The death of a major character in a novel – readers cry, the author has a party – even Stephen King does it

A very good friend of mine is just finishing up her first novel and she chose me as one of the people who will get to read the final draft.

Not only am I very flattered by that, I’m also completely jealous that she’s done…And really excited for her … of course. I’m definitely looking forward to reading her novel. It will be my first chance to read someone else’s final draft, bring out my red pen, find everything that’s wrong with the plot, make cuts and changes, and then give it back to her, a big smile on my face, and tell her: “C’mon, you could do much better than that!”

Just kidding … again …

What made me write this post is a short text conversation my friend and I had a couple of days ago. She had already told me that one of the main characters in her novel dies. She just didn’t tell me which one. I’m a “happy ending” sort of person. And, if the ending isn’t happy, I want to know about it beforehand. I want to be ready for it. I like spoilers. I even read the spoilers for Disney movies … not kidding.

Back to our texts: I asked her to tell me who the doomed character was.

Her answer? “I absolutely cannot tell you who will die lol!! It will ruin the whole story!!!! Haha!”

Lol?!?!? Haha?!?!? How about all those exclamation points?!? Could she get any more excited or more happy? It’s positively disturbing, if you ask me. I mean … a character dies, right?

Well … she did make me smile. She also made me think of something I read in “On Writing” by Stephen King. Mr. King tells about a time, while writing “The Stand”, when he got stuck. According to the genius himself:

“I had come to a place where the straight way was lost […] the land of the writer’s block. […] It all seemed too hard, too f***king complex. […] Then one day, the answer came to me. It arrived whole and complete – gift-wrapped, you could say – in a single bright flash.

The solution to where I was stuck, I saw, could be pretty much the same as the situation that got me going – an explosion instead of a plague, but still one quick, hard slash of the Gordian knot.

I was also able to analyze what got me going again and appreciate the irony of it: I saved my book by blowing approximately half its major characters to smithereens.” (my emphasis)

So, you see, for an author, the death of a character…  or many characters if you are Stephen King and want to overdo it … can be a source of celebration, for at least three reasons.

1. You create drama … as simple as that.
2. You solve a plot that was becoming too much to handle.
3. You are the first one to know about a major plot twist. Now, you can’t wait to shock your readers and get to enjoy seeing the tears running down their faces.

As a new writer myself, I now have a new appreciation for dying or dead characters. Still, I’m soft-hearted and will try to use other literary devices to create some drama in my fiction. Believe me when I say I know much about drama!!!

As for my friend, I will wait for her to give me the manuscript. Then I will go straight to the end and try to figure out what happened. Only afterwards will I actually start reading her novel. And I will get two red pens for the edits. When I’m done, I’ll return her writing with a little note: “You know how X dies right in chapter Y, page Z. I’m sorry to say, but that was a little too obvious!”

I will get my spoiler and my revenge!!!  LOL Haha.