The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 71 – Killing off your character doesn’t make your story good

Killing characters in a novel is fine, but there is a right way to go about it.

In Episode 71 of The Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper draw their swords and magical wands to discuss how to handle the killing of a fictional character.

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Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from Writing Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I'm Autumn. This is episode 71 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast and today we are going to discuss

Narrator (40s): if there's anything to consider when

Jesper (43s): killing off characters in your story or can you just sort of get rid of them like AM if Tom Bombadil appears into your story, can you get just get rid of it, but I know it wasn't the, you know, but my fingers would be itching to get rid of that guy. I really don't like that character.

Autumn (1m 4s): Yeah. And I think we can talk about too, I know in our first series AM you know how we chose how I chose my first time when I had a kill off a character has changed immensely since that time. So I'm going to be fun to revisit what happened the first time I realized I have to kill off a character. What am I beloved characters?

Jesper (1m 27s): Yeah. That's one of the things, you know, sometimes we can get a bit of a text to who to characterize, but uh,

Autumn (1m 33s): Oh yeah. Horrible that way. But Hey, yeah, we will for now. I mean, how are things going on your side of the ocean?

Jesper (1m 44s): Well, a, it's, it's quite good I guess, uh, as good as things can be in the middle of this covert 19 pandemic that is still terrorizing the world. Uh, I mean at the point of us recording this, uh, we're just at the end of Easter right now. Uh, so yeah, as you can imagine, it's been pretty quiet Easter holiday where like everybody else, we've just been staying at home and not much happening too, be honest. But on the other hand, that's a, that's a good thing.

Um, and also in the middle of this crisis, we, we, we've been trying to sell our house. Right.

Autumn (2m 19s): Well I'm going to ask you how that was going to buy a house showings or on hold? No, no, actually they're not.

Jesper (2m 29s): I mean, as long as you don't touch anything and to house us, nothing is going to happen. Right. I mean, as long as you, you keep your distance from the real estate agent, that's also fine. Um, so there's those showing houses. Um, but yeah, we've been trying to sell out of how, well, honestly we've been trying for more than a year now. Um, because the kids aren't going to school in another city like 15 kilometers from here. So we want to a move. They're just to get rid of the daily commute back and forth.

And also because the kids are getting older, so they want to have their own playmate play, the play time, so, or a play date or whatever you call it, with, with the, with their friends. And they actually, at least the older one is, he's old enough to go and see people on his own as long as you can get there. But the problem is that he can, from where we live now as we always have to drive him, which is quite annoying for him and because then we don't have time. So he kept not just go and visit friends as much as he likes.

So that's a big part and why we want to move. So, but we've been trying for more than a year now and uh, we've just agreed here over Easter that a, with a real estate agent that we are going to lower the price with a a hundred thousand Danish grounds. So that's about 15,000 us dollars a year. Yeah. And I think we've reached the limit now to be honest. I mean, if this is the second time, we're reducing the price with that amount.

So if it doesn't sell it now, I think we might end up pulling out of the market at least for a while and then go back to it later. I mean it's not, is not what we want to do because of the reasons I just mentioned. But there is also a limit on how cheap you're going to sell this house. Absolutely. I mean it's gotta be worth it or it's not worth it. Yeah. I mean we like 30,000 us dollars down from where we started right now. So I think, yeah, I don't wanna we don't want to go much, much further than that.

No, that's always hard. So we'll see what happens from a, it has still not a way that the price reduction has still not kicked in on the websites and stuff like that. So we'll see what happens if, if it brings any interest or not. Because again, the covert 19 pandemic is also making while it very difficult to sell a house right now or not. Yeah, I'm not a, not as much, I'm not thinking so much about people viewing houses, but more like there is so much insecurity about finances right now.

So it's a bit like people are holding back a bit. So, and I can't imagine like I know you said your, you would have to go look for a house and you might get an apartment for a while and I can't imagine doing that in a pandemic world. So I yeah, yeah, yeah. Good luck with that on all fronts. It just, it's gone from selling a house. It was already complicated enough to wow, you've got a Rubik's cube worse or a Ruby grew up, Goldstein type machine going just to do one step.

This is crazy. Yeah. But on the other hand to do remember the, you know, once we sell the house, it's probably going to be like six months before we need to leave the house. Right. So it's so it's not like we, it's going to be quite a while before we move out after it's been so good. I usually in the us S it's a very quick, it's a month or two and your,

Autumn (5m 58s): you're out. So six months

Jesper (6m 2s): you can agree anything basically is quite normal for selling a house he in in Denmark at least a one is quite normal that you will agree. Something like a five, six month checkup over time. That's quite normal.

