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Q&A Making People Unsure which Characters will Survive

The simplest way is to kill your main character in the first page. You can then play with time in order to make him your main character and then have people discover only at the end that the story ...

posted 8y ago by Doctor Zhivago‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:41:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25037
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Doctor Zhivago‭ · 2019-12-08T05:41:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
The simplest way is to kill your main character in the first page. You can then play with time in order to make him your main character and then have people discover only at the end that the story isn't written from your protagonist's POV but that of a close be very much subordinate figure. Think of King Leonidas of Sparta and the 300...even he knows he's going to die. But it's not until after all that that we discover the entire story is being narrated in the third person by someone who was with the King and not by King Leonidas himself. This is a very effective method of story telling actually.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-10-25T17:49:52Z (about 8 years ago)
Original score: 1