Writing Death

I don't like killing my characters. I try not to do it too often. Sometimes, however, it becomes necessary.

I agonized over my first death, back in Echoes. I liked that character very much. Initially I only intended to make him sick. I researched the condition and wrote enough to place him in the hospital. But it turned out I had gone too far. His illness became irreversible and his death was inevitable. I still miss him.

I ended one of my books with an unexpected death. I didn't intend to write the ending that way. I wasn't sure, actually, how I would end that book. I just wrote, and the death appeared seemingly from nowhere. I didn't much like the ending, but it worked. I decided to keep it.

I haven't killed many people in the last book of the series, but there are a few deaths. Each has a purpose. The first was suggested to me by my son. I resisted, at first, but finally saw the wisdom in it. The other two deaths were very natural outgrowths of the story and I really can't imagine it going any other way. One of my characters has a slow death, which he decides to "own." He won't let anyone else tell him how to die. It's all on his own terms. (Maybe I shouldn't use a pronoun here, but there are several "he's" in my books.) His death is actually the best I've ever written, I think.

I love to hear when my books make someone cry--because they're moving, not because they're so badly written! I often cry, too, while I write.