: Re: How to detach yourself from a character you're going to kill? So, in a WW2-ish story featuring a co-ed military, I have a female soldier who is very kind and caring. I'm setting her up to

@Steve161

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You don't detach yourself from the character. On the contrary - you let yourself feel the pain of her death, experience the loss, and you pour all of that onto the page.

When a character dies, it should matter. It should be a punch in the gut for your audience. That can only be achieved if you care about the character. If you don't care, if you've detached yourself, how do you expect the audience to care?

When I write a character's death scene, I try to evoke with the words on the page the same kind of pain I feel at the death of this character I've grown attached to. Then I spend a couple of hours in a zombie state. Then I let other characters grieve, in ways that make sense for them. It's not about me processing my grief - they've lost someone they knew, it should affect them, right? Then, the world move on, I'm writing the next in-story thing.

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