Penned To Death

On The Red Carpet reveals that J.K. Rowling almost knocked off the red headed best friend of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley.  Why?  Out of sheer spite, she says!  She was in a "bad place" in her life, and I guess killing a character was one way she considered easing the stress.

Stephen King has been known to kill more than a few major characters.  But his reasoning is a bit different.  I can't think of a time King ever revealed he killed off a character (or even thought about it) because he was in a foul mood.

Why a writer chooses to kill off a character may not matter much -- unless you're actually a character in the novel!  Check out Stranger Than Fiction.  The author is in an incredible position with the power to let characters live or die.  But WHY?  What causes writers to snuff out some of our favorite characters?

King once said that he had fully planned to ink out Paul Sheldon in Misery.  But, Sheldon proved to be stronger than he expected.  He couldn't do it!  The deaths of several main characters in The Stand occur for quite a different reason.  King says he was out on a walk when he realized that his problem was that the novel had become overcrowded. 

So here's Sheldon lives on because he's "stronger than expected" . . . but a few favorites in The Stand are pushing up daisies because of overcrowding!  Then there are those characters who, but they just keep coming back.  Jake Chambers comes to mind, and Flagg. 

King once said that he planned to kill the whole crew in The Shining.  He didn't, and like Sheldon, Danny seems to have proved stronger than the writer expected.  Thus Danny can shine on.

Sometimes a character dies in the novel, but lives on in the movies, such as occurs in Cujo.  Did you know the Jenny lived on in Forrest Gump?  Yep, Groom said that he didn't like the change.  In fact, Groom stubbornly chose to stick with the continuity of the book version when writing Gump and Co.  Or, in reverse, characters die in the movie who live on in the book.  Case in point, The Mist!

Often a story revolves around a characters death; they didn't have a chance to begin with!  Dickens' opened Christmas Carol with the strong statement "Marley was dead."  Gage's death is the center of Pet Sematary.

What's maddening is when a writer kills a character off simply because they want to pursue a new storyline.  Case in point, Dickens' has poor ole David Copperfieldn's wife die just in time for him to meet up with his true love. 

Sometimes a writer uses their ability to kill characters off as something of a powerplay on the reader.  We are at their mercy as much as the characters are!  What do we do when we want to object, call foul?  Well, there's nothing we can do!  We can't bring characters back to life (ask Annie Wilkes!).  Has King ever killed characters off just for sheer power?  Well, something not so nice is up in those Bachman books!  Case in point, read the end of Thinner. 

So, has a writer ever surprised you with a death?  He's a few shocks I got:
1. Needful Things has a death I totally didn't expect, but I don't want to give away too much. 
2. Ken Follett killed Tom Builder.
3. The Dark Tower 7.  Again, no details.
4. I didn't expect Christine to be a blood bath.
5. A Separate Peace has a death that caught me by surprise as a teen.
6. Sherlock Holmes.  Yep, he died.  No, I didn't see it coming (come on, I was a kid when I read it for the first time).  Yes, he came back. 
7. Dreamcatcher. . . dare I mention the scene?  You know the one -- on the potty.
8. Of Mice And Men.  You have to read the novel.  I didn't see it coming.
9. Les Miserable.  It ends with a death that shocked me.
10. The Dead Zone surprised me.
11. The War Of The Worlds, the martians!

And then there was J.R. on Dallas . . . and Spock