Character Deaths in Your Stories

[RetroFan]

I'm currently writing an Erotic Horror story series that contains a case of spontaneous human combustion, and was thinking about how Charles Dickens in his novel 'Bleak House' famously despatched one of his characters - the drunken and unscrupulous rag and bone dealer Krook - through spontaneous human combustion, a most unusual way of killing off a character.

At the risk of sounding morbid, have you ever had characters die in your stories and if so, how did they die? Did any of them have unusual endings like the way Dickens finished off Krook? Here are some of my stories where characters died and how this happened:

Donny & Karen's Giant Leap - Karen, cystic fibrosis

Learning to Love Louise - Jane, brain aneurism

The Pervert Ghost - Colin, struck by lightning in a storm

Take Cover From Tracy - While none of the main characters die in the main part of the story, I reference at the end the story their fates in over 40 years that pass. The dysfunctional family that run the motel have only one surviving member by the present day, the youngest son Dwayne. The parents Harry and Beryl die from old age, the daughter Sheryl succumbs to lung cancer despite not smoking, while oldest son Abbot is killed and eaten by a crocodile.

 

[gordo12]

I'm currently writing an Erotic Horror story series that contains a case of spontaneous human combustion, and was thinking about how Charles Dickens in his novel 'Bleak House' famously despatched one of his characters - the drunken and unscrupulous rag and bone dealer Krook - through spontaneous human combustion, a most unusual way of killing off a character.

At the risk of sounding morbid, have you ever had characters die in your stories and if so, how did they die? Did any of them have unusual endings like the way Dickens finished off Krook? Here are some of my stories where characters died and how this happened:

Donny & Karen's Giant Leap - Karen, cystic fibrosis

Learning to Love Louise - Jane, brain aneurism

The Pervert Ghost - Colin, struck by lightning in a storm

Take Cover From Tracy - While none of the main characters die in the main part of the story, I reference at the end the story their fates in over 40 years that pass. The dysfunctional family that run the motel have only one surviving member by the present day, the youngest son Dwayne. The parents Harry and Beryl die from old age, the daughter Sheryl succumbs to lung cancer despite not smoking, while oldest son Abbot is killed and eaten by a crocodile.

Five stories altogether. I would call all of them unusual but the two that stand out.

Crash

Evil (Erotic Horror)

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yes. My Arthurian tale despatches a few. Mordant the traitor gets disembowelled by his sister, who rides back to Camlann with his head on a stake. His father Artur gets an arrow through his back and bleeds out in the snow - a very visual visceral scene of red blood on white snow with a big black horse standing near.

I have plans to write a final chapter of a romance cycle where the heroine dies. She's not ready yet, and won't let me start. But the bell tolls.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I have killed off quite a few characters, but mostly by natural causes. When you write a series that spans sixty years, it's unavoidable.

I've had two characters murdered, one shot, one hanged.

One traffic accident.

 

[NotWise]

Looking back at my list, I've killed off a few. Some of the modes of death are unusual, but I didn't invoke anything like spontaneous combustion.

Sex under studio lights: the stepfather has a heart attack while driving and plows his classic Camaro into bridge buttress.

A Valentines Day mess: In the first chapter, two thugs are killed by a supernatural cougar. In part 3, Sonia is strangled by Angelito. In the end, Angelito kills himself by diving backward off a cliff.

One Night in Gormaz: Falcona has the main male character garroted. Father Stephen is beheaded. Falcona breaks the necks and backs of the two unnamed Moorish knights.

Love is enough: Hanna and Gabby are already dead--cut apart by tommy guns as bystanders in a gangland assassination.

The Third Ring--Tamsin of Sky Village: Sandoval is crushed by a gravity device assembled by Tamsin. Tamsin chooses to die when her time is up.

The Third Ring: Keren is drowned by her jealous sister, and Tannehill sacrifices himself to build the third ring.

Oscar's Place: Tommy, Oscar, and Trish are already dead in a love triangle murder/suicide.

Edit: My list missed a few in part 4 of A Valentine's Day Mess.

 

[yowser]

My Indian forest demon (Rakshasa) snapped a chap from Leeds neck and bit down til the deed was done.

 

[TadOverdon]

I've got one dying violently in the current book.

First time ever, I think.

