Day Two: Rest In Peace

Killing off characters. The first time I tried to kill off a character, I was like five or six. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I remember that I was trying to write a murder mystery that was on a farm, and all of the characters were animals. Some of which had no business being on a farm. A cat was ‘murdered’ but no body was found, and it was assumed that someone had eaten the cat. The cat, by the way, was creatively called Cat, because there were only one of each animal. Old MacDonald, after all, had a cat and a cow and a pig and a dog, but the song never said that he had more than one of any of these animals.

Short story shorter, the cat was up a tree the whole time because I was like six and didn’t know how murder worked.

The next time I tried to kill off a character, I was in middle school. I think seventh grade? I can’t remember the girl’s name to save my life, but she had black hair, blue eyes, and was probably around thirteen because I had this idea in my head that I could only write characters that were ages I had already been, so I would know what it was like. She was pushed into the ocean and drowned by this evil girl with purple eyes named Athena. I never got around to writing it, but I had in my head that she was *actually* saved by mermaids for some reason because I didn’t have the guts to actually kill her for good.

Fast forward to freshman year of high school and my first NaNoWriMo. This time, I really killed someone. It was only a hawk (albeit a telepathic hawk), but she actually died. Getting stabbed through the heart with a shard of mirror. Come to think of it, looking at some of the other stuff I wrote, I really seem to like mirror shards for some reason. Let’s pretend it has something to do with being harmed by a facet of yourself, because of mirrors and reflection, rather than the fact that I just think mirrors are scary.

It actually really upset me, because Terra was like my favorite character in that entire story. She was horribly mean to my main character and hated humans, but she stuck up for her family and I always felt a bit happier when I was writing and she was in the scene. I went to school the next day dressed all in black. I was in mourning.

Obviously, if one of the stories I’ve written is hopefully the first in a series of murder mysteries, I’ve gotten over killing my characters somewhat. It’s still hard though. Yesterday wrote a scene where I killed off Malik (That’s not a spoiler if this ends up getting published and the scene stays in. It’s like the first thing that happens.) and it was still difficult. And I don’t think it should ever stop being difficult, because part of writing is feeling.

I’m tearing up a bit, but that might be because I just put in contacts.

So this post is dedicated to all the characters I’ve killed off. Rest in peace Terra and Malik and Mordecai. Rest in peace Mrs. Prismall and Shirri and everyone Raizha killed, and anyone who I’m forgetting. I’m sure I must be forgetting someone. But rest in peace anyway.