How do you feel about killing off characters? Be it book, movie, or show, there is always so much perverse pleasure from a well-deserved and gruesome death of an evil character, and beautiful sorrow in the death of a character we love. We love the emotion; the turmoil and angst. Shows like the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones depend on the tension derived from the sense that no one is safe. Any character could die at any moment. We're biting our nails. We're clenching our tissues. We're clasping our hands with gleeful anticipation. Who is going to be next? And perhaps more importantly, how are they going to meet their end?

I am a happy ending kind of girl, but I have to admit, the death of a much-loved character wrenches emotions from my soul in a way that is both terrible and wonderful at the same time. 

You'll find some of the most creative deaths by Dystopian, Post Apocalyptic, and Sci fi writers. They are diabolically ingenious.

Particularly when it comes to thinking up ways to kill off their characters.

A few of my author friends in the Band of Dystopian Authors and Fans were recently asked:

What is the most gruesome way you've ever killed off a character in your book?
Here are a few of their answers. WARNING: Some answers are quite graphic, proceed at your own risk.

Which answer is your favorite? I'm going to keep collecting answers until I get to 101, so check back or add your own in the comments and I'll include them!

1. Betty Cross: One of my important secondary characters was shot through the heart, after electroshock didn't work. And her daughter, the MC of the book, was forced to watch.
2. C.A. Hoaks: Zombies ate her guts out while she watched....lol.
3. Kayla Howarth: Snapped neck and then a bullet in the head for good measure. Oh, then they burned the body just to be sure.
4. Allyson Gottlieb: Impaled on a piece of glass from a broken window
5. DL Young: buried to the neck in the ground, then stoned to death by an angry mob
6. Michelle Bryan: Leg and dangly bits cut off and eaten by cannibals  😵
7. Larry Davis: Chewed in half by a king-size robotic wolf. Okay, three pieces.
8. Jay Guthrie: Fell in a Vat of Acid and Then A bunch of Fireworks were down the street and as he was walking home they set him on fire so an ambulance was just happening by and they put him out and loaded him up to get 10 blocks and at the Turn in for the ER and Have a Fire truck run into the Ambulance and send it over the embankment across from the Hospital to have it come to rest at the Edge of the Ohio River when a Tug boat Snatches the edge Of the Ambulance and as the guy was making his way out and throw him on Deck of the Tug boat. The Tug boat Captain called the Coast Guard and Air lifted him to The Hospital were they did the Wrong surgery on him and He got Rich and lived Happily ever After.
9. Mike Poeltl: Knife jabbed through a gaping mouth's tongue, exits the lower jaw. Bullet to the head and then skinned for the sport of it. 
10. Allen Gamboa: Eaten by zombies while strapped to a table.
11. Michael Peirce: A zombie threw one of my female troopers onto the abatis full of squirming Zs, impaling her on a stake.
12. Matthew Cox: A large mirror shatters and a rotating cyclone of glass shreds the character's skin off, then fingers, then goes deeper until they're sucked backwards through a planar rift and the mirror reforms like it never broke.
13. Justin Vokey: slowly dissolved by alien digestive enzymes
14. Nick A Braker: Ejected him into space, alone, with only a few hours of oxygen remaining with the knowledge there was no one able to help him. That's a lot of time to ponder your certain death
15. Genesis Blue Davies: Torn to pieces by a cuco.
16. Shawn P. Durnin: Castrated, being crucified to the "T" bar on the back of a tow truck with razor wire, then decapitated. Pleasing. 
17. Caleb Hill: Dying of radiation poisoning while falling in love with an AI. Alone. In a fallout shelter.
18. Brian Parker: Let's see, here are a few of mine from various books I've written: beheading in front of his kids; dismembered and eaten by cannibals; eviscerated and strangled with own intestines; ripped to shreds by mutated badgers (really); helicopter crash; mind taken over and bashed own head into concrete until dead; LOTS of gunshots and explosions; starvation; torture tourism (various forms of torture for a crowd's pleasure); stung and cut in half by giant mutated scorpions; torn apart by zombies... oooh, I know! I killed a squad of Nazis with a giant microwave ray that cooked them from the inside out, their blood boiled and the meat burst through their skin. That was fun. 
19. William Bebb: Eaten be a feral herd of ravenous, yet adorably cute, kittens.
20. Travis Sivart: Crabs tearing at their flesh as they dragged themselves across the debris left by a tidal wave. Oh, and it was a dog. Readers reacted.
21. James Zarzana: Killed quite a few. Hard to pick one.
22. Valerie Lioudis: Fights epic battle against mouse, frying pan in hand smashes through window and falls to driveway below perfect time to get hit by car pulling into garage
23. Alexandre Bouchard: an electric misericorde (icepick like dagger connected to electric current) through the eye socket and the optic nerve channel, then shock the brain to fry it. 
24. Franklin Horton: I had one guy die because someone hid copperhead snakes in the toilet. He sat down, got bit on the testicles, and suffered massive swelling. Died a painful death from urinary retention. Post-apoc situation -- no medical care.
25. Tara Benham: Beheading
26. Michael Dryden-Cripton: Expanding foam. ugh no need to expand on that. lol
27. Martin Berman-Gorvine: Impalement on an iron spike
28. Stephanie Crabtree: Too many to pick. All horrible torture.
29. Katy Walker: Head cut off by a sword made out of glass shards.
30. Ian D Moore: I had my lead character build what's called a Guillotine Snare using thin wire, a tree branch, pliers and a couple of well-placed nails. When activated, the wire cut clean through the victim at forty-five degrees from her left hip to top right shoulder. As her left arm fell to the floor, her body began to slide as her legs still struggled to balance her severed torso.
31. Brea Behn Author: Burned, stabbed and then fell to his death.
32. Alfonso Acunia: 10 of my Main Characters died in One Big Battle They Got Blown up Eaten stabbed Lost a duel won a duel then died Burned Dissolved Electrocuted Shot Fell off a Terrace crushed Run over by a MonsteTruck plane Exploded.... but the side that they fought for won
33. Lara Fanning: This question haha. Only on BoD. I'm about to have a character skinned alive by a demonic entity  😐Luckily the fellow doesn't die and is healed as it's set in a fantasy world.
34. Jason Levii O'Hara: most gruesome? it's a tossup. I have killed so many characters in different ways that I have really not thought much about which was the most gruesome.
35. Sean T. Smith: Hog tied after being shot in the balls, floating in the Everglades, nibbled on by sharks, before bring devoured by an alligator.
36. Lisa Lane: I had a character sew sock puppets into a person's hands, complete with button eyes and yarn hair, then run fishing line through his arms and legs to turn him into a living puppet. He and a few others presumably die of septic shock.
37. Jon Messenger: Heart forcefully ripped from his chest (in a sci-fi book)
38. Kell Frillman: well the basic skull being bashed in ... but in front of their child.
39. Ashleigh Reynolds: Hmmmm probably wood-chipper. Or being torn apart piece by piece.
40. Ken Harrelson: Slow steamed to death
41. Richard Correll: 5 years After: 2.0 The Drumhead The skin had shredded open like wrapping paper on a present. First one pair and then a second burrowed into the red, meaty sustenance. Maggie felt herself start to shiver. Are you cold, sweetheart? She thought she heard her mother say. 
    “No, I don’t feel anything.” She whispered back. 
    The probing, pasty hands burrowed up to the wrist and then the muscles on their arms tensed and pulled. Aaron’s body was off the pavement for a second and then landed back on the cold surface. Aaron’s legs convulsed like a fish out of water.. He can feel what’s happening to him. Maggie’s thought was just a whisper in her ear as she watched. More faces appeared out of the solid forest of limbs to tear in to his skin. The look on their faces was hypnotic, delirious at taking down their prey. Is this what wolves are like? The hands on the back were pulling…. 
    And pulling …….. 
    And pulling…….. 
    Murphy’s voice was a random collection of verbs and syllables that never approached meaning. Maggie watched bloodied skin start to peel back and split in several places at once. It was like the fractures of an ice shelf before it gave way. The tears appeared near other wounds on his skin and began to snake together before the whiteness of his back disappeared in a bath of blood. More hands plunged into the crimson, murky fluid and something of substance appeared to rear itself. As they pulled it away, the ribcage started to bend and snap in spots. Maggie’s mouth slowly parted as a snake like object appeared. 
    The spinal column, inside she felt almost drunk to the world. Come inside, sweety. You look so cold…….. 
42. Pheebz Jackson: Being Flayed alive. in the book Give: An Anthology of Anatomical Entries. It was fun researching the interments they used for this barbaric practice.Not recommended for those with weak constitutions.
43. Ken Harrelson: I turned one into a clown. Not quite dead but somehow worse.
44. Tamara Wilhite: Death by nanites.
45. Kristan L. Cannon: *brain freezes as she recounts the nearly 40 deaths of named characters in the first book alone... and that she's up to four published books in the same series...*
46. Greg Jeffery: Ammunition called a 'singularity round'. It collapses a wad of flesh down to the size of a pinpoint then expands it rapidly, shredding the body.
47. Drew Gideon: Shotgun blast to the head from about two feet away...after having a huge dog rip the back of his legs to shreds.
48. Molly Phipps: I have a particularly gruesome death planned for a character in my next book. So far it's just been neck breakings and getting shot
49. Rebecca Piazza: My main characters mother carved her old companions heart from her chest while she was alive...
50. Stephen Drivick: Fingers bitten off by zombies. Had to be put down by friend.
51. Christopher Artinian: Doused in diesel and set alight, while tied to a chair.
52. RJ Kennett: Tough one. The guy tied down to a bed while a zombie fed on him, or the dog thrown to zombies as a distraction for escape.
53. Craig McDonald: Head partially severed by knife cut, with the coup de grace of the knife embedded in the side of the head.
54. Dawn Peers: Hmm there's a few options. I'm going with "suffocated with an acid-soaked sponge shoved down their throat"
55. [Add your answer here by commenting below! It can be a book your wrote or read.]

