Fiction-Writing Problems: Best Ways to Bring a Character Back to Life?

When you suddenly want a dead character to return for a sequel.

Saying goodbye can really suck.

Way back in ye olden days of 2017, I wrote a noir novella titled A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps. It featured three central characters: Bill, a sarcastic and luxury-loving conman who wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was; Fiona, a hard-driving mob assassin (and Bill’s on-again, off-again girlfriend); and a nameless hitman, recently divorced, whose sanity begins to slip as he pursues Bill and Fiona across Oklahoma.

I wrote the chapters featuring Bill and Fiona in the third person; those with the hitman, in the first. It was a risky maneuver, switching perspectives like that, but the hitman’s voice was so compelling, so weird and feral and lively, that I felt the overwhelming urge to channel it. Plus, his rising insanity gave me the chance to deploy some of my sickest jokes.

Then I killed him.

It felt like the right thing to do. By the end of the novella, the character had completed his emotional arc and achieved something like redemption (or at least as much redemption as a weirdo mass murderer can hope to achieve). Shooting him down felt like the best idea, even if part of me…