How Risky Is It To Kill Off a Main Character?

I’ll never forget the day Helen Clyde died. Actually, the day I read about it in With No One As Witness, Elizabeth George’s thirteenth Inspector Lynley novel. No one had prepared me. I was shocked, thinking Helen surely must recover. When I realized she wasn’t going to, I was angry. I loved Helen. I thought her personality was the perfect foil for Lynley.

Ms. George admits to being stunned by the response: “Helen’s death was controversial with long-time readers. They felt betrayed that I had killed off a continuing character and felt manipulated. A number of people were really upset.”

Yes, exactly. I was so upset I refused to read the sequel, What Came Before He Shot Her, which follows the story of Helen’s killer. I still haven’t read it. I don’t want to know.

I think George lost her way in the books that followed, thrusting poor Lynley into a series of romantic disasters. Happily, she focused more on Detective Barbara Havers, who is more interesting to me now than Lynley.

So why did George do it? If you want her full explanation, click here. Here’s the short version, from Goodreads:

When you’re writing a series instead of a standalone book, you have to keep opening the story up, and you don’t want to close the story down until the series itself is completed. This is why, for instance, PD James’s detective never married until her final novel prior to her death… When Lynley married Helen, it was the beginning of the closing down of his story. They had issues to deal with…. If she’d had a baby, Lynley’s story would have effectively closed down. To open it up, I had two choices: either to introduce another character into the mix or to eliminate one. I chose the second option, which was like a bomb going off in the series.

Is her explanation plausible? Yes—in theory.

Am I still upset. Yes. In the words of sci-fi novelist Janet Stilson, when a writer kills off a beloved character, “the magic carpet ride of suspended disbelief” crashes to earth.

So, how risky is it to kill off a main character?

GRR Martin once pledged to finish The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by the summer of 2020. Readers are still waiting. What happened? Did he lose interest? Here’s the explanation I read on Quora:

In a recent interview, Martin admitted that he had ‘painted himself into a corner,’ having previously killed a character that he has now realized is necessary to properly advance some aspect of the main story. Since that character is dead, he is forced to think outside the box to try to solve the problem in a satisfying way, and that solution continues to evade him.

I sympathize with GRR Martin. Somewhere in the final 25% of every novel I’ve ever written, I panic, telling myself I’ve written my characters into a corner. It will never work. I’ll have to start over. Fortunately (so far), the solution has always shown up.

A happy romantic subplot doesn’t always “close down” a series. In A Collection of Lies, the fifth book in the Kate Hamilton Mysteries, Kate and her new husband, DI Tom Mallory, are honeymooning in Devon when a local history museum asks them to trace the provenance of a bloodstained dress said to belong to a murderous Victorian lacemaker. Exactly Kate’s kind of mystery. Until the donor of the dress, a man who lives as a Victorian gentleman, is found dead in a pool of blood.

Kate and Tom’s relationship may have stabilized, but their romance is background rather than main plot. And there are plenty of twists and turns ahead.

What do you think?

All opinions welcome!