One of my favorite mystery conferences each year, the Deadly Ink conference in Parsippany, NJ, features the motto "Writing Is Murder".

Sometimes it feels that way. When you write crime fiction, it's difficult to get through a book without facing the necessity of killing someone. As a writer, it is tempting to avoid becoming too close to the character you plan to bump off in chapter seventeen, because if you get too enmeshed you risk inordinate grief at their loss.

I suppose this is why, in Star Trek, it was always the "Guy With No Name" who beamed down to the new, dangerous planet with Kirk and Spock, only to be eaten by whatever monster-of-the-week lived there. If you don't give a guy a name, it's easier to zag him in the first reel and move on with the story.

On the other hand, I have read far too many books in which it was clear that the author was intimately familiar with the protagonist, and maybe the antagonist, but didn't have a clue about the motivations of his peripheral characters. They were relegated to the role of scenery against which the conflict was played out. If one of them got killed in the process, well, what's the big loss? It's not as if we knew them well.

Killing off a character that hasn't been adequately developed carries all the emotional impact of reading the obits in your local paper. Every person there represents someone's tragedy and grief, but if you never met the person in the photo it's easy to view their demise with a certain aloof indifference and a momentary sense of relief that - at the very least - your time isn't up yet.

On the other hand, if we are to truly engage the reader, it's important that, as authors, we really get to know our characters - both major and minor - and project our knowledge of their humanity on the page right up to the point that we destroy them. If we can do that, then we can hope that the reader will sense the tragedy of their deaths, and identify with the impact these killings have on the rest of the cast.

Any other approach to writing is just plain lazy.
R