Characters that just WON'T DIE...

[thethinker42]

Anyone ever had this problem?

I outlined the snot out of my current WIP. One character was supposed to die at roughly the halfway point. I started writing, and when I got to the spot where she was supposed to die...it just didn't work. So she was spared, and I adjusted the outline and planned to kill her off later. Again, when I got to it, the scene worked better if she didn't die. She's now slated to die in the VERY LAST FREAKING SCENE, and she better cooperate or I'll...um...I don't know. But she'd better die. (her death is important to the development of another character, as it motivates his actions in the sequel)

Has anyone ever had this problem? You outline and plan for something to happen, but the characters just WON'T cooperate?

[scarletpeaches]

This is why I don't outline. :D

Funnily enough, I've been thinking about death/grieving in novels recently but you kinda pre-empted me with this thread, although my thoughts are a bit less...well, murderous. ;)

[reenkam]

ETA: Like scarletpeaches, this is why I don't outline

But, yeah, I've had unexpected things happen. But, to me, that just means that it wasn't meant to be and I usually just accept it.

Maybe the other character isn't meant to have a sequel. Or maybe he ca have the sequel, but there's some other way to motivate him. Try thinking of some scenerios to see if they would work if your first character just refuses to die.

[Stew21]

I'm with Scarlet - I tried to outline once and no one did what I thought they should do because it didn't feel right. Maybe if she lives there is a good reason for it. You just don't know what it is yet. Go with the flow, see where you end up, maybe there is a really good reason for it that will make for a better story. If it doesn't, just tear down that bridge and wrestle her into submission.

:)

[scarletpeaches]

I'm just glad to see SOMEONE giving Lori trouble - even if it is a fictional person of her own creation. :D

[Stew21]

I'm just glad to see SOMEONE giving Lori trouble - even if it is a fictional person of her own creation. :D

actually, that its a fictional person of her own creation makes it even more fun. :)

[scarletpeaches]

The demons get you from the inside, and that's the tooth.

[DeleyanLee]

My ex and I used to collaborate. He inserted a character, Kelvir (gods help me--I still remember the name) into the story to serve a purpose, it was served, and then I wrote Kelvir going off to have the rest of his life. My ex rewrote what I'd written so Kelvir never left and joined the hero's party on its quest. Every time there was a problem for the hero, Kelvir stepped forward and solved it for him so his quest was effortless.

I hated Kelvir more than I hate my ex now--and that's saying something.

Every time I sat down to write the next chunk of text, I did something horrible to Kelvir to kill him off. Every time my ex got hold of the book, he'd rewrite it so Kelvir stole all the thunder from the agreed-upon hero. Kelvir was the cause of many fights, lemme tell you.

When we broke up, I got the full rights to the book (my world, mostly my characters and my words). Lemme tell you, one of the sweetest things I've ever enjoyed was giving that character one of the goriest deaths I've ever written as a side story and never including him in the final version of the book.

Yeah, writing can be very cathartic.

Not quite what you're talking about, but along the same lines.

[Shadow_Ferret]

Think about it, if you outline then the character knows what you have planned for them and will do anything to get out of it.

Don't outline, let the death be a surprise.

[Ava Jarvis]

Of course, even if you don't outline, sometimes the death never comes either.

Sneaky characters....

[astonwest]

That's why my outlines are always fluid and can change at will...

I have a character who went ahead and died, but now wants to come back in a future novel. That's even worse...

[Sassee]

I just give myself general ideas, not outlines. I'll be like "there's a fight coming in right around... here!" but I don't dare write the outcome of it. My characters are finicky. If they catch wind of me writing something they don't like, they'll lead me into a corner, and then I spend days figuring out how to write myself back out of it.

On the flip side of what you're trying to do, I actually intended for one of my side characters to live, but actually ended up killing her for the sake of the MC. It was a good catalyst for what came after, and it worked great, it just wasn't what I had intended.

[sunna]

I outline, but honestly I sometimes I think I do it just because it seems to inspire my characters to do the unplanned...which is almost always more interesting than what I had planned.

