A good story knows how best to introduce a character, how to evolve the character in the role they are supposed to play, and how to engage the audience or reader with the specific role of that particular character. A good story however, also knows how to kill off a character. Relating this to the human life, I can say that the human life is a story of it’s own. The people we meet are characters that assist us on our main character journey. They spice up the story, they add intrigue, mystery, laughter, tears, and all kinds of emotions possible. We need people to spice up our story. But we cannot have too much of the intrigue, or a back and forth of the same thing in a story. A story, a good one at that, needs to have a forward progression.

Imagine a story that introduces a new supporting character, engages the audience with the character, and allows the audience to fully understand the character in all her intrigue, understanding, and allure. After which, the story evolves such that the character has nothing to offer the story anymore, and then the character is killed off. The forward progression of this story is preserved, the audience are looking forward to meeting another character with it’s own passion, mystery, and contribution to the good and allure of the story. What happens when such a story, instead of bringing a new character with his / her own contribution to the story, decide to resurrect the dead character? Or to make things worse, the story decides to keep recycling the characters only to offer the same contribution they did in their past introduction?
The answer is pretty glaring. Such a story is dead and will definitely be considered uninteresting.

I don’t think I’ve been writing too much of a riddle because I think the point is clear. If you recycling people who’s contribution in your life has ended, I think you're heading for a dead story. An uninteresting story. The people in the past came at the time they came for a reason. They had their contributions, they had their lessons, they had their allure, mystery, intrigue, passion, beauty, knowledge, and every adjective you can think of. But they have pretty much offered all they have to give. They have offered all their understanding, wisdom, knowledge, and experience needed for you to get to where you are. This very present day needed them, it needed the past to get here. It needed all those characters to keep the story interesting up to this point. Looking ahead, how many characters who have nothing else to offer do you want to recycle?

The future doesn’t need the past. It needs the present. It is the present that the future will look back at, and ponder on what the characters introduced did. If you keep bringing back characters from the dead, the future probably will never come. The present will forever be stagnant as there will be no room for new characters. And soon enough, the story will leave behind no audience.

Just as seconds in a movie keep counting regardless, not minding which characters got killed, whether it was a loving girlfriend, a powerful friend, a wicked king, or a valiant warrior, you really need to keep pushing on, forgetting which characters were left behind and killed off by my story in the process. It was for a reason. Twisting the story to bring them back is not an option. No matter how much they are missed, the future needs new characters. And it needs them now!

The good story must not stop now. It really needs to continue and it needs to continue being intriguing and captivating. But it will only do so if new characters are allowed to blossom and the audience are allowed a chance to enjoy their intrigue.

Forget the dead characters, introduce new ones. A good story cannot keep recycling dead characters.