Is it normal to go through the five stages of grief when killing off a central character?

Darn it, give me the Kleenex!

To be honest with you, Robert, I don't think there is any "normal" when it comes to writing. I think it's cute your wife got all worried about you, though.

As to your question about feeling close to our creations- I think we can get too close so that we don't see the flaws, or even the good stuff, in our writing. I have never felt so close to a character that I felt grief when killing them off (Truthfully, I've only killed one. He didn't really deserve it, but he had served his purpose in the story).

Can anyone here tell me. Do you grieve when characters you love meet an untimely demise and your literary muse can't seem to do anything about it? Does anyone else feel this close to their creations?

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This reminds me of Norman Lear. He decided the character Edith from All in the Family had to die. He called Jean Stapleton, the actress who played Edith, to reveal his plan. During the conversation he cried. Jean told him Edith was just a character. He replied "not to me."

Well, I felt for Lear when I heard that story and tonight I feel for you.

I've cried when an author killed off a character I loved. Of course killing off one of your own characters is ten times worse.

J. K. Rowling admitted that after she killed off Sirius Black, she went into the kitchen bawling and freaked out her husband.

I had plans to kill off a character early on in a manuscript. In fact, I even had an opening scene that foreshadowed his death, which showed his bullet-filled body in cyro. But as I set about writing the story, he went to being 'a body in cyro' to a beloved character. The novel got increasingly harder to write as I neared the end, knowing he was going to die horribly. Really put me in a funk.

Obiwanbeeohbee said:

Do you grieve when characters you love meet an untimely demise and your literary muse can't seem to do anything about it? Does anyone else feel this close to their creations?

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There's one character in my current WIP that I've shed actual tears over. Twice. He's not even the central character-- but he deserves a happier ending than he gets, dammit . It's not in vain, but still.

He was originally a much more minor character. But he broke my heart so much that when I couldn't save him, I at least had to make him more significant, so that it would matter more.
.

I usually go "MUAHAHAAAAAAAA" for a few minutes.

I've felt really sad when I read of a character dying. Sad enough to put the book down because I can't stand reading it.

As a writer they feel like ritual sacrifices.

I'm already at the stage where I go "Hmm, interesting emotional connection there. Nope, can't have that. She's gotta go. No, wait, we'll have him kill her, just to make it worse. Ohh... lovely" *grins*

I must be too cruel to my characters in general.

It's strange, isn't it? We do get attached to our fictional creations as we build whole worlds around them. We're their gods, really. To a degree, I think the author should be attached to her characters. She should care enough to follow them through, observe them, listen to them, not treat them like puppets.

I'd think that too much attachment only becomes a problem when you decide not to kill a character because you feel sorry for them. Being reluctant is understandable, in pertinence to the aforementioned attachment. But when the whole novel is in jeopardy, it's time to take a step back.

Whatever that means.

I guess I'm the outlier here. My characters are not real beings, although I do my best to give them literary life. If the story calls for them to be killed, I do with it with the efficiency or drama required in the story and have no trouble eating a big sandwich and slamming a beer afterward. To me, there is a difference between creating the necessary intimacy-of-person in the characters and letting that intimacy create real person-like attachments on the part of the author. Neither is worse nor better than the other, and I'd be willing to bet they both can produce equally engaging characters. I just try to keep the emotions surrounding the characters on the pages. That's because it's all about the story when writing fiction (at least to me). If the story requires the death of a character, I just worry about how to kill him/her off in the way that best serves the story.

This doesn't mean I'm not touched by the deaths of characters in the books I read. I do gain an emotional interest in the characters of these books, but that's just a testament to the skill of the authors. And the emotional responses don't outlast the story in these cases, either.

By the time I get to the end of a book I've been living with the characters too long to care. By the time I get to the copy editing phase, I want them all to die a painful death, and never bother me again.

I can get easily attached to characters in books by other writers, but I don't write those characters, or tell that story.

Obiwanbeeohbee said:

One of my central characters, one that I dearly loved was going to have to die at the end of this book. The character had run her course and there was nothing left for her to contribute as a living breathing person.

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In one case, I knew six months ahead that one of my favorite characters was going to have to take a bullet for my MC. I worried and fretted over it. And then I did it, and the grief and guilt bothered me for another two or three months. Even today, I get a little pang of regret when I think about it.

I've killed other people since, but never felt it as much.

Requiem in pacem, Mary Bell.

Absolutely.

I read somewhere that to help with the grief, one writer wrote an epilogue for each book. In the epilogue all the characters -- those that died and those that lived-- had a party, sort of like a cast party after a play's production, with all the booze and food and laughing and going over what worked and what didn't from their point of view. He said it made the killing a lot easier on him, knowing they'd be at the party when the book was done.

So far I've never had to kill off one of my MC's, thankfully. I have to admit, though, I do get pretty attached to my characters. If ever the time comes for one of them to die, I'm sure I will bawl my eyes out before being able to continue the story.

I love your idea of writing the breaking of the news. Very healing.