Autumn (6m 15s): That's what that's, that's so much calmer than over here is, that's a good good. That's good. Yeah.

Jesper (6m 20s): Yeah. But you need to usually have time to find something else to live in. You need to pack all of your stuff. I mean, we don't want

Autumn (6m 26s): stress like, you know that it gets done. We're all stressed in America. Are you kidding?

Jesper (6m 34s): Yeah. It will take a nice and slow. So, but how things have been on your side as well?

Autumn (6m 39s): Well, good. As long as you ignore the outside news. I mean the U S just just crossed the threshold to the most deaths in the world. So I try not to, I stopped reading the news and AM just been working on the cabin. We go out and very rarely, but Hey, I actually finished the inside of the room that we'd been building. So I have my little kitchen area. It's all very cute and cozy and getting things, you know, really wrapped up. And now I'm just working on the outside, um, trim and some the clapboard siding and my husband built a picnic table over Easter weekend, which was very exciting.

And we cooked something outside because it was a gorgeous weather. So, and our little R little sphere of the stream and the woods and now you hear Al was at night in the spring. Peepers are out. So it's quite lovely that way. And actually if you hear any weird drumming, it's a rainy day again. And we were having a rainy Monday. So every time we go to the record, I've got this little drum being in the background. Um, but it's, it's, it's quite lovely in its own way. If it was AM not such a terrifying year, it would be just a little blissful heaven.

But I guess the outside world feels like it's burning and, but my little sphere of the woods is quite lovely. So we'll just stay here.

Jesper (7m 53s): No, that's good. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. And actually speaking of the outside world burning there, there was actually a very quick little tip I thought I could share here upfront because because of the, the whole chaos and the world, all of the big companies has basically scaled back on the advertising. So I'm hearing on almost everywhere that a running Facebook ads at the moment, it's a lot cheaper than normally.

Excellent. Some of our listeners I'm well at depending on when your listening to this of course, and what the status is of the pandemic at that point in time. We could all hope that is better of course, but if it's not, then you might want to dip your toes into some Facebook advertising right now if you have a new book to maybe publish or maybe at the time or maybe running some ads for this building or something like that, it, it's a lot cheaper for right now to the normal.

So that's it. That's a good little tips in a small ship of light in all of the darkness here a week on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, so as disgust, a few episodes to go. We were thinking, two, put a short pause together and the Facebook groups voted for it and that it should be about character development. But we also said that we were only going to create the course if we've got at least 20 sign-ups

Autumn (9m 28s): and we ended up with more than 20, so it was so excited that we're actually going to be making this course that kind of came out of nowhere and we never expected to do so we just went to the task and the task list. So we just added more tasks to our individual task lists, which of course we've never ever, ever even gotten close to the bottom of. It'll be good to do the sweating check in with a, you know, we added it and hopefully in a week or two we'll be crossing it right off hand

Jesper (10m 2s): just to get it done. Yeah, well we have the rest of our lives to get to the bottom of that task list for me. They be very long and, and successful and busy. Very, very busy. Yeah, that's true. But yeah. So we'll, we'll stop recording this, uh, this course and AM well, actually this episode will go out on the 4th of May, so we'll be done. Well actually, if everything has gone well and according to plan, those who signed up for the course should already have it in their inbox by the time and listen to this, but we see how that goes.

So it was it

Autumn (10m 41s): time traveling, sending this off into the future where we're done with the course already.

Jesper (10m 49s): Yeah, that's true. But at least we'll do everything we can to make sure that people have it be before the end of April, like we promised. Yes. Um, but maybe just us a quick recap. So in the course we will cover five different topics. Um, the first one being on cast of characters, so understanding what type of archetype characters are available and which ones your story needs. Uh, then we will talk about why you need to start with character creation rather than plot and also understanding character motivation, choosing point of view characters and then character arcs and how to tie them into the story structure.

Excellent. I can't wait a little bit of a great little course. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Anything else we need to share?

Autumn (11m 37s): Oh no, I think that's, well I had a little tip that got me excited about the email marketing course that you're a working on and I'm editing for you before we get around a recording. But I actually had a fellow author who I didn't even know was on my email recently. Am emailed me and said, ah, so I am sitting here in all of your email prowess. As I realized I need to put a little more effort in mind to make them even half as impressive. And I was like, wow, that's me.

