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“Romance with a body count”, sounds like the one I wrote. I did it to portray how that society viewed and marginalized a particular segment of its population, both in life and death. (ie, funeral/mortuary generally refusing to even touch the body) While gratuitous violence can definitely be fun, this can definitely cheapen because how much effort are you going to invest in a character you’re just going to kill off, especially if you’re doing a thousand of them? If you’re going for realism, any surviving characters will have a very bad case of PTSD; which is why I chose to portray two instead of a thousand in my case, figuring two still had the shock value while implying the other thousand.

Killing off characters has always been a huge problem for me because I do end up getting really attached. I really haven't had any stories (original or otherwise) where I’ve actually done the deed yet, though I know that in certain ones there should realistically be a body count. When I do finally decide to off someone (very reluctantly), I really want there to be a solid reason for it, instead of just doing it for shock value/attention, or because a character is or becomes “boring”, etc. These are reasons I’ve seen characters be bumped off in shows/books/etc, and it’s pretty transparent.

This is pretty much how any romance fanfic revolving around Sherlock Holmes or John Watson ends up being if it’s not a one-shot.

One editor told me I write romance with a body count. I suppose if I was writing detective romances, that might be good, but, sadly, I just like killing off characters.

So, let’s not pretend this is me having an epiphany… This is me procrastinating with a good question… lol. So, as I come to the end to one of the many stories I have here… The major climax that leads to the denouement and subsequent finale and goodbye is becoming a pain in the ass to write. I’ve been finding myself having trouble writing some deaths of characters that are both minor and major characters in the tale and have, hopefully, been good enough to warrant someone actually cheering for survival… It’s problematic… on every level. So, my question, since I’m going to make a wild assumption that everyone grows attached to their characters (...we’re writers, I’m pretty sure we all do this… Even Bob...)… How do you all murder your characters? Do you struggle with it? Prefer it quick and simple as the end grows near or do you prefer long, drawn out deaths? Do you find yourselves procrastinating? Or is just an easy decision, like putting toast in the toaster?

Hmm. I get very attached to mine, even the neutrals/supporting if I develop them beyond a certain point. And my leads? Nah, I don’t think I could kill them, outside flash or one-shots. (even that is rare) I prefer centering on growth and hope so true-death is rare. [my first story had the lead get resurrected a lot, so it wasn’t anything permanent] Many of my stories are slice of life epilogues, so it’s more about rebuilding after the big bad is gone. I don’t want to lessen the ‘big badness’ by new big bads to kill, just smaller bads. Deaths, messy deaths, get in the way of healing and growth. (#screwPalpy) So I am very light on deaths of named characters, I may even be surprised when I’ve started redemption arcs for demi-big bads. Even more when I see a place for them in the post saga plot that is especially fun… if I kill Dooku after all, he cannot be on the Council on Earth after the end. I’m hoping to work on my treatment of villains, but I’m terrible at killing all my characters. It’s probably a bigger weakness in my writing. Plots are problems to solve, and I like elegant solutions that minimize death and destruction. Deaths don’t cure many problems or character flaws. Sure, killing me would stop my nail biting, but that’s just an obnoxious development and has no meaning. Memorable stories have meaning. “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.” The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Well it is a good way to get rid of a boring character lol, provided you don't care if the reader cares about the death. And provided the death serves a purpose. Might jarr your reader out of the story if it comes in the middle of a kittens and rainbows WAFF fest. I can't say I've done this to boring characters though. I try not to feature the boring ones. I don't know about shock value. If you write horror or thriller I think a little dose of shock is necessary. Sometimes the intent is to just outright shock or horrify them. Gratuitous violence can be fun. Campy B horror anyone? Other times it just cheapens things so it depends on what I'm writing or reading.

I had very little problems killing off characters. Well, except for thinking up the best ways to do it.

You know, it’s a bit scary with everybody plotting cold blooded murder in here…. @CloverReef On screen vs off screen deaths, depends on the importance and severity of it. Had one story where I was going to have the main character (+2 friends) witness a mass-murder… but then I kinda realized it’d mess them up more than I wanted, so I made a compromise, rewrote the scene so they wouldn’t be where they’d see a thousand, instead, just a couple of the victims trying to escape, with the rest implied. Overall, better for the story.

I’ve killed off characters often, despite how attached I get to them. It’s often literally painful for me, but if it’s necessary for the story, I’m ruthless about it. I take Stephen King’s advice: “kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” (Which is, of course, Mr. King quoting William Faulkner: “In writing, you must kill all your darlings” who was in turn quoting Arthur Quiller-Couch: “If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” Sort of a stretch to interpret that as killing off one’s characters, but there we are. )

I grow very attached to my characters, in the sense that, even when I get detached from a story and decide to drop it, the characters haunt me for months, sometimes years to come. As we speak, Blackbird is fucking taunting me. But even though I’m so attached to them, oddly enough, I don’t have any problem killing them off. If I got it planned right, like it comes at a pivotal moment and accomplishes something important, I get excited about it. High emotions, high tensions, those are some of the easiest scenes for me to write. When I killed off a main char in Blackbird, that scene took me an hour when most of the scenes in that damn story took me weeks, sometimes months. How I kill them off varies. I like to make it dramatic and bloody, but I tend to favour what’s best for the pace of the story. I’ll only really do an off-screen death if it needs to be a mystery to the reader… or if the character and their death isn’t all that important.

Lets give Bob a red shirt, see what happens More seriously, it depends on the character. If I’ve grown attached, I will typically procrastinate in the story, making sure they’ve had a good time, before I do the deed. Method, the method, unfortunately, more depends on what I’m trying to achieve, and i generally go for simple methods too. (Shove in front a train is about the most complicated I’ll do; gunshots are relatively humane.) There was one character I took out last year, and the location was a nice suggestion from @DirtyAngel. In my current series, I tend not to depict on-screen deaths too often, I will but not often, instead typically making it out-of-sight, so it’s more of, ‘look, there’s a body!’ And while committing the deed, I’ll adjust the soundtrack on my computer, typically more sad/sorrow that helps me put me into that right frame of mind to follow through with it. My $0.02 worth.

Ugh. Phase one of my VERY LONG WORK WEEK is done. 12 hours Wednesday, 14 hours Thursday, and 14.5 hours yesterday.

Annoyance is waking up and realizing that the chapter ending you struggled for days to wrap up, will have to be gutted. Introducing a new speaking part should accomplish something.