It’s Tough Not to Play Favorites With Your Characters
It’s a point echoed by everyone from William Faulkner to Agatha Christie to Ernest Hemingway all the way to Stephen King: you’ve got to write without playing favorites, even if that means killing those that you’re fond of. I get it. After you’ve spent weeks, months, or even years plotting out characters, ideas, scenes, or backstories, the last thing you’ll want to do is delete them like they never even happened. It becomes even more complicated if you get emotionally invested in these characters and root for them.
This is why it takes guts to be an author. It takes an incredible amount of self-control to write a story that you don’t control. It takes bravery to allow the characters to play out exactly as they need to.