I used to think I was cursed. My favorite characters were dropping dead like flies. Eventually, it seemed like all I had to do was think, “I rather like this one,” and before I knew it, poof! There the grim reaper stood, laughing at me as he tapped his bony fingers on their shoulders, one after another.
It’s not easy to lose someone you love, fictional or not.
It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me there might be a reason why my favorite characters always die—a reason other than a curse.
Why Your Favorite Characters Always Die
It’s true that a reader’s psychology has much to do with this particular affliction. If you are prone to liking likable people—people who make you laugh, who make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, or who make you feel understood on some level—then guess what that means?
You’re human.
The thing is, authors know readers are (almost always) human. And we like to use it to our advantage whenever possible.
That’s not to say that we kill off characters willy-nilly just because we know it will mess with you. (Well, not all of us, anyway.) But it does mean that we choose our character deaths carefully, often with basic human psychology in mind.
More often than not, we want a character’s death to evoke strong emotions. Sometimes this is anger, which is useful when we want our readers to dislike our villains. Or it may be pity or empathy we want to evoke, which is often used to drive a message home, particularly a moral one. Humor is even an option when we want to highlight the utter ridiculousness of human existence.
But the one we probably seek out the most is sorrow. It is the most familiar reaction many of us have to death, and because of that, it is typically the easiest response to reliably evoke. The recipe is simple, despite the complexity of the execution:
- Create a character that your audience will connect to on a deep level. Make them care.
- Give your character, and therefore your reader, something to hope for.
- Rip it all away with a seemingly untimely (but actually very carefully timed) death.
In short, the reason why your favorite characters always die because authors set you up to care as much as possible about these characters. This ensures that, when the time comes, their deaths will mean something. There are few things worse for a writer than an unmourned character whose death was meant to be tragic.
It’s not out of spite, however, that we so often kill your favorite characters. At least, I can promise that I have never, and will never, do so. We have better reasons than that, I swear.
Why Authors Kill Beloved Characters
Arthur Conan Doyle famously tried (and ultimately failed) to kill off Sherlock Holmes in order to try and shift his career in a more “serious” literary direction. Cases like this, however, are the exception, rather than the rule.
Most of the time, we authors have other reasons in mind when we kill your favorite characters.
Redemption
Because I am drawn to certain types of flawed characters, many of my favorites have been doomed to this particular fate. Especially in fantasy stories, which are so often about good versus evil, characters who have delved too deeply into the darkness can only claw their way back into the light through sacrifice. The purpose of these deaths may be moral, but they may also be about giving a character closure. The more grievous a characters’ past actions in their life may be, the more cathartic it is when they finally balance the scales with their death. Often, it is only through a good death that these characters can find peace, whether we as readers wish to believe it or not.
Motivation
Sometimes, heroes and heroines need a little push to start something—or to finish it. Killing off a character they care about, particularly someone on whom they planned to rely in the future, can be just the sort of shove they need to show their truest colors. Making readers care about these same characters, too, increases their investment in the protagonist’s quest. This is incredibly useful for both getting an audience to cheer them on more heartily—or, to make an audience feel more conflicted when a protagonist must choose between mercy or revenge.
Conflict
A story is just an anecdote, and likely not a very interesting one at that, if it lacks conflict. Sometimes, our characters get too comfortable in their daily lives—especially in a long-running series. A surprise death not only shocks the reader but other characters as well, pushing them to react in ways we might not expect. It also offers the perfect opportunity to meditate on death in real life, which all too often strikes when we least expect it.
Grief
Art often imitates life, and vice-versa. Sometimes we writers write about death to work through our own losses, whether directly (as in a memoir) or indirectly (perhaps through fiction). Sometimes, this is a personal exercise, not meant for others to read, but many times, we publish it. Why? Because we know we are not the only ones who have loved and lost. Death is an inescapable part of life, a universal experience. Just as we write to work through our feelings about it, we publish these works in the hopes that reading through the grieving process will help others cope, too.
Poignancy
Put simply, stories tend to hit harder when death is involved. I’m not sure that it should ever be the only reason an author kills off a character, but it is certainly one reason why your favorite characters might die. The more layers of emotion a story can evoke, the more deeply it touches us as readers, and the more memorable it is likely to be. In some cases, although a death might be averted, to avoid it would be to take something away from a story, and few authors are willing to make that sacrifice. We are loving creators, but we cannot always afford to be merciful ones.
What to Do When Your Favorite Character Dies
Some of us can brush off the deaths of even our most beloved characters after just a single dampened Kleenex. But for many of us, the grieving process takes a little longer.
First and foremost, if this is you, know that it is perfectly natural to mourn the death of even a fictional character.
Even if they only live on the page, the emotions they evoke in us are real, including the sorrow we experience when we are forced to witness their passing. So take time, if you need it, to process that grief however you can. Many a great (and terrible) fanfic has been born of this moment; feel free to write one of your own. Share it if you like, or don’t. Or, draw about it. Sing about it. Do whatever makes you feel better about it.
And then, keep reading. Will more of your favorite characters die? Yes. I can almost guarantee it. But it’s okay. Life and literature go on. And, for a time at least, so will you.
The Harbinger’s Head and The Dragon’s Last Flight each deal with death and grief in very different ways. You can check out the first chapters of both for free, if you like, or head over to my free reads section for some poetry and short fiction.
