: Re: Should I Kill My Main Character? I'm an aspiring writer who has been writing stories since Kindergarten (None released). Obviously I have a lot of experience, but I'm still unsure with extremely

@Lengel543

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Everything that happens in a story should happen for a reason. And the main reason is to impress the reader.

That said, yes, you can kill your character, but only if you make it meaningful.

Character deaths in stories have two reasons: to drive the plot forward and to evoke emotions in your readers. See George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, for a masterful way of making the reader go through an emotional roller coaster mainly by use of character deaths.

To get to the point, a character's death must have meaning. Either the readers should want his death as to release him from his suffering or he should become more humane toward the end as to make the reader hope for his survival.

Also his death should come with a certain finality. It should conclude something. Don't just off him in an inglorious way like falling down the stairs. There should be a moral to the story.

I don't think you should make the readers hate the main character, especially if he's a POV character, because then they'll just drop the book.

You can, however, write an evil serial killer who is slowly losing their sanity and commits heinous murders and still have the readers like him.

Normally we look at criminal psychopaths and see only their actions. We empathize with their victims instead of them and see them as horrible inhuman beings completely different from us. We forget however that they are still human beings, guided by thoughts and emotions not unlike us. And those thoughts and emotions need not be so different from our very own.

So if you can make your readers identify to some degree with the main character, be them thoughts, emotions or actions, then you can make them like him.

If you are writing a serial killer or psychopath I recommend you the following book first: www.quantumfuture.net/store/sanity_1.PdF
It has an insane amount of information on psychopathy, sanity, mental disorders and various other related stuff.

P.S. If the link ever gets taken down or ends up broken, the book is called The Mask of Sanity, by Hervey M. Cleckley. Just search for it on google, I'm sure it's easy to find.

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