How to Get Over the Death of a Fictional Character

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Express your grief and find new feels to obsess over

Co-authored by William Gardner, PsyD and Sophie Burkholder, BA

Last Updated: May 4, 2024 Fact Checked

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Expressing Your Grief

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Celebrating Their Life

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Making Fanfiction and Art

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Finding a New Character

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Video

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Tips

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Warnings

The death of a fictional character can feel shockingly upsetting and real. Even though the character isn’t a real person, you still can feel incredibly close to them. When your favorite character dies, it’s normal to go through a process of sadness and reconciliation. There are several ways that you can celebrate this character after their death and start feeling better.

Things You Should Know

Express your grief by crying as much as you want and allowing yourself to feel angry. Vent about your feelings to close friends or other fans of the character.
Celebrate the character’s life by rewatching or rereading your favorite scenes. Revisiting your character may remind you of their positive qualities and impact.
Write fanfiction or create fan art to connect with the character. You can also read fanfiction to make you feel like your character’s story is still ongoing.

Method 1

Method 1 of 4:

Expressing Your Grief

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Cry as much as you want. Don’t think that it's silly to cry just because the character is fictional. People can go through a similar mourning process for fictional characters as they do for real people they know, though it may be less extreme.^{[1]
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- Know that you are completely justified in your sadness, and don’t try to suppress feelings of grief.
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Allow yourself to feel angry. You might be angry that your character has died. Sometimes, character deaths come out of the blue and may seem unnecessary. You may be furious at the author or at a character who may have caused their death. Let yourself feel these emotions and express them in a healthy way.^{[2]
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- Exercise as a way to let out your anger. Even taking a brisk walk to clear your head can help.^{[3]
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  Mayo Clinic
  Educational website from one of the world's leading hospitals
  
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- Talk about your anger to help work through your feelings. Either with other fans or with friends and family, talk about how unjust it was for this character to die.
- Try to talk about your anger calmly—taking your anger out on other people will only make you feel worse.
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Write a letter to your character. Sometimes we feel extreme grief over the loss of a character because we don’t have the opportunity to tell them how important they are to us. Writing a letter to your favorite fictional character is a way to feel that you have directly expressed your love and sadness to them. ^{[4]
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- At first, you may feel silly writing to a fictional character. But writing is proven to be very therapeutic, especially when you write directly to someone and express your feelings. ^{[5]
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  PubMed Central
  Journal archive from the U.S. National Institutes of Health
  
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Give yourself time. Don’t expect to feel better immediately. Grief is a process that takes different amounts of time for everyone. Especially if this death came out of the blue, it can take a while to feel stable and better.^{[6]
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Expert Source

William Gardner, PsyD
Clinical Psychologist

Expert Interview. 25 July 2019.}
- Whenever you catch yourself thinking that you should be over the death, remember that there is no correct timetable to get over your sadness.
Pamper yourself a little bit as you are grieving for this character. This is an important way of acknowledging to yourself that you are going through a difficult time. Do one thing a day, whether eating your favorite food or sleeping in a little, to give yourself a little boost.
Everyone has felt the loss of a fictional character at some point. Just because they are not real doesn't mean you don’t form attachments to them. Being sad at a character’s death is human, and it shows that you have a big capacity for empathy. ^{[7]
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If you have friends who have read the book or watched the movie or series with your character, talk to them about how sad you are. An important step in getting over grief is to express it. People who are close to you are a great resource because they love and understand you.^{[8]
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Find other fans online. Engage with other fans on official or fan websites. Many of these sites have discussion boards where you can talk about a character's death. Sometimes, it’s helpful to find people outside your circle who were also affected by the character’s death.^{[9]
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- Talking to fellow fans will help you get your emotions out of your system and make you feel like you're not alone in feeling upset or sad.
- It’s been proven that joining fan communities can provide you with strong emotional support.
- Be careful about what information you give about yourself. Don’t give out personal information like your phone number. Consider using a pseudonym when talking with other fans.

