You know, this debate has pushed a lot of hot buttons with a lot of people. While reading back through the comments (all of which are valid, and most of which are quite eloquent), I noticed some themes emerging.

Some people hate reading about death. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion.

Some people hate reading about the death or deaths of characters they love.

Some people hate reading about senseless, meaningless death.

Some don't mind if it moves the story along.

Some can accept a story with death in it if the death is somehow noble or self-sacrificing and either saves lives or makes many others safer in the future.

Some think every character in the story has concentric rings painted on his or her back and a neon "Shoot Here" sign pointing at the bullseye.

Just kidding about the last one. But it does show that different people have different tastes and different preferences. Just because I'm willing to kill off one or more of the characters in my story doesn't make it a bad story. (It also doesn't make it a good story.) Those authors who wouldn't write about a chipmunk getting run over haven't cheated the reading public by letting them know that death doesn't visit their stories.

And please, don't think I was bad-mouthing those who write n-fic. I was merely expressing my preference, just like everybody else has. I will never tell any of those authors that they can't or shouldn't write n-fic, but it's highly unlikely that I'll read it if the main theme is sex. Again, that is my personal preference.

My preference isn't the standard by which everyone else is judged, and it shouldn't be. That doesn't mean my preference isn't valid. The readers who don't want to read deathfic have a right to know that someone could die in a given story, and there's no reason to assault their sensitivities by refusing to let them know in general what's coming.

And despite all the very interesting discussion, we still haven't really landed on any deathfic guidelines. I was trying to ask a serious question in a whimsical manner in my earlier post. Would it be a valid guideline to say a major deathfic covers the death of a major positive character (like Clark or Jimmy or the Kents) and a secondary deathfic might describe the death of a secondary or original character?

That brings me to "The Write Stuff." It describes the deaths of four people, three of them murder victims and one rather messy suicide. All of them were original characters within the story. Is that story a deathfic? If so, is it a major or a secondary deathfic?

Please don't take this as whining. I really would like to know, because I don't want to offend anyone. Really. If I do, it's unintentional, and we're here mainly to have fun, right?

Life isn't a support system for writing. It's the other way around.

- Stephen King, from On Writing