Thread: Killing off an awesome character?

I have a great character, introduced around 100 pages into the book. His name is Ewan Sowno, and he's not given incredible amounts of exposition. But I love him.

And now, for the sake of my plot, I feel that I need to kill him.

Someone has to die, and they have to mean a lot, so my mind instantly picked him. But I love him. Should I really kill off one of my favourite characters, or find a way of keeping him and using him more?

I liked Jerry Jenkins's reply to people who complained when he wrote the death of a popular character, "I didn't kill him! I found him dead."

Of course it's your call but if your gut says to axe him, then by all means do it!

My gut is telling me that I could do so much more with him, but my plot is telling me that he's got to die. As a reader, I don't like it when characters die. It's dramatic, and would make him even more memorable... but I love him!

Maybe I should kill him because he's such a good character; to give him more in the novel, I'd have to subtract attention away from my other characters. Or, I'd just end up writing more.

Give it a shot! It's not like he'll be dead for ever, you can bring him back if you have to & sacrifice someone else in his place.

The other issue is that there are few people who I can kill in his place. Sowno's perfect because he's based in the Guild. Once Freelancer's finished, I'll be writing a sequel (I have a saga planned... eight books... yep, I think ahead a lot). Most of the later adventures of John Carris won't take place in the Guild.

I think I'm going to kill him. Or maybe I'll just find him dead...

Go ahead and kill him. If you want to bring him back, write a prequel.

It's really not your choice, is it? The story determines what happens to the characters not the author.

When I decide to kill a character, it is because the story requires that in order to move forward. Sometimes that means sacrificing a really good character.

Does the story really require that this character get whacked? If not, save him for a rainy day and find someone else dead. If he has to go, then I'm with the prequel idea. Tell more of his story there. Or spin him off into short-story land.

Good luck!

I had the opposite problem - I created a character fully with the intention of killing her off. Except she wouldn't let me kill her. I'm not kidding. She just wouldn't die. And so then I had to work out how to save her after all!

"Kill him for me, Marv. Kill him good." - Wendy in Sin City

I just killed off a character in my story. She was meant to die from the start, and we had very little time together, but it was still very sad. I really hope I gave her the farewell she deserves.

I think that anyone who make any character in any story untouchable is making a big mistake. Unless the character is an immortal of some flavor the character can and will die. The story will determine if he lives or dies in the course said story.

I have a short story that I just completed my first rough draft on (intended to be a stepping stone for a later novel) and I fully intended on killing off the "annoying", "selfish" theif character in an act of momentary sense of honor for the group. But instead I chose to kill off another character at the end of that story instead even though I had already written in my mind the entire conflict between this character and another character which would have been the driving story of the novel to come. Oh well. The story made me do it. My hands were tied. I swear!

One of my biggest pet peeves is writers who can't kill their darlings. So, against all odds, they survive the epidemic, the dragon attack, the alien invasion, the zombie hoards, and even the nuclear holocaust. Those are the books I'll never read again.

So I say off with his head!

I heard a song with the line, "He's torn between his honor and the true love of his life; he prayed for both but was denied" and realized I had to kill one of my characters. She was my favorite character, but her death shaped the story quite profoundly. It simply had to be done.

Originally Posted by Walkio

I had the opposite problem - I created a character fully with the intention of killing her off. Except she wouldn't let me kill her. I'm not kidding. She just wouldn't die. And so then I had to work out how to save her after all!

This reminds me of those characters that are secretive by nature, too. It can be really difficult to unwrap their backstory because they just don't want to reveal anything.