Sad when you have to psych out people you made up, but there it is. :)

[thethinker42]

I'm just glad to see SOMEONE giving Lori trouble - even if it is a fictional person of her own creation. :D

I'm married. There's ALWAYS someone giving me trouble.

Meanie...

[Stijn Hommes]

It's just my opinion, but I suspect you haven't really outlined what needed to be outlined. When you outline, you should get enough of an idea of the scene to make sure the death works long before you get there.

The way you tell things it's not the character not cooperating, but you finding out too late things don't work. If you work using outlines, I suggest you spend more time checking the offending scene before you hit it.

[mscelina]

Although I don't outline, I always know where I'm going when I write a story. I knew that, in order to get to my much-desired ending spot, I had to kill off a certain character at a certain time. However, my problem was just the opposite of yours: I killed him off all right, and I found that I enjoyed it SO much that I had to kill him again.

So I did. 50 pages later. Much gorier death the second time. *grin* The moral of the story? There isn't one; just consider that every once in a while it might be best to just let things happen...

[preyer]

funny, i have the opposite problem of not being able to keep character alive so i can *prevent* a sequel.

then again, sometimes it's just enough to have the other character be all like, 'ohmigawd, i thought i lost you when you fell into the acid lava pit as rabid hellhounds were biting your head!' to get the motivational effect you need. i mean, gandalf returned, eh? all the character needs is to think the other person is dead, the results are the same unless the corpse is needed for proof. when and how (or if) there's a rediscovery can produce some interesting results.

just because i kill my characters off like wheat during the russian harvest doesn't mean i *have* to, i'm just serious when i say killing characters is meant to prevent sequels. and then i add junk in there that *can* be a sequel, just with different characters, which is a very important consideration for me, not using the same exact cast.

if you don't want to kill him off, don't: you can always have the character who benefits from their supposed death still think they're gone. the way you framed your problem sounds as you need the character to die pretty late in the game anyway, imo, in that the death is needed for motivation in the *sequel*, suggesting there's really not a pressing need for the motivation to happen in the current story.

[thethinker42]

It's just my opinion, but I suspect you haven't really outlined what needed to be outlined. When you outline, you should get enough of an idea of the scene to make sure the death works long before you get there.

The way you tell things it's not the character not cooperating, but you finding out too late things don't work. If you work using outlines, I suggest you spend more time checking the offending scene before you hit it.

You'd be surprised. As I'm outlining, I work through the scene in my head, sketch it out, etc. By the time I've finished putting it in the outline, it works. Sometimes when I get to a scene in the actual story, though, the way it had played out in my head just doesn't work. It doesn't happen often...but it happens.

[ishtar'sgate]

Well, my problem was slightly different. I killed off one character in rather spectacular fashion and then resurrected the poor guy by mistake right near the end. Fortunately, the error was caught in time and corrected. One of my other characters was slated for death but I took pity on her and let her live.:D
Linnea

[Stormhawk]

Stef refuses to die. Rather, I keep killing her, but she always comes back. (It's ok, she's near-immortal and has a good sense of humour about it).

For the rest of my characters, I haven't actually had a reason to kill off any of them.

[Paichka]

Hrm. I hope this doesn't happen to me. I have a character in my WIP that NEEDS to die. She's a very nice girl, good friends with my MCs, quite important to the plot of the book...but she has to go. She's a princess, see, and if she doesn't die, her father-the-king won't have an excuse to invade in the next book.

It's a pretty gruesome death I've planned for her, too.

Hope she cooperates. :)

[ClaudiaGray]

You're probably dealing with one of two situations:

1) Your original outline doesn't match the story you really want to tell, and the character you thought was less important really is more important.

OR

2) You've gotten sidetracked.

There is a third possibility, less likely but worth considering:

3) In the middle of one book, you've found another -- i.e., your character doesn't need to take over the story you're already telling; instead, he/she needs to vault into a brand-new story in which this person is the star.

