not dying. I mean, what would have happened if Darlene didn't die? I know. <evil grin> and I killed her anyway. No wonder Janin hates me.

I haven't killed anyone off yet. But I plan to kill Loretta's grandparents in my March novel, and I killed Christine's mother, even though that took place before the story.

I recently read a really good book (I won't say what book because I'm going to give you a spoiler.) One of the main characters was absolutely adorable. I loved this character from the very beginning. And then, when she was in danger, I got really tense and full of dread. It was the strongest emotion a book has ever made in me.

Then she died at the end. I cried. My eyes were tearing up twenty minutes after I finished the book. And the next day. I still feel like crying when I think about her.

It was a really great book.

In my new pet story, I decided to be cruel. I was tired of making my characters be invincible (one of the things that really annoys me is invincible characters) and started killing them off. Not randomly, but to show the seriousness of the situation (the MC's race is the last resistance to another country who is taking over their own) and.... because I wanted to be tragic. I kill half Kai's friends, his love interest, and he himself. (except there's a catch with the last part that I can not disclose.) Of course, now my characters hate me, but I think I can deal with that.

I like it when books and movies can make me cry. (except for when no one dies, of course, if I'm crying then, something must be majorly wrong with the film/book! (like, say, someone free falls off a 25 foot cliff and walks away, that'd make me cry for the laws of physics... ) ) They make me cry because I've been able to connect/sympathize with the characters, and their pain is mine. (as creepy as that sounds.... ) Making a reader sympathize with the characters is a sign of a good book. (in my opinion, at least.)

(Wow, I used a lot of parentheses in this post.)