My writing group leader told me to kill my favorite character and she was right

Honestly, I was furious when my group leader Sarah in Portland said I needed to delete my main character halfway through my fantasy novel draft. I spent like 3 months building this guy's backstory, his magic system, his whole deal. But she pointed out that every time he showed up, the plot just stopped dead because he was too perfect at solving problems. I argued with her for a week until I tried rewriting one chapter without him, and suddenly the other characters had room to breathe and make mistakes. The conflict got way more interesting when my villain actually got to win a few rounds. I ended up cutting 40 pages of his scenes and the whole story came together in a way I didn't expect. Has anyone else had to dump a character they loved for the good of the story?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jake1mo ago

Murdered my favorite character for plot reasons too. It hurt but it worked.

harper_owens1mo ago

Wait, did I read that right? You actually deleted 40 pages? That's like... my whole writing output for a month and a half. I killed off a side character once but he was basically a walking exposition dump anyway, nobody cried but me. The worst part was realizing my favorite character was just me projecting my own wish fulfillment fantasies onto the page, like I made him too cool to fail and too perfect to be interesting. When I finally cut him loose I had this weird empty feeling for like two days, like I broke up with my own imaginary friend. Probably should have listened to my group sooner instead of arguing with them for three sessions straight, but hey, at least the new draft doesn't bore me to tears anymore.