TECH: Killing Me Softly With Your Song

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Original Posting 1 February 2009

Killing Characters

Writer's Digest, August 2005, pages 44 to 45, has an article by Sandra Dark with the title, "Life after Death." The focus is on how killing a key character can actually help your story. It starts right out with the observation that, "For both reader and writer, nothing jerks the rug out from under complacency quite like turning a key character into a corpse." But at the same time, sometimes readers don't want favorite characters to get killed. So why would you kill off an important character?

1. To add surprise. Readers like stories to surprise them, and the death of a character can raise questions that readers will want to see answered. In mysteries, obvious suspects all too often have to die. "The trick is to wield the ax (or the weapon, accident or disease of your choice) before the reader quits on you, and to make the death a pivotal point in the story."
2. To allow an entirely new track. Characters in stories are often stuck in ruts. The death of a key character often shakes up others, breaking them out of old habits and forcing them into new ways of life. Sometimes the kind of death also adds to the story or the character development.
3. To eliminate a dead end. Some characters really don't have anywhere to go. Killing them helps the writer, and turns their part in the story into a serious question. Be careful with this. You don't want to create cardboard characters just so that you can kill them. Instead, think about Stephen King -- who "populates his stories with vivid, often endearing characters, providing himself with entire villages of people to kill." By making people who will die as three-dimensional as primary characters, you raise the suspense by keeping the reader guessing as to who is going to survive.
4. To force a new mindset. Stories sometimes seemed to be running into a dead end. Killing an important character can force the writer to take a fresh look at the story. Who is the new viewpoint character? Which characters will carry the ball now?
5. To create motivation. Killing someone can give the lead character strong motivation, pushing them to do unexpected things. In this case death acts as a catalyst, pushing the protagonist into action.

Whether you're writing mysteries or any kind of story, consider whether having one or more main characters die will help push your story. Be careful with this -- it's the 900 pound gorilla of story events. But sometimes you will really want to let loose the gorilla and see how the story bounces.

Exercise? Take your work in progress, and look at the various characters. Think about what would happen to your story if one of them died. Which one would cause the most disruption and difficulty for the other characters? What kind of a death -- terrorist attack, automobile accident, medical tragedy, skiing accident, etc. -- would help the others learn something?

to touch the stars with life