Only your gut can tell you which of these scenarios you've found. Sometimes these new character directions are, essentially, darlings that need murdering; other times, they're the greatest part of creative discovery. Think long and hard about it, consider all the options, and good luck.

[KTC]

Your problem is in outlining. Or at least in trying to adhere rigidly to your outline. Once you get into your story, toss that puppy away...or use it as a very loose guideline. I don't outline. I never will. I let the story tell itself in its own sweet time. I don't know how I would ever write to an outline. To kill a character at a certain time just because I said I would when I outlined it! Oy! If you have to outline, outline...but use it loosely...especially in cases like this. Your character knew it wasn't time. See, our characters don't give a shit about outlines.

[Gray Rose]

Well I don't outline (except in my head). I wrote this nice scene where one of the characters dies. And he does not want to die. OK, actually he would be happy to die, but some other people would rather he lived. I keep writing exercises in this character's POV, and they get more and more perverse and more and more tender, to the point where a whole alternative future exists in my world where he lives on as a happy cripple of sorts. The whole tangle is so bad that I cannot write the 'real' WIP; his death was a major plot point.
Damn.

[ClaudiaGray]

Your problem is in outlining. Or at least in trying to adhere rigidly to your outline. Once you get into your story, toss that puppy away...or use it as a very loose guideline. I don't outline. I never will. I let the story tell itself in its own sweet time. I don't know how I would ever write to an outline. To kill a character at a certain time just because I said I would when I outlined it! Oy! If you have to outline, outline...but use it loosely...especially in cases like this. Your character knew it wasn't time. See, our characters don't give a shit about outlines.

The problem is NOT necessarily in outlining. Perhaps the method works for you; perhaps it doesn't. But the author's problem is with a character that isn't cooperating with the story -- something that can happen whether you outline or not.

Once again, here's hoping this "problem" is actually an opportunity in disguise.

[HourglassMemory]

Perhaps your character didn't die because as you read the story, it made no sense to kill her.
How about you change the story, here and there, so that you can then kill her?
IF that's what you really want to do.

[Rowdymama]

For my mentoring (for-lack-of-a-better-word) "clients" who detest outlining, I have them write a summary - a short description of the story, a paragraph or a couple of paragraphs. Then, acting as a reader, I ask questions about the text, i.e., "Who is this guy and why is he here?" They keep answering my questions and slowly, the summary builds. When it gets to about 10 pages, we arrange it into scenes and narration, and when that is finished, we start the first draft. By the time that is finished, we have a much better idea where the story wants to go. With every draft, it gets clearer and clearer.

I know it is common among writers to think that because a novel is "character-driven" that the characters write the story. That isn't true. The writer writes the story. The writer controls the characters as far as the plot is concerned. I tell my characters what they need to accomplish. How they manage it (or don't), is up to them.

An outline should consist only of what needs to be accomplished. How the characters do their job is the creative part.

Just my way of working.

God Squad Member

[zornhau]

Anyone ever had this problem?

I outlined the snot out of my current WIP. One character was supposed to die at roughly the halfway point. I started writing, and when I got to the spot where she was supposed to die...it just didn't work. So she was spared, and I adjusted the outline and planned to kill her off later. Again, when I got to it, the scene worked better if she didn't die. She's now slated to die in the VERY LAST FREAKING SCENE, and she better cooperate or I'll...um...I don't know. But she'd better die. (her death is important to the development of another character, as it motivates his actions in the sequel)

Has anyone ever had this problem? You outline and plan for something to happen, but the characters just WON'T cooperate?

Strangely, this is why I outline. When I get a brainstorm, I can send a tendril into the future to see if I have a viable novel.

Regarding the actual problem. The same thing happened to David Gemmel with Druss (the old axeman simply killed anybody that the author sent against him), and turned a smart-ass high concept tail into something more epic. To hell with the sequel - you have to sell this one first.

That said, if her demise makes you uncomfortable, then it would perhaps have the same effect on the reader... not a bad thing. There will be other characters. Stick to the original plan!