: Re: Killing the protagonist - should it be done? I am an aspiring author, but I have written several short 'test novels.' With each of those, it became increasingly clear how you have to develop

We've addressed "the protagonist continues to talk after dying, even in first person" here:

Ways for main character to influence world following their death

1st person story, but the main character will die in the end and some of the story needs to be told after his death. How to solve this problem?

It sounds like your concern is that the death of the protagonist means the absolute end of the storyline. As in, there's no room for sequels, nothing for the reader to wonder about, no way for the story to go on and on in the reader's imagination.

1) Okay, it ends. So what? Not every story has to be part of a series.

2) Only kill the main character at the end of a series. If the character dies at the end of book 10 after a lengthy arc and struggle, it's a very different feeling than if the character lives and dies in one book.

3) The series continues from the POV of another character. To take a recent modern example, both the book and the TV show of Game of Thrones feature a particular character in the first book/season who then dies shockingly about 90% of the way in. Most readers/watchers were gobsmacked because this person seemed to be one of the pivots of the tale. Other characters took up the story.

4) The Reichenbach Gambit, aka "Surprise! I'm not dead after all." Your character might appear to be dead to the other characters but in fact isn't, for whatever reason. This catapults you into the sequel, as the other characters will inevitably find out the greatly exaggerated reports.

(ETA This isn't just the "I faked my death" trope, but also might have a sci-fi component, like the Trill in Star Trek. They are a joined species, so the symbiont can take a new host and retain the memories of its previous life. So Dax, the symbiont, remembers being part of the host Curzon, and when Curzon dies and Dax is joined to a new host Jadzia, Jadzia Dax now has the memory of Dax's friendship with Sisko.)

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: No, you can only do that if you're making some sort of break or shift in narrative style. If the story switches to a dream, for instance, or if the characters enter a Fae realm or another

@Debbie451

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: If you can't boil down your novel into a logline (or "elevator pitch," which is how I learned it), then you may actually have a problem with your novel. You've provided the structure of

@Debbie451

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: "Literary criticism" and "editing feedback" are two entirely different beasts. Litcrit is about looking at an existing text and analyzing it. You look at the author's intent, you look at symbolism,

@Debbie451

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: In narration, stay in one tense. "She had green eyes" is fine, because your entire story is in the past tense — the "present-past," if that makes sense. If she had green eyes as a

: Re: Killing the protagonist - should it be done? I am an aspiring author, but I have written several short 'test novels.' With each of those, it became increasingly clear how you have to develop

More posts by @Debbie451

: No, you can only do that if you're making some sort of break or shift in narrative style. If the story switches to a dream, for instance, or if the characters enter a Fae realm or another

: If you can't boil down your novel into a logline (or "elevator pitch," which is how I learned it), then you may actually have a problem with your novel. You've provided the structure of

: "Literary criticism" and "editing feedback" are two entirely different beasts. Litcrit is about looking at an existing text and analyzing it. You look at the author's intent, you look at symbolism,

: In narration, stay in one tense. "She had green eyes" is fine, because your entire story is in the past tense — the "present-past," if that makes sense. If she had green eyes as a

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