Killing a character

Edit 3: (yep...another one) As it is still critique week (sort of) if anyone who has submitted their story to the folder wants me to run through it and highlight grammatical/general problems then please send me a note with a link to their story! I won't bite and then I can give you a more personal overview of your story

Edit 2: Critique week begins today. If you can, give any of the submitted stories a critique. Even just a few lines of pointers could really help out.

Edit: Submission folder is now open. Bring out your dead!

Hi everyone, I’m tromacom and I’m here to teach you about killing

I find there are always two problems with killing in stories. Firstly, people have a tendency to make it very melodramatic and over-the-top, which spoils it.

That’s if they even kill their characters at all…

But I don’t want to kill anyone!

I can imagine that’s most peoples’ reaction. But don’t worry; when I talk about killing a character I don’t just mean physically. It’s all to do with their goal; what they hope to achieve by the end of the story. You need to decide how the character will be affected if they don’t achieve that goal.

For example, if your character was a spy trying to stop some criminals causing WW3, he could die in one of three ways:

First, he could die physically. That’s the obvious one and also the most he has to lose, but there’s also the danger of making it melodramatic.

Secondly, he could die professionally. He could save the world but mess it up so badly that he gets fired, or he could be promoted to a position he hates.

Finally, he could die psychologically. He could be so depressed at having so much blood on his hands he could turn catatonic, or he could lose friends because they find out what he did.

Having the character lose something important to them means that the story doesn’t feel like a fairytale with a happy ending for everyone except the antagonists.

Melodrama can easily be avoided in death scene. You have to underplay it. You still describe the agonies of a difficult death, but you do so in a restrained language. The contrast between simple, almost clinic language and the intense emotions in the scene actually make it work better! This is a predicament where the ‘show don’t tell’ rule almost ceases to exist. Instead of showing a reader how people are feeling through actions (and this applies to first person as well), you tell them bluntly.

Keep passages brief if you are writing from the POV of the dying person, and place the death at the end of a scene to make the transition of POV plausible.

Deathbed speeches should be short and make no sense. Alfred Hitchcock said something like ‘I am…I…a sea of…alone’.

Now for the exercise! After all that babbling I’m sure you’re itching to throw your character off a cliff in a non-melodramatic way. I’ve got two for you. You can do both or just pick one.

The first is choosing how your character will die and writing a scene describing how they feel and what is happening etc. This can be in first or third person, but let us know what his goal was and why it was important to them.

The second is a little more difficult (I think). Write a scene where your character is dying physically for whatever reason, but write it in first person all the way up to the end. Don’t go beyond the point where they actually die!

January 23rd, workshop begins

January 30th, submission folder open

February 6th, critique week. Give some submitted stories feedback, and don’t be afraid to keep submitting

February 13th is the last day of the workshop! Overview and favourite pieces will be posted

Useful references: Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint by Nancy Kress