For some reason, it seems us fantasy writers are obsessed with the idea of killing off our characters. In this cliché book alone, I have mentioned situations where the main character died, the entire world got killed off by some zombie outbreak, and a character's death has been faked-out just to name a few.  It just seems that in order to make a story interesting, many of us seem to resort to killing off characters.  Although these plot twists can work (and I have been guilty of using this plot element before in past writings), I have to ask why do any characters have to die at all?  Would it not be surprising if somehow the entire cast survived a seemingly inescapable death sentence?

  While not always bad, this cliché has been used multiple times wrongly for just the plain thrill of creating a plot twist.  Most of the time unfortunately this character will end up being a fan favorite or worse a vital character to the plot.  L from the Death Note manga and anime is such an example of wrongly killing off a character for the need of a plot twist.  This character was the established foil of Light Yagami, the main character of Death Note and the holder of the book of the same name.  They created great tension in the story through their intelligence-filled game of chess, each representing a ideology in human society about the subject of whether or not criminals deserve to die.  Not to mention the character keep readers and anime viewers watching the show despite Light's small crawl into irredeemable insanity from his unique quirkiness.  By that description of the character, would you say that keeping the character around would be vital to the story and an extremely misguided move if somehow he were to die?  The death of the character to most was just plain infuriating and took away a vital second side to the main philosophy the entire series was trying to express. 

  Then there are the deaths that can kill an entire series completely.  While L's death infuriated many, the series still went strong and in my opinion went in a pretty acceptable direction up until the end.  Sure, Light's foil was gone, but that was replaced with more intellect from the direct focus on the police investigation as well as the creation of the over-hated character Near.  The two "deaths" of Hollyleaf in the Warriors book series though were enough to make many fans stop reading the books altogether.  Despite the third arc of the series not being as strong as the others, a lot of people liked the introduction to the strongly loyal but flawed character of Hollyleaf.  Alongside Jayfeather, she provided a strong sense of leadership to the destined three.  She may not have been right all of the time, but her actions were well thought out and mature for a cat as young as her.  Many people for that reason loved the character.  Unfortunately, the writers, (who I do have a lot of respect for despite their mistakes now and again in the series), disagreed and decided to write the character out of the series not once but twice.  The first time was a fake-out, a cliché I have mentioned in the past for being kind of cheap.  The second time she died for real, only a book after she got reintroduced and non-coincidentally in the climatic end of the fourth arc.  Fans did not react well to the deaths, twice over, very well.  First they obsessed over them.  Afterwards, they ended up quitting the series altogether.

  If these two character deaths show anything, they depict why killing off any type of character could be a disastrous idea.  To keep consistency towards the line-up of cast members, it is important to pay attention to who plays the most major role to the plot as a whole, even if they are not the main character.  It may additionally be a good idea to pay attention to who the fans love the most.  Even as writers, we are prone to making a mistake or two.  I admit to making multiple mistakes in the past, even in this editorial.  It is fine if you guys do too once in a while.