Weekend Writing: Why Writers Hate to Kill Their Characters

Over the summer, I took an online writing class from New York Times-bestselling author, Karen Kingsbury, from Liberty University. I remember a lot of the information she provided, but my favorite memory of the course was a story she told her students about the emotions she feels when she has to kill off her beloved characters.

She described that she was writing and began to sob when her character died. Her husband walked into the room and noticed that she was crying.

He asked, "What's wrong?"

She whispered, "Ira [or whichever character it was] died."

His eyes became dark with fear and worry. "Do we know her from church or from school?"

She whispered through her tears, "No. She's one of my characters."

She described that his eyes rolled up clear to the ceiling. Jokingly, he said, "Well, I don't feel sorry for you. You killed her!"

I think every writer could relate to this story. We grow attached to our characters. They're our friends, but sometimes, we have to let them go. We have to follow through on the story's plot, and if our character is destined not to make it to the ending of the story, then we have to kill him/her.

(photo/Elyse Salpeter)

There's a stereotype out there that writers love to kill their characters. It's the opposite, actually. Writers hate to kill their characters because they are killing a part of themselves. The characters come from within our imaginations. We fall in love with them, their stories, and the way they interact and inspire the other characters in the story. So, of course, we hate to kill these characters.

We even hate killing off our beloved antagonists. Yes, you heard me...the "bad" guys. If the antagonist is written correctly and has a compelling story, with an even more beautiful backstory, then yes, we hate to kill off the character.

It's one of the sad elements of being a writer. We fall in love with our characters--both the good and bad ones--and then we must at one point say goodbye through an illness, a car accident, a murder, and more. We hate these goodbyes, but they must happen.

So, this post is to negate the stereotype that writers love to kill off their characters. No, we hate it. We hate saying goodbye to the beloved people we created. But, like every writer knows, it must happen...and we dread it during the writing process until we finally get to the scene.

Write on.

-KJL-