Hub: How’s the writing going?
Me: It’s not. I think I’m going to kill off (insert main character
who is annoying me here) and call it a day.
Hub: I may wrong but I think your readers might be upset,
like, really upset.
Me: But I just don’t see any other way out of this story.
Full disclosure: I haven’t killed off any of my characters
but I can see where an author can be driven to murder.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in the
short story “The Final Problem”. Why? Because he was tired of writing about
Holmes and wanted to focus on his other writing. He said Holmes “kept his mind from
better things”, which he considered his historical fiction to be. Readers were
unhappy -- understatement, one woman wrote him a letter calling him a “brute” -- and
so pressured Doyle brought Holmes back in “The Adventure of the Empty House”.
I share this story with you only because it’s common
knowledge, so hopefully no spoiler but also because Doyle brought him back so even
if it is a spoiler, it all comes out okay in the end.
True confession: I’ve read series where an author kills off
a beloved main character (a certain YA series leaps to mind, as well as a San
Diego amateur sleuth series about a psychic and a detective that I adored) and as
a reader I was, well, I’m not going to cotton ball it – I was furious and hurt
and vowed never to read these authors again! What can I say? I get emotionally
invested in characters and I can be overly dramatic sometimes.
So, while I understand the decision to kill off a character
as an author, I am also aware of the betrayal felt by the reader – yes, this
awareness has stayed my hand a couple of times. You’re welcome.
How about you, Reds, have you ever thought it was time to
kill off a protagonist? How do you feel about it as a reader?
Readers, how do you feel when an author kills off a beloved character?