Obiwanbeeohbee said:

it wasn't until the rest of the characters' feelings for her came bubbling up from my subconscious that I finally realized that no death is unnecessary, when we are talking about character-driven fiction, and my character had accomplished more than I had first realized.

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That's the key right there. Everything major in your book should serve the story. Don't kill off a character just because she serves no more purpose in the story. Then her death will feel pointless. If she serves no more purpose, she can move away, or just fade into the background. Her death needs to affect your other characters -- and thus your readers -- in some important way. And it sounds like it does, so you discovered that her death makes your writing stronger.

Can anyone here tell me. Do you grieve when characters you love meet an untimely demise and your literary muse can't seem to do anything about it? Does anyone else feel this close to their creations?

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In my historical novel I got pretty teary-eyed when I wrote the death of three little boys. I knew they were going to die all along, since the outlining phase, but actually writing the scene was emotionally difficult. I can't say it sent me into a depression, but I went through a box of Kleenex. My heart still pounds a little when I re-read that part of the book, even after dozens of re-reads for revisions.

I have had a different kind of severe emotional struggle with my writing. Last April I started a book I was really excited about, and a subplot of the book involves a woman trying to divorce her husband. The husband ends up committing suicide over the divorce (and other things, too.) Shortly after I started the book, I began the process of my own divorce, and for MANY months afterward my ex-husband was threatening suicide. I was not prepared for real life to mimic my WIP in that way.

It has made finishing this book extremely difficult. Most of the time since April 2010 when I've tried to work on this book, I just can't face it. The realities of my own life are being reflected in the book in ways I did not intend, and was not prepared to deal with. I've been working on this book for over a year an a half now, and I'm still only about halfway through. I'm not giving up on it, because I really believe in it and feel it's an excellent work, the best I've ever done -- but the fact that it's taking me this long says a lot about how difficult it is for me to face sometimes. (By comparison, the historical novel took me three months to finish!)

So yeah, I've had the experience of being strongly, negatively affected by my own writing, and it involves a character's death in some respects, though it sounds like a bit of a different situation from yours. But you're not alone!

I got into a shouting match with one of my betas over this (fortunately we were not angry, just emotional, and the two of us are kind of ditzes when we're around each other).

"How could you? I can't believe you killed her! You killed her!"

"I created her! No one is more hurt by this than me! I didn't WANT to do it, how dare you suggest that! IT HAD TO BE DONE!"

tl;dr, but the title caught my eye, and scanning the thread I read this post:

jjdebenedictis said:

I've cried when an author killed off a character I loved. Of course killing off one of your own characters is ten times worse.

J. K. Rowling admitted that after she killed off Sirius Black, she went into the kitchen bawling and freaked out her husband.

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People will die in my NaNoWriMo novel. I must make note to Kill Them Now while I don't particularly care for them, and also make note not to do this at a write-in.

Libbie said:

I have had a different kind of severe emotional struggle with my writing. Last April I started a book I was really excited about, and a subplot of the book involves a woman trying to divorce her husband. The husband ends up committing suicide over the divorce (and other things, too.) Shortly after I started the book, I began the process of my own divorce, and for MANY months afterward my ex-husband was threatening suicide. I was not prepared for real life to mimic my WIP in that way.

It has made finishing this book extremely difficult. Most of the time since April 2010 when I've tried to work on this book, I just can't face it. The realities of my own life are being reflected in the book in ways I did not intend, and was not prepared to deal with. I've been working on this book for over a year an a half now, and I'm still only about halfway through. I'm not giving up on it, because I really believe in it and feel it's an excellent work, the best I've ever done -- but the fact that it's taking me this long says a lot about how difficult it is for me to face sometimes. (By comparison, the historical novel took me three months to finish!)

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

I had that happen to me, not a divorce, but a life-follows-art situation. I was working on a novel about hate crimes against Sikhs, including some kids setting fire to the Sikh place of worship. Guess what happened. I was too busy after the real fire at our Temple to finish the novel. But I have thought of writing a novel about writing a novel and having life turn into that novel.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Not only do novelists feel for their characters, but so do other artists. Puccini apparently bawled while writing the music that accompanied the death of Mimi at the end of the opera La Boheme.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

It's a mark of good writing. Someone sticking to a checklist creates bland and clinical stories; everything progresses rationally but life is not rational. Life doesn't make sense. What's "right" in a subjective sense is going to be very different than the way we think it should be.

With one story I'm working on, I feel the main character's pain as if it's my own. I've put him through the wringer in ways that are hard for me to justify to myself and it's a much better story because of it. (For example, he basically kills his lover twice-he's misled the first time and she's part of an illusion during the second, an illusion he can only break by accepting what happened in the past. That makes his triumph at the end so much more inspiring when it all comes together.)

Bleed for your art. That's what separates the mediocre from the great. It's not normal and that's precisely what makes it so powerful.

I have never killed off a major character.
I don't think I could.

And I tend not to like reading books in which one of the major characters (especially if it is the main character) is killed off.

I don't go through five stages of grief but I do cry. And worse, I cry at all the sad parts. I once read my first chapter aloud to my husband. I could hardly finish. You should have seen the look on his face.