I am writing a story at the moment and I want to kill of a charactor. I have tried to kill someone before and failed misrabely.

Can anyone help me?

What exactly do you need help with? Do you want help on how exactly to go about killing them? Is there some sort of emotion you want to go for? What? You should probably add a bit more information about the story in question, and the character who you want to kill.

EDIT: Maybe you need to distance yourself from your characters more. A lot of writers who see the characters as children or whatever find it harder to do what the plot calls for.

I agree with those asking for more information. Nobody can really give you any worthwhile advice on anything specific unless we actually have specifics. I’ll say this: Don’t just kill a character for shock value or because you feel like you have to. Like pretty much everything in fiction, it needs to serve some kind of purpose. What is your purpose?

I have tried to kill of other people and have not been inspired and what I have written has been sucky. I am at school but when I can find it I will post one of my attempts at murders.

Do you mean that you aren’t good at writing the deaths of your characters? Not that you can’t bring yourself to, but that you just find it difficult to?

Personally, I think that if the plot doesn’t call for this character being killed it’d be sort of unnecessary. Is the death of this character supposed to move another character’s development, does it add greater conflict with the other characters at the loss of this character? Does it move the plot forward or does it halt it?

I want to kill him because the story is in a bit of a lull and I need something shocking to spice it up

Don’t do this. You said he’s your main character, so I wouldn’t kill him off just for shock value. His death (if you do kill him, which I don’t reccomend because honestly killing off THE MAIN CHARACTER is kind of depressing and draining to read), should be more meaningful, since the reader has probably spent the most time with him.

You said he’s your main character

She said he was a main character, not the main character. I made the same mistake when I skimmed over the comment. If it actually is the main character, then I agree, that she shouldn’t kill him.

I don’t have a problem with doing things for the shock value so long as it’s more to shock the other characters than the audience.

This. I’ve found that killing characters really does help in when there’s a lull in the story because then you get to deal with all the other characters’ reactions to the death, which gives you a lot to work with and should help to move your plot along.

Jesse Pinkman character in Breaking Bad

Are you talking about Jane or the cliffhanger ending of the last season?

Wow, I did not know that…. I’m really glad they didn’t kill him. He’s so good, and the show wouldn’t have been the same without him.

I am coming in on the side of do not kill a main character because there is a lull in the action. Kill a character because that is where his path took him. For myself, I see my characters as people who have lives that existed even before my story – they are all there because a choice they made in their lives brought them into my story. If a character has made a choice that could lead to him being killed, then there is the option of letting that scenario play out. But killing a character in order to reanimate the plot is often times like doing a shot of heroin: it’ll mess with the senses for a short time, but has it fixed anything in the long term?

I admit it’s difficult to properly kill a character; one wants to have it be meaningful without making it eye-rollingly sentimental. I suppose my first question is: What is the age group of your audience? That answer helps determine how to handle the scene. If the audience is teens or adults, you can use more of the “gory” details about death than if this is for young readers.

Up above you said, “...I want it to rise to a boil and a fight scene where they are injured and go their separate ways.” So my next question: Do you want the character to die from his wounds from that fight, or does he die from something else as a consequence of setting out by himself?

Sorry if I don’t seem to be much help, but I just want to make sure we’re on the same page so I’m not giving you advice for the totally wrong scenario.

OK. Since the age range is 12+, you probably don’t need to be as vague as for younger readers. Now much of the following will also depend upon your writing style. If you have a story that utilizes alternating view points between characters – whether first person or third person – you can opt to follow the dying character so that the reader sees his last thoughts and experiences the agony of his injuries as he struggles onward. On the plus side, this can give the reader a very powerful final look at the character as he faces suffering and death all alone. On the downside, it can also become melodramatic and wangsty.

You can also go with the suggestion from one of the other members that you handle this off stage – the last living glimpse the other characters have of the dying man is him staggering away into the shadows. The pro to this is you do not have to narrate a death scene. The con is that you are missing a chance for a very powerful display of character. Also, you would have to address why his companions let him go off on his own if he’s mortally hurt. Generally, no matter how pissed people are, they don’t let comrades in arms go staggering away.

I hope this has helped you in some way. For myself, if I am killing a main character, I like to show the death. I would recommend letting the story focus on the dying character (again, depending on the narration view point of the story) as he sets off first in anger and then giving way to fear and/or determination and possibly regret. Be matter-of-fact in the descriptions and word choice; remember, this should reflect a dying man, and people rarely wax poetic as they die alone and in agony.

Good luck and I hope this was helpful.