Killing Your Characters Is Traumatic: And It Should Be

I don’t want to kill again. It’s just too stressful. My first major kill was of a family: father and two daughters drowned in a flash flood. I got a lot of flack for that from friends and family members with small children, all of whom seemed to take it personally. Next, there was the ex-lover of a main character who died along with his wife in a fluke car accident—decapitation—that was far too bloody, I think, for the story. In general, I’ve killed off at least one character in nearly everything I’ve ever written. I mean nothing malicious by it. My latest killing, however, in my novel Dixon, Descending has shattered me. Partly because I truly love the character I killed off, and partly because I’ve been writing and revising this novel—that is, killing and rekilling my character—for nearly 15 years. I’m a bit chagrined to say, but that is the longest relationship with a man that I’ve had to date, and the old saying is right: Breaking up is hard to do. Well, killing off, is. It was hard enough to write his death the first time. I was holed up in a woodland cottage that led to a startling view of Mt. Rainier, which appeared ghostlike mid-sky each afternoon. My characters were ascending Mt. Everest, and my view of Mt. Rainier made me feel like their comrade. I hunkered into their journey and then its sorrowful aftermath and wrote breathlessly, actually panting and trembling. I completed the first draft weeping. That was more than 10 years ago, and I have to say, I have been emotional each time I’ve read that death in revision. Every time. You see, the thing about killing off a character—especially one you love—is that you will have to do it over and over as you write and revise a novel, and it will never, ever become less fraught. In fact, it shouldn’t. No one ever told me that. I liken it to having committed any infraction of rules that plagues you, so that you continually relive it, breaking it open for […]

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