Character Deaths

The mentor sacrifices himself so our hero can become the hero he was destined to be. The best friend is murdered, angering and empowering our hero. The bad guy gets it.

But you knew all of that already.

A writer has a lot to juggle when penning a story. Is there romance? If so, who's the lucky couple? What are they like? Where do they come from? What's their history? What do they believe in? What do they fear? Who are their friends and who are their enemies? What are their motives? And, most important of all, what's the freakin' story about?!

But as you have probably deduced from the title of this post, I'm focusing on death—character death to be specific. I recently read a post by Tara Maya on character death and it got me thinking about where I stand on the topic.

Back when I was 14 and writing The Unicorn Girl, I had a strong urge to do somebody in. What can I say? To my 14 year old brain, a novel wasn't a novel without someone dying. And there are actually a lot of deaths in Unicorn Girl, but they're all minor/peripheral characters. The fact that they were dead certainly affected their fellow characters, but not me. Not really.

The first character death that I really count did have a very strong impact on me. After I'd written the scene I was filled with a strange mixture of excitement and fear. I think that was because I had never written anything like it before. And it wasn't the most pleasant way to die.

Have you bared with me this far? Cuz this is what I'm getting to.

I haven't yet killed off a major character. And there are two reasons for this.

1)   So far in two books, the story did not require a main character to stop breathing.

2)   I'm a wimp.

I'm the sort of writer who writes the story.  I didn't care that vampires were all the rage when I worked on For The Kingdom. I wasn't going to change the castle into a breading ground for vampires and have Mally turn into one. That wasn't the story that came to me, so I wasn't going to fiddle with it to reach the hype and frenzy. And by making that point, I'm also not going to kill off a main character to speed up the pace.

And about me being a wimp. I have a really hard time imagining killing of a major character. I'm so close to them! And it would upset so many people! (My mom.) This is one of the reasons that J. K. Rowling is my mentor (even though she doesn't know it).  She killed off so many major, wonderful characters, and she had a reason for each and every one of them. They made a powerful impact that—if she had decided otherwise—would have dramatically changed the story.

Death is real and it affects us in terrible and great ways. It reveals how human we are. That even in horrible grief we can still rise up and move onward. We still live.

Because death is such an explosive tool, a writer must be aware and careful when she uses it. It must successfully make its impact with the reader—because wasn't that the point? I'm a much more experienced writer now than I was at 14 and I think about character deaths a lot. I actually just might have my first major character death in my near future, but I won't type that in blood yet. Remember, I'm a wimp.

But one thing must always remain clear. A good writer's goal is to make her story as believable as possible. It must resonate with the reader. And you'll have a harder time doing that if you gloss over death like it isn't very important or knock off people when the story lags.

Character deaths are powerful, so use them well.