Kill Your Darlings: Why Primary Characters Deserve to Die

Writers abhor slaying their favorite character.

Some popular excuses include, "They've got so much left to live for! I can't kill them." Or "I just really, really like them. The reader does too. They can't die. They just can't!" After slogging through months of a draft or shedding blood during rewrites, it's easy to become attached to the people you write about. After all, that's what you want the reader to do, isn't it?

But killing off a beloved character can be the single best thing you do for them.

Death is a Shared Experience

One of the biggest challenges in fiction, and especially so for fantasy, is finding a way to connect emotionally with the reader. Dragons, castles and magic are all things of the past - so writers have to rely on things common to the human condition to make their worlds and characters something that readers want to care about.

Death is a powerful tool to make that connection. Everyone has had an experience with a loved one or friend dying. And even if they haven't, they've worried about it. There are countless, complex emotions attached to death. Fear, regret, longing, relief and anger are just some of the ripe areas to explore.

But it has to be a major character to have an impact. Think about your own life. How would you feel if a secondary character in your own life died? A distant cousin, or a friend you see three times a year? What about your father? Or your daughter?

Avoid Predictability

Even though death is a necessary part of life, readers often expect the main characters in your book to make it through in the end. Fantasy worlds are rife with dangers, but the good guys are always supposed to win in the end.

But if you remove a key cog in the middle your story, (Boromir, Lord of the Rings) it forces the reader to ask, "What the heck happens next?" And if it happens in the end, (John Coffey, The Green Mile), it's often an outcome the reader was afraid of all along, but stuck with you to see how that character might avoid that fate.

Transform Characters

People and characters are creatures of habit. They like to resist change, and it's a writer's job to show transformation and to tell a story. The death of a main character leaves a massive void that prods others to step up and fill.

And since death is such a transformative experience, it's a believable motive for change. Think of Viserys' death in Game of Thrones. That scene wasn't merely to inject justice into an otherwise ruthless world, it was done to let the reader know that Daenrys was the focus and to give her room to be free and grow into a queen.

Death Raises the Stakes

Nothing is worse than death. Period. In fantasy worlds, you win or you die. But if every single character in your book is safe from perishing, why should anyone care what happens to them?

Unless, of course, you're making a statement that a character's way of life is worse than death. That introduces a powerful dynamic, where the stakes of staying alive become just as dangerous for the character as any type of mortal peril a writer can put them in.

Steer Clear of Resurrection

One final note on death -- never ever resurrect a dead character. It feels cheap, and as if a writer is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Even the great ones do it -- but think of how different Lord of the Rings might have been if Gandalf had stayed dead. Or if Harry had truly sacrificed himself in Harry Potter. The moments when they come back to life are unemotional and unsatisfying, and water down the development of the other characters in the story.

Keep in mind, there are good and bad ways to go about killing a character. These are all good reasons to consider killing a character, but by no means touch on how to go about it.

Killing someone off for killing's sake feels hollow and unsatisfying to the reader. It's the underlying reason most writers fear offing a character -- because they feel like it will destroy them. Done without thought or purpose, it will. But a literary death, executed properly makes that great character immortal in the mind of the reader.