Is that it often hear, you know, from readers, I think every author has that where they don't often always hear it from your readers every single time you said on the email. But it's always nice to hear from a compatriot and contemporary who tells you you are doing a good job in, which made me think high working on that email course script, um, for us to get that going.

Jesper (12m 26s): So that's another course on our to do list that we're making progress on and obviously we have some things to teach. So that's exciting. Yeah, that's all excellent. So all it all in due time, I think 2020 will be a good year in some way. And yeah, well at least in terms of putting out a lot of the content for teaching of the authors and helping the author authors out.

Autumn (12m 51s): So all in due time we, we'll make sure to mention it on future episodes as things gets ready. But uh, yeah, uh, Killing characters so hard. It's for it. I have to admit, I've met a few authors who, it was like second nature for them to kill off characters. But I know for me, when I was writing my first trilogy and I had that dawning realization, as the stakes got higher and higher and bad things were happening, that someone's going to die.

Someone who has to die. You can't have this Epic Fantasy quest that all these life threatening situation and no one dies. It, it feels so false. The stakes don't feel real. So someone has to die in who is terrible. I think I wrote a blog post on it that was basically the was titled that someone has to die. It was quite agonizing because I do, I loved all my characters and I went through many gyrations as I was plotting out that final book.

I mean people had died earlier, but not one of the big, big characters. Um, and trying to figure out how to do it and who was going to be that person. Yeah. It was a very tough as a new author and my first Epic Fantasy trilogy to us to figure that one out and to get to a point where I felt comfortable with it. Hmm. Well that's quite interesting because I don't have that problem. You can kill them left and right.

Yeah buddy. But it's still, there is finally a difference we found between us. I mean, I had a horrible time. I, I went through a random number generator. I was pulling names out of hat just to try to figure out which one it had to be. I love for them. It was horrible. So why did you have to kill one of them? It just didn't feel real. I always have complained that, you know, you read about these amazing question and somehow everyone makes it out alive and a third of these horrible life threatening situations.

And that's just to me, unrealistic unfeasible. I just logically somebody has a die silly character. One of the big characters, cause again I, my trilogy really has probably five or six, you know, really top tier the point of view characters and they're kind of all my little heroes and heroines. So I had to choose one of them. And it was, like I said, it was quite how I ended up getting there is funny in its own way, but I knew someone to make the stakes Real somebody's had to die.

It has to be a gut punch at some point. Those final chapters. So you, you roll the dice Indian or what? I did and I settled on a character, but honestly when I was writing the story out, I got to a scene, I'm like, this is it. This is the character that dyes. It came as I was writing it with someone I didn't even expect AM was going to die and it fit the story. And that's sort of even with that old blog post when I was writing, um, about what it was going through it, even when I was going through it, that's sorta what it ended up being is that it has to fit the story.

You, you can't, you can you random if you really need something to tell you, you can random number generated in work it in. But I know since then I've talked to other authors who you just writing and there's a point where you're like, this character dies here. You just know it. And I know, I remember talking to one author and he said, and the funny thing is I had it all plotted out and this character was going to show up in like three or four more chapters. It, it was like a point of view character. And so it was like I have to rework my entire plot to make the death happen when it felt right for it to happen because I, everything else I plotted was good.

And obviously they couldn't come back from the dead to be for their new scenes, so they had to figure that one out. But I do think, um, if your a slight pantser in your writing, there becomes a point where it's, you know, you just get to that life or death moment and usually you have your hero is make it out and just every once in a while and you're like, no, this is, this is the, this is the time that this character doesn't make it.

Jesper (17m 10s): And then you have to do it. The fallout. Yeah, for sure. But, but I agree. I mean, I don't have any problem Killing characters. I'm probably not the kindness to my characters. They would probably don't like me. I won't say my character is like me, how life is hell and my world. So, but, uh, but I do think there's a lot of truth in the fact that Killing characters should not be taken lightly. Um, there needs to be a reason on a purpose for Killing a character.

Uh, and I'm just thinking of an example and I, and I might be mistaken to be honest, because I'm not a hundred percent sure if it's true, but I did hear once that, um, Stephen King had written himself into a corner and at that, in the fact that he had way too many characters and he didn't quite know how to get all the different story arcs merged together. So he decided to blow up the town and a bunch of characters with it. And then while up, you know, you've got wind of a bunch of the storylines, but then everything could work again.

