Handling Death In Fiction
D eath happens to all of us. Most people know people who have died. I didn’t know him personally, only having read his books and his blog, but just the other day I opened my feed reader and where I would have expected to see a blog post from Blake Snyder I saw a notice saying that he had passed away. He was in his early fifties. This experience made me think about how we handle the deaths of our characters. When we write, some characters die. If we are writing a murder mystery, that is pretty much a requirement. With other books, the story may not tell us about anyone dying, but death is in the back story and future story of every character. Death is a part of every story. The decision we must make is how to handle it. Ignoring Death There are a number of different ways to handle death in a story. One thing we can do is simply ignore it, as if death doesn’t happen. In many stories, death is not an important part of the story. Though the characters have lost friends and loved one, we do...