I'm writing a novel in which the story is told from a first person pov. I don't want it to be predictable so I feel that if I kill the protagonist it will give it a sense of difference since they usually don't die and the readers know it. How can I do so?
Answer
There is a old idea that in the moment of one's death, their whole life flashes before their eyes. Perhaps your entire story, up to the point where the narrator dies, is just their giving voice to that final moment; reviewing the facts of her life on her way to face Judgement. This approach will grant your narrator hidden fore knowledge which can justify any foreshadowing which you work into your prose.
Killing your pov character midway through a story is a powerful tool, but it leaves your readers without a guide for the remainder of your tale. You can avoid this issue by splitting the pov between two characters earlier in the story. If you shift between two narrators repeatedly during the first few chapters, you can still use the survivor to narrate the remaining pages.
Finally, be careful with how you build your disposable narrator. If the soon-to-be-deceased is, in any way, a sympathetic character, then their death may wound your readers emotionally and will definitely cost you their trust. We may all enjoy a good George R.Martin novel, but we don't trust him. We have learned not to get too attached to any of his characters, because they usually don't last very long.
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