Author Matt Cost explains why people need to die in fiction, how to decide who lives and who dies, and how it’s not always entirely the author’s choice.
As I write mysteries, I am often faced with difficult decisions, but none so arduous as who gets to live and who must die. As I toy with the fates and lives of the people within my stories, I find myself delving into possessing a god complex. It is an intense and terrifying power to hold, and I don’t take the responsibility lightly.
This god complex has gotten me into trouble before. In my 2020 mystery, Mainely Power, I made the distressing decision to kill a character in the book. She was an outcast as a Bowdoin College student, but found a comfortable accord with Goff Langdon, PI and mystery bookstore owner, and his colorful cast of friends. She seemingly had become a reader favorite by the three-quarter point of the book in which I killed her. But it was not my choice. Somebody had to die.
Still, I was blamed for this bleak murder. There was a time there when I was afraid people were going to spit on me as I passed them on the street. None were put out so much by this murder than my friend, fellow author and Bowdoin alumni, Anne Britting Olesen. She was razzing me on Facebook about one thing or another when I replied that if she didn’t stop, I might have to kill another Bowdoin student.
Boom. Bang. Banned from Facebook. Apparently, they take those things seriously. I was able to appeal, explain, apologize, and get reinstated. It seems that Facebook is more powerful than a god.
I well understand that my power does have limitations. Dogs and cats are off limits. I’ve explained that to my inner-voice, and we have come to an understanding. Pets are untouchable, but everybody else is fair game. It is easy to kill off the villains, but the good guys, the likeable people—that is where the real heart of the story comes from.
It is all about raising the stakes. I write mysteries that verge into thrillers. And what kind of cliffhanger would it be if you, the reader, had no fear that the protagonist would lose or that the admirable might die? Not much, I reckon. That is what makes the human experience so riveting. It’s not always winning, succeeding, and nonstop happiness. The piece of existence that truly is sensational is created by the possibility of failure, loss, and death. That is what makes the good things great and the great things tremendous.
I understand that there are readers out there who like their mystery to be cozy. I’m telling you right now, my books are not for you. People die. Not just the baddies, but the good ones as well. The characters we like. Not a lot, mind you. Just a few sprinkled throughout my eight published mysteries.
As a matter of fact, more people die in my three historical fiction novels than all my mysteries combined. Because in real life, people perish for all kinds of reasons. Of course, the topics are the American Civil War, the Cuban Revolution, and the fight for social equality during Reconstruction. They are not exactly Victorian romances.
I follow a path of rising tension, climax, receding recovery and understanding, followed by rising tension once again. Eight times. Every 12.5 percent of my book has some sort of eye-opening, soul-shaking, handclapping, or spirit-crushing event happening. This is not an exact science, mind you, but a rough outline transcribed into the marrow of my bones.
These events vary. It could be a scene that kickstarts the entire plot into gear and sends it racing down the road. In Mainely Angst, a lobsterman comes into the PI office to hire Langdon because somebody “stole” his wife. Boom. We are off and racing away.
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The midpoint of a book is an excellent time to shake the reader up a bit, make them pause, reread, curse under their breath, and say quietly, “That’s what this entire thing is really about.” For those of you keeping track, that would be the 50 percent, or the fourth mind-altering event of the book, and it can be as simple as a word that changes the direction of where the novel seemed to be originally headed.
And then at the 75 percent mark of the book, all needs to be lost. The protagonist is up a tree with wolves baying below as they suddenly realize they’re perched next to a hungry bear. This is usually not a kill scene for me. This is not where somebody we cherish is sent to the afterlife, but once the reader starts believing that to be true, then I must rock the boat and change that perception. This may have happened with a recent release of mine, Cosmic Trap, but I am taking the fifth and avoiding any spoilers regarding that.
Sometimes, it is the villain flexing their muscle, displaying the vey blackness of their depravity and iniquity, that creates the crest of intensity within the pages. This is the moments when that voice inside my head sometimes calls out, quietly at first, slowly growing in intensity. Somebody must die. SOMEBODY must die. SOMEBODY MUST DIE. Most of the time, though, the scene is less than murder, but often, just as disturbing.
So, it is not really my decision. Sometimes, when something needs to happen, a voice in my head says, somebody must die. And then it is merely a process of elimination.
Write on.
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