How to Kill a Main Character
You’ve probably heard people talk about killing their main characters and how it can be good for the story.
Unfortunately, if we don’t do it right, it can be cheesy and unsatisfying.
It’s not possible to just kill a character that’s been around for a while and have the reader feel sad about it. If it’s not done well the reader might feel it was just unnecessary.
We wouldn’t want to kill a main character just for shock factor. We should set it up in a way that makes sense for the reader even though it might be sad.
Give the death purpose.
Even though we can’t see the purpose in a death in real life most of the time, in our stories it should mostly have a purpose and we should try to bring some sort of meaning to death.
If we have a character that we’ve really developed and love and the reader loves too we need to make sure that their death has a good purpose. Make sure their death was worth it.
Our purpose shouldn’t be to have the reader feel sad about their death. There should be a fictional world reason like self-sacrifice for others or plans will not succeed otherwise type of thing.
Be careful with this type of planning. It should not be easy for the reader to say, “but he could have just done this and not have died.” Don’t leave plot holes that are more obvious. This can be considered very lazy writing.
Give more than one reason that the character died unless it is an airtight argument that there was no way around it.
Make sure no one is safe.
Keep the stakes high for the reader by making sure that no one in your world is safe.
If every main character keeps surviving every major conflict and barely escaping death this creates predictability in storytelling and eventually, that reader may become bored.
If you are able to convince the reader to be on the edge of their seat because any character could die at any moment, this would be a successful thing.
Set it up ahead of time.
You can add foreshadowing to show the reader that this was supposed to happen. Set it up, that way, if they look back they can see the signs and see how cleverly you set it up.
By making little promises to the reader and fulfilling them we add trust to our writing as well as meaning and purpose to the decisions we make.
Kill characters everyone loves.
One of the best things you can do for your story is to kill someone you love.
Make the character lovable, helpful, and maybe slightly friendly to a fault.
Someone that no one would want to hurt and then kill them.
It is probably best to have one of the main villains directly involved in this sort of death so that the reader feels ridiculous amounts of animosity towards the main villain for being responsible for killing such a great person. The more they feel like that character didn’t deserve it the better.
A surprise death can be very effective.
Good deaths don’t always have foreshadowing. Sometimes good deaths are ones we as the audience really don’t want to see happen.
When we have that feeling of, “oh no! But I loved that character!” We know we’ve done something right.
The last thing you want is for your reader to feel indifferent towards death. You either want them to feel the sting of it or the justification of it.
Make the villains do truly horrible things.
If you’re going to kill your villain make sure that they do truly horrible things to some lovable people. This allows readers to feel justified when the villain dies.
It is like the villain is getting what they deserve. Everything they have done makes this death feel like it needed to happen.
Take a break from death, but don’t break up completely.
After writing really emotional death scenes, take a break and write, watch, or read something lighter.
Writing highly emotional scenes like death scenes can be really draining. It’s important to take emotional rest.
Even watching some funny videos is helpful to just laugh for a bit.
Don’t force yourself into a state of grief unending. Take emotional breaks from it and work on something else and then come back to it.
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Don’t allow your feelings to stop you.
Sometimes we can fall in love with our character. Sometimes we like them so much we decide to let them live just because we don’t want to kill them.
Don’t do this.
If the character’s death makes sense and is necessary to make their story beautiful go ahead and allow them to pass on.
It can feel horrible but in the end, it will make sense for the story and the readers will cherish the character and their death. And I think you will feel less regret about it.
Sometimes people do have random deaths.
In real life, sadly people do pass on without warning and seemingly random at times. (I personally don’t believe this, but it seems that way for now.)
But in a story, it’s hard to do a random death because we feel like, “why are you telling this story if their death was just random?”
People can die in the story randomly at first, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Sometimes a character dies to make other characters sad and it helps start their journey, the one you are truly focusing on.
It’s okay to cry while killing your character.
Many authors describe deep emotional feelings of loss when killing a beloved character.
I don’t think that we can say 100% that this means the reader will also love the character and cry at their demise.
But this is a good sign. If you feel that deeply about your character and have done a good job of showing your reader who they are then there is a good chance that the reader will also feel emotional pain at losing the character as well.
So it is okay to feel emotional sorrow when writing a character’s death, even if it’s a villain. This is usually a good sign.
If you feel indifferent, maybe you didn’t spend enough time working on that character’s development and personality.
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That’s all for the moment.
Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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