Killing Off Those Favorite Characters

        I've fallen in love. While that may not sound too earth-shattering, what I have to say next probably will.

        I have to kill her.
        
        Now before you run screaming from me, let me explain. I'm hard at work on my next novel. I'm actually behind where I need to be, so it's more "I'm frantically writing my next novel" than anything else, but you understand. One of the characters in my novel is a sweet woman. She's beautiful, she's funny, she's humble, loyal, has a wonderful sense of humor and a great body yet never spends any time working out. All in all, she's perfect. She's also a walking dead woman...she just doesn't know it yet. You see, I created her with the sole purpose of driving my story forward with her tragic death. My hero chooses to ride the fence in the story right now, choosing to re-act rather than take the initiative in anything. With a simple sentence, however, his entire life will change as this budding love interest bites the big one and goes into that word processor in the sky. This will be the catalyst that turns my reluctant hero into a true warrior, ready to seek vengeance. The only problem I have is that I've invested so much time into this character I can't stand the thought of killing her.

        Then I put myself in my reader's place. If I'm this crazy about her, hopefully my reader will be too. Hopefully my reader will have visions of her future with the hero. Maybe they even think they see where I'm going with it, and think they can outguess me. As a matter of fact, I'm really hoping they say, "Oh, I see what he's going to do with this. I've seen this all before." Then, when they think they have it all figured out, they turn the page and find themselves staring at a corpse. If I've done my job right, they'll be as in love with this character as I am, so the shock of her sudden demise will come out of nowhere. Anger will boil (hopefully toward the villain of the story and not toward me) and they'll furiously turn pages as they stalk the murderer with my hero, seeking their own revenge. If I've done my job properly, they've invested so much into the story they won't be able to put it down until the last page is turned.

        Creating memorable characters is what it's all about. A good writer can make you so in love with a character they feel like part of your family. A great writer can make you so in love with a character they cry during said character's death scene. But a fabulous writer takes it one step further: he lets you fall in love with a character, see a future and a "happily ever after" for them...and then proceeds to kill them right before you eyes to take the story in a whole new direction or kick it into overdrive just when you thought you knew where it was going.

        Take Stephen King for example. No character is ever safe in his books. You'll learn to care about them and feel for them. Then he'll whack them and you're stunned. How could he kill such a valuable character? Why waste time creating someone so great just to kill them off? The reason is simple: to make you feel the story. You have no idea where it's going next, and you have no idea who stands a chance of getting out of it alive.

        But just as important, remember that just killing a character isn't going to do it alone. They have to be someone the reader cares about. An unnamed pedestrian crossing the street and becoming roadkill doesn't really move the reader. An old man who's been living in that neighborhood for years taking care of orphans on the street while delivering food to a shut-in old lady who never trusted anyone before but has finally opened herself up to love with this man just as he gets hit by a Hummer doing seventy through a stop sign...that's tragic.

        And that's the kind of moment your reader remembers.