Method 2

Method 2 of 4:

Celebrating Their Life

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Revisiting your character when they were alive and happy is a great way to make you feel less sad. It’s comforting to know that even though they eventually die, you can always go back and spend time with them.
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Emulate the character’s positive qualities. There are qualities that you love and admire about your favorite character. Try to incorporate them into your daily life.
- If you admire the character’s kindness, be more kind and generous in your daily life. This is a way of letting the character’s legacy live on.^{[10]
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- You can even emulate your character in your habits and hobbies. If your character liked to take long walks or to drink coffee, try these things out.
- Taking on aspects of your beloved character may make you feel closer to them and help you understand them in a different way.
Think about your favorite character and their impact on you and other characters in the story. The story would not be the same without this character, and even though they are gone, you still can remember all the good they did for the book or show.^{[11]
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Reconsider their death. Maybe you feel like their death was unnecessary or wrong. However, most authors kill off characters for a reason. Often, it’s to spur other characters into action. Even though your fictional character's death was devastating, it may have been necessary for the plot or for another character's development.
- Just because the death happened for a reason, it doesn’t mean you have to be any less sad about it. It may be comforting to know that they didn’t die in vain.

Method 3

Method 3 of 4:

Making Fanfiction and Art

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Write fanfiction about your favorite character. You can fill in the gaps in their life that the writer didn’t cover. Or you can even write them an alternate ending to their story. Writing fanfiction is a powerful way of engaging with the character and keeping them alive in your life.^{[12]
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- You may be so affected by the character’s death because you felt like a spectator in their life. Writing fanfiction gives you an outlet to engage with your character directly and even to control their fate.^{[13]
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Read fanfiction. Do an internet search for fanfiction with the name of your character or the story they’re part of. Nowadays, many books, television series, and movies have fanfiction based on them.
- Reading fan fiction can be thrilling because it opens up a whole new life for your favorite character beyond the original canon and can soften the blow of their death.
- Most fan fiction comes in categories. For instance, there’s romantic fan fiction that “ships” certain characters together.
- There’s also “crossover” fan fiction that blends different stories or series together. Pick whatever fan fiction you feel like exploring.
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Make fan art. Draw your character based on your favorite scene. This is a great way to inject yourself into your favorite parts of their life. Drawing is a way of spending time and connecting with your character, and it can make the loss feel less upsetting.
- Fan art can give your character another dimension, especially for book characters.
If you are the musical type, write a song about your character's life or about the emotions you have about their death. Songwriting has long been used to eulogize, and it may make you feel better to write a tribute and express your grief in song.

Method 4

Method 4 of 4:

Finding a New Character

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Find a similar book, show, or movie. You’re not betraying your favorite character by finding a different character or story to follow. It may help to find the next closest thing to your character and envelop yourself in that story.
- Do a Google search to find similar titles or ask friends and family for recommendations.
If you don’t feel like sticking to the same genre, you may try going down a different path. If you move from a romance book to something like a sci-fi novel, you will find a completely different set of characters. Sometimes, it can help to get out of the realm that your favorite character was in.
Go back to your favorite books or movies from childhood. Because you already know what happens, there is no suspense or anticipation about an unforeseen character death. Spend time with some of your favorite characters from past years as a way to comfort yourself during your grieving process.

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Tips

Try not to isolate yourself in your sadness. This can make you feel alienated and even sadder.

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You can also try doing anything that makes you happy. Whether you enjoy listening to music, playing soccer, or crafting, doing things you love can help you through this time.

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Tips from our Readers

The advice in this section is based on the lived experiences of wikiHow readers like you. If you have a helpful tip you’d like to share on wikiHow, please submit it in the field below.

Read or write fanfiction. Fanfiction is always a good way to vent and to keep characters alive. Yes, you were very attached to the character(s) that are gone now, but they can be alive to you in more ways than one.
If a movie or TV character died and left someone behind who you feel sad for, remember that those two actors could be sitting in a coffee shop together right now, both very much alive and happy.
Cry as much as you want. If other people don’t understand, it’s fine! Sometimes crying for a while can help ease things up and make it easier for you to accept your character’s death.
I just went through this! It is awful, I know. The best thing to do is find someone who feels the same way, or go online and read some fanfictions about them.
If the book, movie or show is fiction, try to remember that there is hope for them to come back to life - you never know!

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Warnings

If you are talking with other fans online, do not give out any personal information. Use a degree of caution when talking to people you haven't met.

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Be aware of inappropriate fan art you may find on online forums.

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If you choose to read fan fiction, beware of “lemon” fan fiction. That means the story has sexual intercourse content in it. Most stories will warn you if there are any “lemons.”

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