forum How to have a character fake their death

Started April 08, 2019 by @NotSoBeautifulDiseaster group

tune

One of my characters is going be faking their death throughout my novel how do I make it convincing and not cotrived

The first thing that comes to mind is the TV show Bones.
There's an episode or two were the secondary main character Booth fakes his death in order to catch someone

Idk if it's what you're looking for, but check it out

If the reader doesn't know they're alive, foreshadow it. Not too much because you don't want to make it obvious, but just enough to let the reader know.

Make it a situation in which it is likely they would have died but were a body wouldn't be expected or at the very least very hard to find. Just to name a few:
-A collapsed building the narrator/ protagonist/ reader thought they were in, there is so much rubble that finding a (recognizable) body (soon) would take an insanely long time or is unlikely.
-Falling from cliffs into raging rivers, always fun and no-one really questions were the body is. 'Swept away by the water' would be a common thought.
-Lost in some sort of blizzard or storm, preferably an area the other characters aren't familiar with.

Also, fires. If they supposedly die in a fire, than a burned and unrecognizable replacement body can be there so people will really think they’re dead.

Thank you for the advice :)

Also, fires. If they supposedly die in a fire, than a burned and unrecognizable replacement body can be there so people will really think they’re dead.

cough cough Valentine Morgenstern
sorry I'm bored so I'm scrolling through my unread stuff and it was too good to resist
i'll leave now

If you want to fake their death then it is just simple because you are the creator, but you do have to know their story well enough so their fake death won't be a surprise and be like "Woah! that doesn't belong in the theme of this story" or "this was so predictable" so think about the theme of your story and just make the reader think that the character actually died. And this is all just my opinion.

Also, in a situation where the other characters might be very desperate for a body (either to bury or show as proof of something), they might be in such a hurry that they don't focus on the exact look, just basics like the character's gender and skin tone. So they might find a body that looks like their seemingly dead friend, but is too damaged to tell.