I first started reading romance novels almost 20 years ago; around age twelve. I used to hide raunchy paperbacks or harlequin novels under my mattress like a boy hides dirty magazines. (Mom, if you're reading this, I'm sorry.)

I loved the stories but I hated the weak heroines. The female main characters always seemed to be weak. indecisive, and had low self-esteem. The men, on the other hand, were almost obnoxiously arrogant, decisive, and commanding. I remember getting so annoyed with the female characters, I would lie awake at night (or sit in church) and re-create the novel with my own leading lady.

Women like strong men; power is attractive. That might account for some of the success of 50 Shades of Grey - in a society that seems to encourage feminine traits in men (like sensitivity, understanding, and the love of selfies) powerful, decisive men are a breathe of fresh air.

That does not, however, mean a woman needs to be subjugated (or submissive) to complement a male character's strength. I love the current trend of strong women heroines. A knight in shining armor is still a requirement for the leading man, but the leading woman shouldn't be stuck in the tower. Rather, we'd like to see her fighting alongside him, sword in hand, hair artfully mussed.

The new romance novel has strong women and powerful men who coexist beautifully. That is the concept around which I crafted my main characters, Aerina and Marcus.

When I crafted my main characters, I made sure both had strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, they are both characters a reader might want to be, or might want to fall in love with. A strong, courageous woman and a powerful, trustworthy man. What more could a girl want?

What are some of your favorite main characters? What traits did you love about them?