“My thriller is getting published!” I exclaimed to a good friend a few months back.

“Great! Hope you killed off some of the nasty people in our lives,” she shot back. Hmm…. Interesting thought.

Well, we all have several `Yikes!’ characters in our lives. The nosy parker across the road who is watching to see where you go and when; the aged relative who is ready to cut you to bits with her barbs; the neighbour who wakes you up early every morning with her screechy singing….

But I’ve not written about them in my novel, nor have I killed them off. The characters in ‘The Madras Mangler’ are purely imaginary, their traits and motivations melding to advance the plot towards a nail-biting climax. Of course, all characters are drawn from real life; otherwise they would not hold our interest or stimulate our sympathy. In fact, I was happy when a reader told me she was upset when a character she liked had got killed. I thought that was a compliment.

Now, who does the King of Horror want you to kill off in your novels? “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings,” says Stephen King. He wants you to kill off the characters you love, not the ones you hate. The reason? We make our reader sympathise with a character and root for him. Then we kill him off so that the shock is greater.

Now, does this make you a little scared of writers? Do you think it’s better to move away when you see one, just in case you become fodder for the next book? Well, here’s some advice for you if you are in a relationship with a scribbler. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.