: Re: Killing off a character: deciding if, when and how Killing off a character is a serious issue. Secondary characters or even extras can pass away without too much negative response from the readers

@Annie587

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A lot depends on the tone of your story.

Like you mention in your question that a criteria might be to only kill a main character if he "deserves it" because of evil deeds he's done, etc. That's good and valid IF you are trying to establish a tone where, basically, everything ends up with a happy ending, good triumphs and evil loses, and all justice is restored at the end.

On the other hand, if the point of your story is to say that there is no justice and sometimes the good guys lose, having a good guy die tragically and unfairly would advance that point.

Hamlet would have been quite a different play if in the end Hamlet had avenged his father by killing Claudius, and maybe even succeeded to the throne himself. It would have been an even more different play if in the end Hamlet had discovered that Claudius was completely innocent, it was all a mistake, and Hamlet and Claudius became best of friends and lived happily ever after. All those endings could make a perfectly good story, but they'd be completely different kinds of stories.

I've often thought that a problem with a lot of fiction is that the reader knows that the main characters are all invincible, so there is no real suspense. Like, no one watching a James Bond movie supposes for an instant that Bond is going to be killed, no matter how many bullets fly or how many things blow up. No one is on the edge of his seat wondering IF Bond is going to survive, the only question is HOW. A story in which main characters fail, even die, heightens the tension because now the reader really doesn't know if the hero will triumph in the end.

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