It’s a question that all crime writers must ask themselves at some point during the writing of their books: how many people should they bump off throughout the story?
It might be a slightly grisly topic to address at this time on a Wednesday, but it’s a topic that can have a huge impact on a crime fiction novel. How many characters die throughout the story will obviously affect the book that you write, and the story you are aiming to tell will also affect how many characters die in the process.
A serial killer novel is often a very different beast to a book with a single death, after all. When they are done right, one type of book is no less compelling than the other, but they do differ significantly.
The sources of tension are likely to be different, for example. If you are writing a novel about a serial killer, one of the key sources of tension is likely to come from who is going to die next and when. If you are writing about a single murder, the tension will come from other places, such as the actions of suspects.
Something else to consider is how many bodies your book actually needs. Deliberately writing a book with a high body count is one thing; bumping characters off just so something happens is something else entirely, and it isn’t always a good thing. If you’re killing characters to add excitement to the story, it might be time to look at the story you’re trying to tell in the first place.
I think this is the issue at the heart of it, the one that ultimately affects how many bodies your crime novel will include. Getting the story right is the most important thing. Everything you write should be essential to the story you are trying to tell. Whether you are going for the multiple murders or the one-death-per-book approach, the needs of the story must always come first.