My writing group leader told me to kill my favorite character and I fought back hard

I was in a weekly writing group downtown for about 4 months. The leader said my main character was too safe and I needed to off him in chapter 3 to raise the stakes. I thought that was terrible advice because I had built the whole story around him. Six weeks later I tried it on a short story and suddenly the beta readers actually cared about what happened next. Has anyone else had a piece of critique that felt wrong but turned out to fix your story?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jake20d ago

Ugh, I feel this so hard. It's brutal when someone tells you to dump a character you love. I had a similar thing happen with a story I was really attached to. The advice was to cut my favorite side character who I thought was the comic relief. It felt like ripping a page out of my soul. But after I did it, the main character actually had to step up and be funny themselves. Now I can't imagine the story the old way. Sometimes the worst advice is the stuff that actually forces you to grow.

phoenix_adams6020d ago

Killing a favorite character might sting but sometimes the story needs that tough medicine. To @the_jake's point, it sounds like your leader spotted a soft spot where you were playing it safe instead of taking risks. One writer I know had to scrap her entire third act because her villain was too sympathetic - turns out, making them purely bad made the ending work way better. Those critiques that feel like a punch in the gut are usually the ones that shake loose something bigger underneath.