Oh no! I killed off a character I love!

Killing off characters is a sad but necessary part of narrative, even fairy tales kill off vast numbers of characters (although to be fair the original versions of most fair tales are certainly not the way Disney portrays them).

The problem with killing off characters is their deaths are meaningless unless you first establish an emotion connection to them, no matter how tenuous, but by then it's too late. It's far too easy to fall in love with that doomed character and try to find a way to avoid killing them. Believe me, many an author has cried over their keyboard when the time has come to dispatch a beloved character.

Some characters just don't want to die

If there is no life, there is no death.
Unless your novel's universe revolves around immortal beings then there will almost inevitably be death involved in it somewhere.
In my first book there were thousands of deaths (no exaggeration, I was feeling pretty nasty I must admit) and most of them were not an issue for me because their deaths were preordained for the plot, but I did fall a few of the characters and although I had to kill them I do regret it. They were lovely people and they wanted to live so much, but they had to die instead.

Here, unlike in real life, we can at least find a solution. No, not the infamous Dallas solution "It was all a dream" (I know, I know, it can work but Bobby Ewing ruined it for me as a child) or the alternate universe (even if Star Trek has proved it can work well), but the well written prequel.

I love a prequel, it can fill in so many gaps and explain why characters behave the way they do when you first met them (but no, just no, I could have done without Jar Jar Binks).

I order to maintain my sanity, what little of it I have left, I have found myself writing the odd mini-prequel to resurrect dead characters and let me play with them again.
If you want to meet my poor doomed characters Joe and Tam again, follow the link to a time when Se-se was young. I enjoyed getting to spend some time with them, they were so important to Se-se and it felt mean to rip them away from her but I had to get her alone.

Babel Squad's Surprise Exercise
And they never knew it was anything more than a game they played when some old friends appeared unexpectedly.


And please excuse all the TV & film references, for some reason they just floated to the top of my mind, ripe for skimming off.