11 Things to Consider When Killing a Major Character

'When you don't know what to do next, kill off a major character.'  That's some really bad writing advice that floats around the NaNoWriMo participant world. Yes, killing a major character unexpectedly brings change to the story. But if your story is to someday acquire readers, they will certainly feel betrayed by an abrupt major-character kill off.

Highly skilled professional writers DO kill off major characters sometimes. But they do it after much careful consideration and do so in a way readers are more likely to be able to accept. Here are some things for YOU to consider before bumping off Little Nell.

1. Is the reason for the death related to the story?
Arthur Conan Doyle once got bored enough writing his detective series that he declared an end to the series by killing off his sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. An angry public successfully demanded that Holmes be resurrected.  Since Doyle's reason for the character death had nothing to do with the story, this made it much harder to accept. A character who dies so the other characters in a story can complete their essential quest DOES have a death-reason that's story-related, and so we do accept it.

2. Is the death foreshadowed?
Everybody anticipated the death of Little Nell. And by the second half of 'Little Women', we knew that dear little Beth wasn't destined to make old bones. Foreshadowing is the technique of dropping little hints about what will happen later in the story. Foreshadowing makes a reader feel more secure, since they feel that the bad things in the story didn't hit them like a bolt out of the blue, as such things can in real life.

3. Is this the kind of story in which major characters can die?
In epic dark fantasy, no one is surprised by a few major-character deaths. In a sprightly comedy, even one major-character death will ruin the whole mood. You have to consider the type of story you are writing--- the genre, the degree of seriousness--- to see how well major-character deaths are received in stories like the one you are writing. In addition, the length of the story matters. In short stories, killing off even the main character is business as usual. In a novel, not so much. In a trilogy or longer series, killing off the main character that the reader has had so much time to fall in love with is VERY problematic.

4. Is the character good or evil?
The death of a sweet, innocent character makes us weep (unless we are the neighborhood sociopath), even if that character is the villain's daughter and the reason the villain is doing his evil. The death of a mob enforcer, no matter how likeable he is, no matter how helpful to the main character achieving his story goal, makes us think something along the lines of 'you reap what you sow'. Now, you can kill off both good and evil characters, but how you handle the deaths must be different because the readers' feelings will be different.

5. Is the character the main character or primary viewpoint character?
Main characters and primary viewpoint characters are the ones readers are most likely to identify with. In part this is because we 'know' such characters don't get killed off! So killing one of these characters is going to be much harder to do right. If your story has a main character, and a different character as the primary viewpoint character, you might be able to get by with a main character kill-off by having the primary viewpoint character have a strong enough part.

6. How many readers THINK this is the main character?
Years ago I read an otherwise-forgettable novel in which two characters, one man and one woman, seemed to share 'main character' status equally. I identified more with the woman. But at the book's climax, the woman died a horrible death which motivated the man to take revenge on the villain. I found that death an utter shock, and I did NOT care to read any future works by that author. The lesson here is to make it clear who really is the main character and who is a mere killable secondary character.

7. How many readers REALLY love the character?
I have a long history of falling in love with secondary characters. Sometimes these secondary characters just are more compelling to me than the official main character.  Sometimes the secondary character is just more compelling to certain readers--- as a character with an autism spectrum disorder is someone readers with autism spectrum disorders identify with. Or an ethnic Chinese character might attract readers of Asian ancestry.  Try to avoid killing off a character that many readers may love more than they love your main character. If you must kill, make it a death with much meaning, and make the surviving characters very sad.

8. Is the character death transcendent?   
A transcendent death. A death with meaning, in other words. Think of this scenario--- a young girl is stabbed by her would-be rapist and dies. Sordid and not at all transcendent, right? Well, what if the girl's name is Maria Goretti, and she tells her would-be rapist that she would rather die than be involved in an impure sexual act. Her attacker obligingly stabs her. Dying, the girl forgives her killer. Her saintly ways result in her becoming a saint. By the time of her canonization ceremony, her killer has repented and devoted himself to God and to a life of repentance. These facts turn the sordid, sad death into a death rich with meaning. A death with meaning is a death that readers can better accept. Now, of course, this is difficult for writers who have adopted a life-philosophy that nothing is transcendent and everything is pretty meaningless. But such writers probably have to suspend that worldview a bit when they are writing.

9. Is the character 'in friendship with God' or on the hell-bound train?
Particularly in Christian fiction, the spiritual status of the person to be killed is very important. Now, this is not the same as whether a person is 'good' or 'evil' by human standards, since in Christian teaching no one can measure up to the standard of holiness God has. A person 'in friendship with God', or 'born-again' in a more Evangelical expression, is not so much a 'good' person as he is a person who has humbled himself before God and accepted the forgiveness God offers to the human race. For the Christian reader, nothing is more troubling as when a favorite character who is clearly NOT 'in friendship with God' dies without a chance to turn to God. You don't need to write up a lengthy 'getting-born-again' scene. It can take just a word that shows the character's heart may be softening, or changing the 'bolt-from-the-blue' instant death to one in which the dying person has a chance to think about God and eternity. Just so long as your Christian readers are granted a bit of hope. [In fiction written by Neopagans and other believers in reincarnation, expressing the hope for a happier future incarnation plays a similar role in reconciling the reader to a character death.]

10. Have you considered denying the character a Happy-End rather than killing him?
Sometimes having a sad ending for a particular character's story can take the place of killing off the character. Perhaps your desire to kill off that character is really just the fact that you are sensing that a Happy-End solution is not the right thing for this character. Maybe your character needs to be defeated, damaged or saddened rather than killed.

11. If a character absolutely must die, you might diminish him.
You see this all the time in cozy murder mysteries. The guests arrive at the English country house for the weekend. The character about to get corpsed to provide a murder mystery for the sleuth is either an absolute vile, cruel monster, an old-and-suffering person, or a person who is colorless and not particularly attractive or interesting. There are also the spear-carrier or redshirt characters who exist just to get killed off to show the hero that the villain means business. These characters are never given enough screen-time that their deaths will be a heartbreak to the reader. 

So, these are the considerations I think are important to think through before killing a major character. Do you have any considerations to add to the list?

Other blog posts on the topic:
Character Death Should Be Premeditated
Go Teen Writers: How to Kill a Character
Kill the Character? Tess Gerritsen






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