Dead people can't fuck.

That we know of.

 

[CyranoJ]

At the risk of sounding morbid, have you ever had characters die in your stories and if so, how did they die?

Interesting question. People die off-screen in my stories when it happens... for the most part.

• Chris in "Strange Hunger" dies by drunkenly wrapping his car around a telephone pole (described in passing).
• Gorgeous George dies by overdose in "The Game" (seen in passing in a narration).
• An untold number of masturbating p-zombies and just over six hundred "meat droids" get killed in the story being promised in "A Short Disclaimer," but not to worry: each of them is only worth about a tenth of a human life. Oh, and a few dozen mice get blown up, but hey, it's not like they're an endangered species or something.
• A whole bunch of people are whacked in "The Ballad of Little Bird," which is about a failed servile insurrection, but we only see a handful of them "in-frame" (in particular the story's main baddies, Pereste Duro and Shal Osho Sesarea, and it's the latter who gets graphically stabbed in full view, which is rare for my erotic stories). The story also ends with the MC's death.

 

[PennameWombat]

<snip>
At the risk of sounding morbid, have you ever had characters die in your stories and if so, how did they die? Did any of them have unusual endings like the way Dickens finished off Krook? <snip>

I've only once killed off core cast members. In Adrift in Space Peter and Queen Anna and others died when the secret alien satellite they were on crashed onto Earth after a group of aliens mutinied against Queen Anna. Peter had been the male MC in the "Carole" series, and they'd been kidnapped by these aliens but Carole is still alive, on another satellite.

Plenty of others have gone to meet their maker. Never spontaneous combustion.

My Geek Pride series (You Promised Me Geeks and its two sequels):
- gang member falls through roof opening and breaks his neck.
- tourists at Stonehenge murdered using killer nanobots ("invisible death cooties") controlled by terrorists; a couple of terrorists are later shot to death and a third gets his neck snapped.

City of Angels: one person dies after his life force is sucked out by a body-stealing alien energy vampire after they had sex (she usually leaves them brain dead, he was weak. Yeah, had to walk the snuff line carefully.) Her male compatriot kills a family setting their house on fire while they're asleep and poisons a couple of people. This one's in Erotic Horror.

A Tale of Two Parties: a whole bunch of ne-er-do-wells and outlaw bikers die when the abandoned church the biker gang had taken over caught fire when it was packed full during a Halloween party. The fire was caused by oil lamps falling when a sex cult in a back room was attempting to perform human sacrifice on a man and a woman during sex.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm currently writing an Erotic Horror story series that contains a case of spontaneous human combustion, and was thinking about how Charles Dickens in his novel 'Bleak House' famously despatched one of his characters - the drunken and unscrupulous rag and bone dealer Krook - through spontaneous human combustion, a most unusual way of killing off a character.

At the risk of sounding morbid, have you ever had characters die in your stories and if so, how did they die? Did any of them have unusual endings like the way Dickens finished off Krook?

One frozen to death, one from heart attack and car crash (not clear what order), one from taking a very ill-advised Halloween bet in a horror story.

Current story begins with the death of the romantic interest from dementia, so that's going to be cheerful.

 

[KeithD]

I have deaths in my stories, usually out of scene, rarely a main character (and, if a main character, the death is central to the story), and almost never violent (never that I can recall). My stories focus on arousal and entertainment--and sometimes to evoke thought. The death of a main character will almost always be of the latter variety.

I do rough. I don't do graphic gore. The roughest come in my spy and crime stories.

 

[LAHomedog]

The story I'm writing for the Mickey Spillane event begins with a slaughter. A lot of folks are going to die in it.

I have no problem killing off a character if the story calls for it.

 

[RejectReality]

Oh... the lifeforce sucked out of her until she was nothing more than a dry, brittle husk. Another oh-so-slowly crushed to death, dwelling on the ever larger bones popping and the last whistling wheeze of breath, until she's finally dropped from the magic into a boneless glob. ( Evil half sister and evil stepmother... and not a nice guy as the protagonist, obviously. Origin story for my main villain in Danica )

Fucked to death by manifestations of pure evil ( off camera ) and then she's the instrument of the other main protagonists demise, which also happens off camera. I never decided exactly how he died, but assumed it would be something twisted and sexual, which is why I didn't write it to avoid running afoul of the guidelines. The fades to black are just as effective IMO.

