Authors & Reviewers discussion

How do you kill off a character? whether it is a main character or a not so main character. Does it emotionally hurt you as an author to kill a character? Do you do it often?

Maybe this should be directed at Mr. George R. R. Martin, as he is the expert in this field....

On a more serious note, it SHOULD be painful and difficult to kill a character that you have seen grown and cultivated throughout your work. If it isn't difficult then you haven't done your job correctly.

Lol yes, he is the master of it.

Oh this one is very difficult... sorry Jackie. I won't say who it is but it is someone very important. And it is very, very sad. I have been working on the same chapter for a week now because it is just too fricken awful to write. And the author of game of thrones... I haven't read that yet although I have been meaning to. I saw the tv series. A little erotica but very sad.

Oh yeah, that series is crazy. Don't get attached to any characters, they aren't safe. And, NO,NO,NO are you killing someone I love????

Unfortunately... Someone I love too. And there are two more people that we love who would probably be better off as dead.

I think I know who it is. So sad, so sad

Really? Who? Add the little spoiler things. I might answer and I might not

(view spoiler)[Jesse? (hide spoiler)]

nope. He's one of those as good as dead ones and that made me sadder then the person I killed :'(

Okay, I'm glad you didn't kill him. I can't wait to see who it is. Is that wrong? lol I'm excited to see who died...

Lol. No I don't think so. It is very sad though. It has been holding up the first draft though for a very long time

Wow, I don't think I would be able to kill any of my characters.

I think I would cry the entire time. lol

I rarely.. well pretty much never cry when reading or watching something sad but this came close. Probably because I am so attached to this character. I know everything about them and I killed them in a very sad and heart-breaking way

Books are my down fall, I get attached, and then they die, or something bad happens to them. I don't think I have ever cried over a movie, I think books only.

Books are so much easier to get attached to because you are actually reading the emotions instead of seeing someone try to replicate them. It is the original thing instead of a replication/ copy

Yeah, and I read a lot of romance books, and they just make it worse. lol

They have a tendency to do that. :P

Lol

This is an interesting topic as I am trying to figure out how to kill off a character in a book that will be a spin off of The Falling series.

Not so much 'trying' as in emotionally, but the HOW I'm going to do it.

Do you do a lot of research when you're deciding to kill a character off?

Shay, I really need to read your books so I can understand what you and Jackie are talking about. ;)

You should, they are really good! She writes paranormal.

I usually just wander away from the book and do other things, write other books, work on other projects, until I am eventually forced to come back and kill them due to deadlines.
It is emotionally very distressing for the author to kill of their own character.

I'm not usually into paranormal, but I am putting The Rift on my TBR list :)

I'm going to have to do research on the disease, if that's what I choose to use, before I start writing. I can imagine its going to be difficult. I'm not too emotionally connected to this particular character as yet, but once I start writing I'm sure I will be.

Well hopefully you like it. It's fairly different from most paranormal and most YA. Ask Jackie :) Her view is probably a lot more unbiased than mine.
And if it is a disease you probably will have to research it.

I actually think it's more towards the horror genre.

Yeah, probably. I had a reader be unable to finish it because it was too creepy and she was expecting something similar to Fallen.

LOL, that is nowhere near that. The following series is more like a romance

Fallen is definitely Paranormal Romance. Mine is a lot more focused on what I like to call the "creep factor". There was a side story of romance but it wasn't mainly focused on that

Yep, two totally different books

Oh well in that case that sounds right up my alley! I love CREEP FACTOR!

Me too :) It is the best kind of factor.
Think demons and asylums... with demons

I'm going to go check it out :)

Now you know what me and Jackie are talking about XD!

I didn't find it too creepy at all. This could be because fantasy doesn't creep me out, because its fantasy

I wouldn't classify your book as horror. But that's just my opinion. I can't even figure out how to classify my own books.

When you talk above about killing a character off, is it a character from The Rift or The Deceived?

I'm thinking maybe Jesse...

I'm on narcotic so if any of this doesn't sense, that's why.

lol. Maybe. I think it creeped people out who were expecting something like Fallen.
This character is in both books but it isn't Jesse. He does end up as good as dead but it isn't him

I'm so excited to read it to see who!

It probably falls under the psychologically weird category. And I'm working on it. I may just be drawing it out since it's the last book in the series or because of the school work

Take your time :-)

I had a hard time with my last book in The Falling series. It's almost like losing good friends. I started a spin-off a few days ago, only 26 pages, and that has helped a bit. But, yeah, I think I drug it out too. Too hard to say goodbye.

Hmmm now I'm curious.

Who's the author of Fallen? I might have that book.

Lauren Kate is the author. It was eh. I think the angel part was what kept me reading.
It is so hard to part with them. I am considering spin offs just to keep them a part of my writing.

That would be cool :-) I like the falling series, it is kind of good.

My Falling series or Fallen is a series? LOL

Loren Kate's falling series. Although I love your books too

In my writing, I had killed off a character a while ago. He was a side character, but not a crucial one at the time. Now as I develop the other characters more, the one I killed off is more relevant. I didn't have a chance to develop his character when he was still "alive", so it made me miss him after I killed him off. Although, it ended up being crucial to the plot line.
When killing off a character, you typically want to stay away from main characters and sometimes even strong side characters. It'll make your reader upset and likely rate it lower. But if not killing off a character will disrupt the storyline, keep it the way it is. And yes, it's normal to be sad after you kill them off. Good luck with your writing!

One needs to consider genre. I write historical fiction, so when I've told a character's life story and he reaches the end, what else is going to happen? In my first four novels I've presided over the passing of six main characters (one book covered three generations). In my latest, a political satire, a main character is beaten to death by a mob as a metaphor for the absurdities of modern life that the book lampoons.

I killed off a main character in my published novel Darkness Forbidden, and found it really hard. They were possibly one of my favourite characters to write so to finally say goodbye was hard and I missed writing them into the sequel but their death was necessary on a number of levels. I agree with Gabriel in that it should hurt when killing off a character as you have invested so much into them. In other books I've written I've even hated saying goodbye to the evil villains!