Uh, I don't know if that was him doing that or if it's just like a story about it, but at least I would say, you know, it serves us a good example to me how to not do it, but just because you did you feel like I have to many characters and I don't know what to do. Killing them for that reason is just not good enough.

Autumn (18m 32s): No, no. And I have to say, I mean really if your writing something, I'm a very deep and impactful and you want your readers to love your character as sometimes it's gotta be the one that is, no one wants to see di. And that's the way it always is tough. I think as an author you don't do as a reader to your reading and you don't want that character did I? It's always such a tragedy. I mean that's why I had um, game of Thrones. I know some people love game of Thrones because characters were dying left and right.

Just when you get attached to someone there gone. And I, it was too many for me. I have too many of my favorite characters die. I can easily just put down a book and be like, I just really for game of Thrones, I could go back and read it now because I know which characters I can stay attached to. Uh, reading it through for the first time. I still remember I picked up the first book and the series is back probably when it came out, which is what, a decade and a half ago or something. It was ages ago when I got to the end when Ned died, it was like, and I just put the book away and it took probably eight years for me to be like, I wonder what happened with that princess.

You got married to the, you know, nomadic guy. I couldn't remember names or anything and I finally went back and picked up the book again because I was curious. And then low and behold like six months later it becomes this huge thing. So, but I still never made it actually reading wise, I think past book three because I've just got so sick of it, I got to the red wedding and I was like, I'm done. I'm just done. Yeah,

Jesper (20m 8s): a bit. But this is, I mean, you do run that risk of annoying the reader way. You know it if you kill off a character, especially if it's one of their favorites, unless I mean if there is a really good reason for it, I think it's okay. Um, you, you still going to annoy some people about or some maybe they feel sad about it, but if it's like there was a really good point to this and it serves the story really well, then I think it's okay.

Um, but killing off characters are never easy in that way, but you need to be careful not to do it the wrong way.

Autumn (20m 45s): Exactly. I have received a text message from my niece who reads my books and she was said she was mad at me when she read that final book and let the one character died. So I know I chose the right character. Would I can spark hire from my niece say, how could you, but again, it's, it was important to the story, I think because it did make it more impactful. I made those final scenes and I think that's part of Killing a character. You can't just kill off somebody and the next day everyone jumps up and maybe they're angry.

It's just if they don't process it, if you don't have that, especially when you're doing the wrap up after the climax, if you don't have that tearful time, the one characters mourning that loss or you know what the worlds going to be like without those character, it helps. It helps with the grieving process, with even the reader to actually be able to say, Hey, this is important. It was important to everyone and, and we're so sorry and life's going to be forever different.

Jesper (21m 45s): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean there's, there's purpose behind this topic, right? Because on one hand you could say, uh, if the writer, for example, realized, is that a, well, okay, I don't think that as much of a purpose for this character anyway, so let me kill that character. Right? I mean, what if the character, it didn't have a purpose at the first place, what is he, what is he or she even doing there? But you shouldn't be in the story at all. But on the flip side, I would say, and I'm curious what you think about this, but I would say you can add a story or a character to the story with the purpose that you want to kill them.

Autumn (22m 28s): I think it makes sense. It does. It does. It now that I plot out more, I kind of, no, you know, if the character is not going to make it from the beginning and it's not as much of a surprise anymore because I'm no longer whipped behind the ears. I as an author and I kind of, I've kinda, you know, learned to it was like becoming a manager or you can't be best friends with your employees is doesn't matter how much you like them because you might have to fire them someday. So you always need that little arms distance. Um, no matter how much you want to hug them sometimes.

But it's the same with your characters. Sometimes, you know, they're gonna die, but that's also a problem. I mean, I've talked to a lot of other writers and they've said that if they know that character is going to die ahead of time, there kind of colder and almost crueler to them. And I've said, I've just the opposite. If I know a character is going to die, I actually spend more time like developing them and loving them and you know, there were like the glowing wonderful thing and then I kill him off. So I give them the best life possible before ending it.

But again, that can be actually a challenge for writers if they know the characters is going to die, maybe they don't want to get to attach to them. And so they don't write it quite as well as maybe they need to go.

