Killing Characters - good idea?

[chocolategirl74]

Hello All,

I'm several chapters into two stories - they're in different genres, but closely correlated to each other.

I'm getting to a point where I feel like I need to kill a character to advance the plot for both stories. I've been trying to write it differently, but I really think that this character needs to die. I

Have you ever done it? Is that too much for an erotica story? If this was any other fiction story I wouldn't hesitate, but I don't think I've ever read an erotic story dealing with the death of a character.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

cg74

 

[TxRad]

The first part of this thread should give you some insites from other authors. Killing charaters

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've killed off characters in several of my stories. An important supporting character in a romance series, and protagonists in two horror stories. Whether it's appropriate depends very much on the story.

 

[Hypoxia]

Slaughter them when it makes sense: tragedy, comedy, retribution, inevitability, housekeeping, boredom, finale, etc. Tear-jerking tragic deaths always play well. Divine wrath satisfies many BTB fans. And just clearing the stage of excess actors can be refreshing. Got too many extras? Sink their cruise ship. Oh, the humanity!

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I've killed of characters. In a rape story I wrote I ended up killing off the rapist. Or well he ended up killing himself over the guilt and because he loved the girl and knew she was never going to love him back especially after what he did to her.

 

[Hypoxia]

Let's see how I've eliminated characters:

* Tragic demise (heart attack, fatal disease, subway crush, war, plane crash, etc)
* Justifiable homicide (murdering a rapist and his bodyguard)
* Deliberate assassinations by political terrorists
* Global genocide (all fabrics disappear)
* Devoured by evil demons

Disease and disaster are always good fallbacks.

 

[Haulover]

There's nothing wrong with killing characters in erotica.

"Kill your darlings" has long been a catch phrase among writers.

It was first coined by William Faulkner who said, "In writing, you must kill your darlings."

Stephen King followed up by saying, “kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings” in his book On Writing.

And BTW - I would highly recommend King's "On Writing". It's not a dry how-to book. There's plenty of instructional text, but it's also a surprisingly good read.

 

[Bramblethorn]

There's nothing wrong with killing characters in erotica.

"Kill your darlings" has long been a catch phrase among writers.

It was first coined by William Faulkner who said, "In writing, you must kill your darlings."

It is very often credited to Faulkner, but he wasn't the first to give that advice. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch advised readers to "murder your darlings" in 1916, before Faulkner started publishing. https://overland.org.au/2012/07/dont-kill-your-darlings/

Note, that advice isn't specifically about killing characters - it's more about how being too much in love with one particular part of the story you're writing can detract from the story as a whole. AQC used fancy vocabulary as an example.