My Thoughts on Killing Characters

I was scrolling through Pinterest this morning, you know, as one does before going to the gym. My Pinterest feed is typically cute animals, writing quotes, and ridiculously in shape people. 

One of the things I saw was a screenshot of something off of Tumblr. It was a list of ideas to get out of a writing rut. 

Guess what the first one was. Go on. I'll wait.

The very first one was 'kill someone'. At the end, someone had written that these were the best writing tips they'd ever some across. 

*deep breaths* ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

So I should explain, so you don't think I need to go to anger management classes. One of the things I hate more than anything else in writing is when writers kill characters for the sake of being brutal or for the sake of creating plot. And let's just be clear- there is difference between a character dying as part of a plot and a character dying to advance the plot.

But let's get back to this idea of killing a character because your story has stalled out. 

First, who the fuck do you think you are? George R. R. Martin? Shakespeare? 

If the answer is no (hint: it fucking is), then you should probably find a better way to move your plot than just picking a character to kill. Killing a character because you, the writer, haven't figured out what comes next, is the lazy, immature way out. 

It's the same as not knowing how (or not wanting to deal with) what naturally comes next in a scene so you knock out the main character, thus saving yourself the trouble of actually writing said scene. Suzanne Collins, I am referring to Mockingjay. 

For the sake of argument, let's say you are stuck at a point in the plot and you're not sure what to do. Maybe you had an outline you've since scrapped or maybe you're just writing because it's fun.

This is what I do. I step back. I go for a run (although I've heard walks are just as good but I'm too impatient for walks) and think about what needs to happen after the scene I can't write. I work backwards. Then I write the damn scene. Who cares if it's absolute shit? Revision exists for this precise reason.

The second option is to just skip to the next scene you know how to write. I personally can't do this because I have to go in chronological order otherwise I'd have a beginning and a end, with no middle.

I am not saying you shouldn't ever kill a character because people die. It's a fact of life so it's a fact of writing stories. There's a big damn war going on in my book right now, so yes, I am going to kill characters. But long before I got to this war, back when I was still writing the beginning of B&G I knew which characters were going to die. Their deaths will change the plot but not the overall story arc. Death isn't something that happens to the plot: it's what happens to the characters who don't die. 

I suspect those of you who may have read B&G are worried about which characters I'm going to kill in C&C. Good. You should be worried. 

But I'm not fucking Shakespeare, so I promise some characters will be alive at the end of the third book.