Jesper (23m 43s): Well that's true. Yeah, I guess so that, that could be a thing actually. Uh, but I just feel like if you add a character to the story, knowing that this person is going to die, you know, if they're destined to die at some point, then it also means that the actual dying part has a role to play in the story. I mean it will tie into the main storyline somehow. Um, and it becomes very meaningful because of that. And I think some of those way it might sound, uh, you know, at face value it might sound a bit a bit weirdly.

Okay. So you add a character just to kill them, but it actually usually ends up with a very, very meaningful death that that actually plays heavy Lee on the emotions as well. So if it might be a lot better than you think to do something like that.

Autumn (24m 37s): Oh, I agree. And I think again, that almost becomes as a writer, uh, you know, we, whether or not you want to read that we create hidden subtext or a symbolic symbolism in stuff in our characters are in our themes of our novels. You know, are we creating just a simple story or is there some underlying message? It's so hard to say, but death has a big, and um, I know even though I am writing for adults and adults often read my books, I have readers as young as 13. So you are giving them tools psychology wise of how to process this.

You know, to me it shouldn't be a a shoot 'em up game type of world where we're doing, Oh what does the one with the car chases? And you know, people jump out and shoot everyone in gangster his and I don't want that type of world. I want the deaths to be um, of a sense of loss too. The other characters, I want the reader to feel that sense of loss and how to grieve, but also that, you know, they died hopefully for a cause because they believed in something not because you know, the bridge collapsed on their head.

You know, life is already crazy enough and we're always looking for a meaning of our own lives. That books where we have a beginning and an end and there is a meaning and a purpose in a storyline that we sometimes can't create a lot of our own lives. We can create that in our novels. And so the life and the depth of a character could have a purpose and that's kind of soothing in this crazy chaotic pentatonic world we live in.

Jesper (26m 10s): Yeah, I think you're right. Absolutely. But I think part of the point your making as well, at least I think it is, is also that the, the death scene itself should be an Epic one is something to me and the, OK. Then, you know, as you said, you know, the Brits fall on their head and, and they die. You know, it's like what?

Autumn (26m 31s): Yeah, the, the giants, you know, trips and squish and it's just no fun that way. No, it's going to be in the sense of loss. I can't imagine you have this incredible character is it just dies because

Jesper (26m 44s): of the giant trips will just be de, you know, so senseless, but no one wants to a senseless, it does sound quite fun for me for a tertiary character. How does that, we'll see that in some way. Yeah. I, did you ever see the a tooth 2004 movie called Troy with Brad Pitt where he played at the kidneys? I think I did. Yes. It was just like, I really, really liked that movie. I mean a Brad Pitt is bad-ass Achilles a especially a remember like there is one, this one seen in the um, in the movie where the two armies, uh, you know, they, they, they need to fight each other, but then the Kings sort of discuss between them and say, well it's a bit of stupid thing that we, all of these people are going to die so why don't we just take our two best fighters and let them fight and then uh, whoever wins wins and, and everybody else have to die.

So there are the two Kings, it greeters and AM there was this huge, like huge guy, the guy, you know who, who is the champion of the one arm and he steps out in front of the army there on his ready to fight. Like he looks like a freaking bad ass, right? So your thinking Oh shit. And then a the, I think it's Agamemnon, the other King and turn it around to the army and he calls it Kellys and then nothing happens. And he's at the way he called slate.

I, it's a bit of quite a while to know what's the movie, but I think he calls it a few times and not nothing happens. And then he tells her, I said, where, where's the Achilles? Uh, well he's probably sleeping. So somebody runs down to the beach and into a right and quite right Achilles, just sleeping in his tent. So they get him and say you need to come and fight. So he just sort of gets up and um, you know, he has, he is a warning here and everything is going in there. So he walked up and a stand in front of their army.

They're in facing this a group guy there. They'll probably like, I don't know, a hundred feet between them or something at that point. So AM this guy, he has a spirit, you're the guy and Achilles has his short sword. So this other guy, Achilles just starts running towards him, like full sprint street for him. And the other guy then takes the spear up and throws it. And just like the most cool attitude bread pit could ever make.

He, you know, he his head slightly to the side and pass us right through, right past him, like an inch past him or something. And he doesn't stop running at all. And you just do it this while in full sprint. And then when he gets to the guy, he, he jumps up and the steps, he's a short sought into the guy down the neck and then, and then he falls off that, you know, it was just like done and, and the guy's done. So yeah. And he has several of these kinds of insane scenes in this movement.

