How Do You Kill Off Your Characters?

I was taken with a comment by Canadian writer Joy Goddard, who said she was in a funk for days after killing a character in one of her books.

I empathize.

I had to kill off a major character in my first novel because he was the son of a historical figure who’s known to have died without heirs. I actually ended up killing him twice (it’s complicated) but I hated doing it. And yes, it put me in a real funk.

On the other hand, killing off minor characters is no problem for writers.

Do you appear in a red shirt in an early scene of a Star Trek episode? You, sir or madam or otherwise, will be dead by the first commercial.

Consider too poor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet. Minor nobility caught up in the political machinations of the Danish court, William Shakespeare has them sail away to their (offstage) deaths at the hands of the English king.

In Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard's brilliant existential riff on the Hamlet story, the hapless duo spend the whole play trying to muster the strength of character to resist the end heartlessly determined for them by the playwright.

Gods that writers are, we hold the fate of any character in our hands. And like any god, we may love our creations but cannot change their fate.

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Art cred: d'Anna Christina Olsen

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