I'm writing a story, and I want to kill almost every character in it. How can I properly kill off most of my characters without it being too cliche or expected?
1) Vary the Deaths
If you’re writing sci-fi, don’t kill all your characters with a laser gun. If you’re writing high fantasy, don’t kill them all with arrows and swords. If you’re writing contemporary, don’t kill them all with big accidents and tragedies.
You must vary the deaths if you want to keep them fresh and unexpected. Kill someone quietly. Kill someone in a major accent. Kill someone just when the reader is going to think they’re going to escape a tense and dangerous situation. Kill someone in an otherwise safe situation.
Don’t let living characters always have control over the corpse.Have one character’s body be completely destroyed. Let another look almost unharmed. Let some characters be buried. Let others be thrown overboard. Let others go missing. Let others be left outside for the bugs and animals. Let your characters find the decomposing body of a character they, and the reader, believed to be alive.
Variation also refers to how long it takes a character to die. Let some die instantly. Let some suffer for a few minutes or a few hours or a few days.
Let some characters die alone. Let others be with friends. Let others be with enemies. Kill a lot of characters in one section and only one in another. Put two deaths close to each other and then let the reader go through three more chapters without seeing a death. Don’t let the deaths be evenly spaced. They will become predictable.
2) No One Comes Back
Do not bring anyone back from the dead.
3) Make It Heartfelt
Use sacrifices
Make the death sadder
Kill a hero
