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How to Successfully Kill a Character: The Checklist

I love killing people. Or, rather, I love killing characters. I love it when a noble characteror perhaps an ignoble one on his way to redemptiongets his grit on and sacrifices himself for someone he loves or for the larger cause. I love pulling on my own heartstrings, never mind my readers. I love the epicness a well-placed death can bring to an otherwise mundane story. Authors are always being advised to be mean to their characters. Often, that meanness involves killing them off. And even as we may bawl over our beloved characters deaths, most of us get a strange sort of fulfillment out of it. We gotta play tough and do whatever best serves the story, right? But that, of course, begs the question: Is killing off a character really the best way to serve your story? Before we answer that question, lets take a look at some reasons that may justify our decision to end a characters lifealong with some not-so-good reasons. Good Reasons to Kill a Character We can find many good reasons for snuffing even important characters, including: * It advances the plot. (Melanie in Gone With the Wind.) * It fulfills the doomed characters personal goal. (Obi-Wan in A New Hope.) * It motivates other characters. (Uncle Ben in Spider-Man.) * Its a fitting recompense for the characters actions up to this point. (Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.) * It emphasizes the theme. (Everybody in Flowers of War.) * It creates realism within the story world. (Everybody in Great Escape.) * It removes an extraneous character. (Danny in Pearl Harbor.)

Bad Reasons to Kill a Character Some less worthy reasons for doing our characters dirty include: * Shocking readers just for the sake of shocking them. (Shock value isnt without its, well, value, but not every author is Alfred Hitchcock and not every story is Psycho.) * Making readers sad just for the sake of making them sad. (An old saw says, If they cry, they buy. But readers never appreciate being tortured without good reason.) * Removing an extraneous character. (I know, I know. I just said that was a good reason. But you have to double-check this one. If the character is extraneous, then you better verify he really belongs in this story in the first place.) A Final Consideration Before You Kill a Character Now that we have a grip on what makes a character's death work within a storyand whats sure to make it failwe next have to consider what could end up being a crucial reason not to kill your character. Every character in a story should be there for a specific reason. Hes there to enact a specific function (as we discussed in recent posts about archetypes and roles). If he doesnt enact that function, then you have to question his purpose in the story. And if he does fill a role within your story, well, then ask yourself this: Whos gonna fill that role if you kill him off? Dramatica authors Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley explain: Unless the functions represented by the discontinued player reappear in another player, however, part of the storys argument will disappear at the point the original drops out. In the attempt to surprise an audience by killing off a major player, many an author has doomed an otherwise functional storyform. How to Kill a Character: A Checklist Lucky for our sadistic little souls, roles and archetypes can shift from character to character or be shared by several characters. In short: when a character dies off, his death doesnt have to mean his role will be left vacant for the rest of the story. With all this knowledge in mind, heres a quickie checklist for figuring out if you can get away with murder:

* You have scrutinized the list of good reasons to kill off a character. * You have identified one of the reasons as being present in your plot (or come up with a new good reason). * You have identified what role and archetype your character fills in your story. * You have created and positioned another character(s) to fill the hole left in your story by the doomed characters death. or * Youve ended your story in a thematically satisfying way that doesnt require the characters role to be perpetuated. Sometimes the death of a character can raise an ordinary story into something special. If you can justify a characters death, then go for it! Special may be just around the corner.

About the Author: K.M. Weiland is the author of the epic fantasy Dreamlander, the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her website Helping Writers Become Authors, her books Outlining Your Novel and Structuring Your Novel, and her instructional CD Conquering Writers Block and Summoning Inspiration. She makes her home in western Nebraska.

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