Killing Characters

A lot of times, avid readers will say something to authors along the lines of "Why do you always kill off the characters that everyone likes?"

Here's the answer: I don't know.

I'm more than halfway through a manuscript right now and I don't have plans for killing any beloved characters, but hey, stuff happens. Sometimes, you need the emotional devastation of killing someone for the protagonist to get motivated to do something. Or you need it to totally devastate them so that it's a struggle for them to keep going. Sometimes you just don't have a purpose for that character anymore and you kind of leave them in limbo, which is way meaner to the character than just killing them.

And sometimes, that character just wants to die.

The most difficult thing about writing to explain to someone who is not a writer is the concept that the characters, if created correctly, often have minds of their own. You might sit down and plan to write a scene a certain way and you write for a couple of hours and when you reread the scene, you realize that the scene went a completely different direction than you originally intended, just because one of your characters did something different from what you expected. 

Characters really do begin to contribute their own input (whether invited or otherwise) of how they would act or how things are going to work out.

I know, I sound crazy. But every writer out there knows exactly what I mean. The characters really do begin to control the story. 

So sometimes, it isn't up to the author whether or not a character lives. Sometimes, that character decides to die on you.

But keep this in mind when one of your favorite characters gets killed off: it hurts the author too.

Authors invest SO much time and effort into developing the story and the characters, writing it down, editing, and everything that goes into the publishing world (which is freaking scary), and often there are years of planning before a word was ever typed. So when a character dies, it hurts. It's like a close friend or relative dying. You know them so well, you know everything about them and have known them for years, and now they are dead. I know that I have had the idea for the manuscript I'm working on for at least 10 years, probably more. If after 15 or so years of knowing these characters and their stories and developing them and putting so much effort into their lives, I know I would be devastated if one of them died, and unfortunately, at least one of them probably will. It sucks. But it happens. Sometimes characters need to die to keep things realistic. 

Anyway, I hope y'all don't think I'm crazy now that I was talking about how characters have a mind of their own. Or that I just said y'all.

KMG