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@joelle-stone

I personally am not apposed to characters coming back…as long as it’s done properly. One thing you might want to keep in mind is how you kill your character. If you have them stabbed in front of everyone and someone checks their pulse and announces them dead, it’s going to be hard to bring them back believable. But, if you, for example, do it like in Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf falls with the Bullrog, but nobody actually sees him die, it’s easier to bring him back.

I think what I’m trying to say is how you kill someone will give the reader a hint of whether or not you’ll bring them back. If your story is in third person (he, they, Sam, etc.), and the narrator says, “And Sam died,” it will leave no doubt in your readers mind that Sam did, indeed, die. If you bring him back later, they’ll be skeptical.

But, if it’s the same story, and Sam’s friend Jerry says, “He died,” after Sam apparently fell of a cliff, your readers will subconsciously realize that Sam’s death is Jerry’s opinion, not fact. They will still be surprised if you bring Sam back (especially if characters mourn Sam’s passing), but they will realize that it’s not a supernatural act to have Sam alive, he probably just caught himself on a ledge on the way over the cliff.

I think bringing characters back can be a good (and enhancing) thing, actually, as we see in stories like Lord of the Rings, and the Wingfeather Saga (I’m talking about the Spidifer in Throg😄).