By A.C. Williams by @acw_author

I’ve read a lot of manuscripts in the last few years, ones that have been submitted to me as a publisher and ones that I’ve been hired to edit. While there are a lot of common themes that I’m seeing over and over again, one that keeps popping up frequently is a strange apparent need to kill your characters.

I’m totally on board with killing all your darlings, but frankly, folks, this is getting ridiculous.

Don’t get me wrong, killing a character can create meaningful change in a story. It can serve as a turning point for your protagonist. It can even affect your antagonist in many ways. But, make no mistake, killing a character is a choice.

If you choose to kill a character, it had better have an impact. It should serve a specific purpose in your story. You can’t “just kill” them.

Sometimes I see stories where characters become inconvenient, so it’s just more efficient to cut them out. Other times, authors seem to kill characters off in order to punish or redirect their protagonists. But more often than not, what I’m seeing is protagonists being killed off at the conclusion of a story in some attempt to redeem their past actions or to evoke an emotional response from readers.

May I suggest that a strategy of that sort will backfire on you?

Sure, it can be done, but it’s a huge challenge to kill a beloved character that readers have followed and cheered for from the beginning of the story. If you don’t do it right, you’ll frustrate your readers.

Or if you keep hitting your protagonist with meaningful death after meaningful death, eventually those deaths will lose their meaning.

Of course, there are examples where the death of the protagonist will serve the story, but I honestly believe those should be the exceptions to the rule, rather than the rule itself.

One of my favorite shows of all time is an anime called Rurouni Kenshin. It was later developed into a five-part live-action movie series. Spectacular story. It followed a samurai from the Meiji Revolution in Japan. He’d been tasked with assassinating important officials, and he killed so many people that by the end of the conflict he’d lost his taste for violence. He took a vow that he would never kill again.

Here’s the cultural irony of that choice:. In Japanese culture, especially at that time in history, it was considered far more honorable to commit ritual suicide. This character would have been considered more honorable to end his own life rather than to keep living, but the writer of this story hit on a concept that we don’t talk about enough:

Death is the easy way out.

When you give up your life, especially if you’re telling a story from a Christian perspective, you get a reward. To die is gain and no greater love and all that jazz, right? So for a hero or heroine to sacrifice his or her life is honestly the easiest thing they can do to solve a problem in a story.

What isn’t easy is choosing to live. A greater sacrifice is learning how to face a day full of sorrow and grief and loss and showing others how to do it too.

What’s better? To die once and save some or to keep living in order to help many? No, there’s not a right answer, and it does depend on the story and the author’s goal and the overall theme, etc. etc. etc. But don’t jump immediately to killing your characters.

Ask yourself WHY. Why does it matter that this character dies? What purpose does it serve? How does it improve the story? How does it affect the other characters or the world or the galaxy? Is death truly the only way you can make that point? Or would it serve the story better—communicate your message better—to have your character choose life?

Death happens. It’s something we all face and have to live with and have to learn from. If a character’s death is the best choice for your story, do it right. Make us care. Make us hurt. Let us feel it.

But I still hold that some of the most powerful moments in fiction are when a protagonist chooses to keep on living. Those moments show us that even though life is hard and challenging and frightening that facing down the obstacles is worth it, and if a hero in a story can do it, hey, we can too.

Award-winning author A.C. Williams is a coffee-drinking, sushi-eating, story-telling nerd who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. She’d rather be barefoot, and if she isn’t, her socks won’t match. She has authored eight novels, three novellas, three devotional books, and more flash fiction than you can shake a stick at. A senior partner at Uncommon Universes Press, she is passionate about stories and the authors who write them. Learn more about her book coaching and follow her adventures online at www.amycwilliams.com.