And Achilles is so freaking badass. But then I'm getting to my point now, so I love that movie and I know why Achilles has to die the way he does and all that. But getting an Aero in the heel, it just feels like this is so fricking lame, you know? And this is not an Epic death. So it was a hero that is just like more bad ass than anybody else. And it annoys me so bad.

Autumn (30m 14s): I'm going to go back and rewrite Grecian history and Achilles should die a little bit better.

Jesper (30m 20s): Yeah, I mean if he has to die, it should be in Epic death. Right. I mean this is like the whole time hero. Nobody is more bad as this guy and then he has to die by an arrow in the heel, I mean I know, I understand all of the law and all of the history in why it is so and all that good stuff. But ah,

Autumn (30m 37s): come on. This is annoying. And again, it's one that um, all these actors, all of these directors and actors have struggled with when they get to play this awesome bad-ass character and they know they have, its a written, they have to die this way. And I know there's been one scene where I think you shot a couple times in the chest and they break off. So the only one that's visible is the one who in his heel and to everyone, you know, that starts the legend that he dies because of this. And so they tried so many times. But yeah, it's, it is one of those things.

I mean I can see that with AM. I know I've watched lots of shows and my husband and I will be like, Oh, how could it end that way? And sometimes the only way for me to deal with that is to, it's like the wrap up is too sudden. So in my head I'm, I'm Writing the next scene so that I can then process the death better when it seems so meaningless. And you know, I don't want to do that with you. You go to my readers. And I think that's one reason. I mean, so many writers often fail at the wrap up very well or fail with those emotions afterwards, which are so nuanced.

You meet a lot of readers these days, they don't want the hero like AM Hercules or you know, He-Man. You know, we used to have all these shows where it was like, you know, these brute Conan the barbarian, you know, they'd go and squash people and kill people at a time and there's never any reflection. And that's not the type of Fantasy we're reading and writing right now is people want to have the reflection. They want to feel that sense of loss. And so I think that's important to give that to readers, at least in the Fantasy I write and you know, not everyone's writing that or reading that, but there's definitely a trend to have more side effects of even PTSD and these things that a people are struggling with to make sense in this world.

Jesper (32m 27s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's just, it is just important to keep everything aligned with the story that you're telling. Um, at the end of the day, that's, that's the best thing can do.

Autumn (32m 41s): So a random number generator is probably best way for, to have to choose between your favorite character as if you're like me and your way to attach to everyone and a U. So you have to find some way of killing them off. And I do tell people, if you are like me and you just absolutely adore all your characters and you don't want to see any of them die, just to remember, you control the universe and you can control where they go in there dead. And this is magic and Fantasy.

So I do AM am I my one characters? Death actually is what spawned the basis of a second trilogy that goes into the realm of the spirit realm actually in which is ends up being where all magic is from. And it creates a whole nother storyline that might not have happened if I hadn't killed off a character, especially the character I chose. So I do tell him, that's a whole another thing. And I know when we talk about character development and magic and in a lot of our courses we talk about, you know, you should answer that question of what happens when characters die?

Where do they go? It's part of the world's mythos. It's the tired of the part of the world building. So if you have the answers to that question, hopefully as a writer, it, it doesn't hurt so much to kill them off. Unless they go to the ether and just dissolve into a universe, then I guess they're going to,

Jesper (34m 7s): no, not yet. But that's true. Uh, in, in, in my own trilogy as well. Um, there was a, uh, a world For the debt as well, and went to one of the characters die. Um, he goes there, uh, and then another character actually gets to meet her love again, uh, in the realm of the debt. So, um, so, so for sure. Yeah. That's one of the advantages we have in friends to see sometime there is a realm of the debt, right. A little just like in Greek mythology with the underworld and all that stuff.

So there is not a lot,

Autumn (34m 40s): Oh yeah, there is always that other side of the coin where at least when you get to go visit them.

Jesper (34m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. But I think at the end of the day, you know, trying to let the story dictate when some, when a character dies rather than you just feeling like, yeah, I need a bit of a tension or drama in this scene, so let me kill somebody. Because that usually don't give a very good result in, at least, at least in my view. That's a bit of a lazy storytelling that stuff. But yeah. Yeah.

Narrator (35m 10s): Okay. So the next Monday we are going to share our thoughts and also a part of our process for how to handle book launches. If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn in Jesper on patreon.com/am Writing Fantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Going to stay safe out there and see you next Monday.