Once a Day Blog 10: Killing Off Your Main Character and Any Recommendations for Blog Ideas? - Comments

@ Lark Dresden.
I definitely agree with that. I bet it was an interesting decision for authors to make a decision like that and kill off their main character like that in actual published novels. :)

@ cruciatus.
I see you have a good point their. I agree that sometimes killing off the main character gives the readers a better understanding to what the story is about. Usually in most stories, the main character is like a sort of "safety net" for the readers cause they know nothing's gonna happen to them, but when the main characters are on edge, that usually takes readers (or watchers in certain television programs) an unstable grounding and when they have unstable grounding, that brings opportunity to take in the story from a different perspective. :)

I definitely think it's fine to kill off your main character if there's a purpose behind you. You just have to make sure that there's a strong enough attachment to another characters so readers switch over easily and don't feel jipped. There's a show I watched/watch where the (beautiful, wonderful, amazing) lead character gets killed in the third episode. From there, the story builds up around his friends and how they are following it.

I've never done it, but I've considered it before for sure. Plus, I've read published novels where it happens - some are more successful than others, definitely.

I've killed my main characters off several times. At this point, they all know they're not safe.

In all seriousness, though, sometimes that's what the story calls for. Not every hero survives in real life, it shouldn't be that way in good fiction, either.