Should I Kill Off my Characters?

    Have you ever been writing and you begin to wonder if you should kill off that certain character? Then you think of how it could affect your plot and your other characters and you doubt doing it. Well today I am going to break down character deaths with a list of questions that will hopefully help you. 

Who is the Character? 

    When asking if you should kill a character, you need to ask who that character is. 

    For example, say you have a side character who doesn’t do much throughout the entire story. If you were to kill that character, it would probably be useless. Unless you used it to advance the plot or give your main character a better character arc. 

    The reason the character’s death would be useless has to do with one main thing: development. If the character doesn’t have any development, the readers won’t care if the character dies. 

    But don’t look at that and think you definitely shouldn’t kill that side character. There are a lot of cases where it could be good. It isn’t always good to kill the main character or someone the main character cares about, although sometimes it is. It really depends on your character and story. 

    Just one tip, try to avoid cliches in character deaths. Like killing the mentor or the parent just for drama. 😉

    Make sure to ask who your character is before you kill them. 

How Will it Happen? 

    How will the character die? 

    The death has to be realistic. It makes sense for a character to be killed in battle or in a fight. You can’t have your characters just falling over, dead. 

    Make the death realistic. 

    Readers need to believe that is a way this character would die. 

    So after you decide you want to kill this character, plot their fate. 😂 Keep it realistic to your genre, which leads me to the next question. 

What Genre is Your Story? 

Is it fantasy, maybe contemporary, or maybe romance? The genre of your story defines everything, including character deaths. 

If your story is contemporary, you may not have as much room to throw a death in there unless it is a main turning point in the plot. 

Whereas if your genre is fantasy, you can have a battle or a fight and kill as many characters as you want without much consequence. Just kidding 🤣, it needs to be a pretty big part of the plot too, but not as much as contemporary. 

Double check your genre, make sure the death would make sense. 

How Will it Affect Your Main Character?

    You kill that character, it will affect everyone in the story including your main character. Write down how it will change your character. How will it affect their character arc? 

    Will they be sad or angry? Will they want to get revenge? Or will they just want to sit and cry for hours? Or maybe they just ignore it? Think through how it will affect your main character. 

    In one of my projects where I killed a character, it was my main character’s grandfather. The main character went through a lot of emotions and it affected him differently because he already lost most of his family. He finally found one living relative, only to have him die. It affected him a lot. Think of all the ways death will affect your main character. 

How Will it Affect the Plot? 

    I have mentioned the plot a lot already, but I needed to add a whole section on it. 

    Your plot may not need a character death in the way. It could just seem thrown in unnecessarily. 

    Look at what your plot is so far, think about what a character’s death would do to that? Would it alter the plot a lot? 

Is it Really Necessary? 

    The final question you need to ask after all those questions is if the death is really necessary. All these questions should bring you closer to this conclusion. This is the final step before you decide to write those fateful words.

    Would adding a character death enhance the story? Or would it just seem thrown in there just to add drama? 

    In my story where the character died, it was not originally planned. I went through a lot of thought and I came to the conclusion it was necessary. It heightened the ending suspense and developed my characters. 

    And it was a great ending overall in my opinion. 

Be Prepared for Tons of Responses

    This is not officially a point in the article, but I felt the need to add it. 

    If you have people reading your story and you kill a character, be prepared for tons of responses. 

    Back when I killed that certain character (now whether or not he was a collaboration character may have had something to do with it), my friends sent me a ton of comments to go through 🤣. And certain people (I’m looking at you Allie) plotted to avenge the character. 

    Overall, it was pretty fun, despite all that. But I just wanted to give all you writers a…heads up. 😂

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    I hope this article was helpful! I have had quite a few experiences with character deaths, so I hope I was able to pass that on to you. If you have any more questions or need some more specific advice, feel free to ask in the comments below and I will get back to you as soon as possible!

    Until next time, 

~A.J. Syngrafèas