Camilla got melted into a puddle of goo by magic, screaming until there wasn't enough of her to make the sound. Then yanked back from whatever hell she'd been sent to into a clone body where the incalculable torment had to be contained in a human mind.

Zoraster, Archmage and wielder of Godsbane got brought low by two of his slaves and a pair of jagged chunks of wood in the throat and chest. He made sure that he didn't make a pit stop in hell before entering his clone body, but the experience wasn't much better than Camilla's.

I had a lot of nightmares when I was younger, and most of them stuck with me. I give them to characters when I want to really punch a death. Zoraster's stepmother was a nightmare of one of my friends getting slowly crushed to death in a cardboard baler, for example.

Fun times

I've written my share of peaceful and merciful deaths as well.

 

[Healwsteel]

I'm trying to figure a way to redo it but it loses all of it's luster. The story was rejected because the protagonist was seduced and killed against his will. An ancient demon lures him into a deep fantasy that eventually has him with Raquel Welch from the original Bedazzled movie.

It then cuts to an ancient room being found with a skeleton chained to the floor and his belongings, missing for 32 years, lying next to it. The skeleton isn't him. It isn't even human.

 

[jaF0]

I don't do horror/drama/tragic .... read, write, watch .... But comic, light hearted stuff can be cool.

Dracula - Dead And Loving It.
Once Bitten.
Beetlejuice.

Dead people can't fuck.

Sure they can. Lots of movies along that line. Mainstream, so they don't get explicit. In addition to the above:

Ghost.
Always.
Death Becomes Her.
High Spirits.


I've been trying to drum up support for a challenge along those lines.

 

[SimonDoom]

My erotica tends to be light-hearted, so death is unusual. But it features prominently in two stories.

People die in my tentacle sex story, Planet of the Tentacons.

Most of Earth's male population is killed in my erotic horror story, Penis Fish. So that's the conspicuous exception. It makes up for the lack of killing in my other stories.

 

[TadOverdon]

Well, okay, so Demi Moore did fuck Whoopi. Haven't seen the others...

 

[SimonDoom]

Oh, and I forgot. Some orcs died in my Hobbit-Elf sex story. Does that count?

 

[gunhilltrain]

I haven't killed off any characters yet. I once asked a similar question to yours on this forum, but I decided against the character's death.

I'm not against horror or erotic horror when it comes to reading it. However, I don't have any knack, or interest really, in writing it. The worst thing that happens to a character is usually a break-up, especially an abrupt one.

 

[jaF0]

Weekend At Woody's

Patriarch of a dungeon club croaks. Wake is set, members have him embalmed with his member at full mast. Members party hardy around him (not on him) in a royal send off orgy.

 

[Handley_Page]

I'm currently writing an Erotic Horror story series that contains a case of spontaneous human combustion, and was thinking about how Charles Dickens in his novel 'Bleak House' famously despatched one of his characters - the drunken and unscrupulous rag and bone dealer Krook - through spontaneous human combustion, a most unusual way of killing off a character.

At the risk of sounding morbid, have you ever had characters die in your stories and if so, how did they die?
.

Look at: 'The Dancing Ghost of Webster's Gore' by MelissaBaby.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Look at: 'The Dancing Ghost of Webster's Gore' by MelissaBaby.

Yeah.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Pumped full of lead, slit throat, garroted, chocked, beat to death, and poisoned, with the killer asking, "Does it hurt?" as they die. And other ways as well. One was murdered by his rape victim, in the bedroom, with a knife, with stabbings, many, many times, quickly, into a place where the sun don't shine.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Pumped full of lead, slit throat, garroted, chocked, beat to death, and poisoned, with the killer asking, "Does it hurt?" as they die. And other ways as well. One was murdered by his rape victim, in the bedroom, with a knife, with stabbings, many, many times, quickly, into a place where the sun don't shine.

I had a story in which the victim of an attempted rape pretended to "help" the guy, then she punched him in the balls. That seemed adequate.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I had a story in which the victim of an attempted rape pretended to "help" the guy, then she punched him in the balls. That seemed adequate.

Well, when you've been raped, no, no its not enough. But for the attempt, yeah adequate is about right, even Steven.