A common trope, particularly in horror or thriller stories, is the throwaway character. The blonde in the tank top who wanders in the monster's jaws, the jock who jeers at the mysterious MacGuffin and promptly snuffs it. It's an excellent and easy way to show the reader that this situation is dangerous, people can and will die, and we need to take these things seriously and not push random big red buttons because they're shiny, but without having to throw anyone we really care about under the bus.

I'm not talking about the big sacrificial scenes at the end of the book, either. Not deaths that mean something - only deaths that are purely there to show the reader that this story means business. To show you that when you are infected by an alien, you die, horribly, and it's something that the characters are justified in being scared of.

But you can't just throw the lambs in wherever, or because you can't think of an easier way. There are some particular ways and means of using them that are essentially verboten, because the damage they cause to the reader's experience of the book is irreparable, especially if the character concerned hits more than one category.

Narrators

Narrators are your reader's viewport into the book. The character they most identify with, the one they connect with and care about most. Introduce a character as a narrator - either by having them narrate directly, or using their eyes and experience to filter the story (first-person, or third-person non-omniscient, for those of you who're fixed on grammatical narrator categories) and the reader automatically pays special attention. They extend a trust to the author that their connection to this narrator isn't going to be abused.

Kill off a narrator, and you break that trust. The reader feels their investment in that character (and by extension, the story) was wasted. It didn't go anywhere, it didn't fulfil them. They now have to connect to a whole new narrator in order to continue the story - and in the back of their mind, they're wondering will this new one die as well? Would I be better off just going back to my sudoku?

It's the too many narrators problem super-sized. And if your narrator is also someone who hasn't been around long, it'll be really really obvious that they're just there as cannon fodder, which makes your reader feel manipulated. You don't want your reader to feel manipulated. They get annoyed, and post your book through compost chutes.

The most likeable / entertaining character in the book

On the surface, I guess this seems like a great way to shock the reader, a great heart-wrencher. Take the character they're rooting for the most and put them in the blender. They'll definitely notice, and the seriousness of the Big Bad will certainly rise by a thousand percent.

But you've just killed off your reader's main interest in the book. There response is not going to be Oh no! How can Sensible Sue possibly survive if Entertaining Eric was splattered?! More like Well, um, that sucks. Who the hell do I root for, now? Oh look, Idol is on. 

On the other hand, picking off the character everyone hates doesn't do you any favours either - the reader is relieved the character's dead, and promptly starts wondering why that character even had to be there if they were only going to die. You could have saved them so much energy not being frustrated by Idiotic Irwin.

So pick a middle-ground. Make sure they have at least one 'feature' that makes them likaable, something that makes them sympathetic or entertaining, but don't let them upstage the characters you want the reader to really care about.

Characters we've only known for five minutes

"Hi, my name is Jim, I'm from the planet Hooplah where we don't have hats, oooh, look a button, I wonder what happens if I push -**SPLAT**"

Did you like Jim? Did you care that he just had his head smeared in a crossways fashion across the inner hull of the spaceship? I didn't think so.

Characters who've just been introduced suffer from cardboard-insert syndrome. They're just a name on a piece of card until the reader gets a feel for their personality and what their story is - where have they come from, where are they going? (not necessarily literally. In fact, most of the time, not literally). It happens to all characters - the reader just hasn't figured them out, yet. 

Trouble is, if you kill off a character who's still in cardboard-mode, the reader doesn't care. They're not invested, which means the seriousness of the Big Bad has been increased by exactly zero. Not only that, it takes the focus off the big bad, and puts it on to the structure of the book. Why the hell was that guy in there? Was his sole purpose just to die? Why couldn't someone just tell me that big button is an instant-head-splatter, then? 

When a character is killed too soon after being introduced, it's painfully obvious they're just there to die. It rips away the curtain of suspension-of-disbelief and shines a bright and horrible search light on your book's construction. Your reader is now questioning your decisions. Never a good sign, because every book has stupid decisions by the author. Things that they'd rather the reader didn't think about, like whether the character's decisions were really the most sensible solution in the alternative. The book has stopped being an immersive entertaining story, and turned into literary analysis.

Characters whose development arc hasn't finished yet

Sometimes main characters have to die before the climax of the book. It happens. Even more rarely, they're not a Mentor character with no personal growth of their own, but rather a character with their own arc. They're learning something, changing over the course of the novel. 

The development arc of one character strengthens the arc of the others. It's like supporting notes in a musical score - the reader feels the sense of overall change rippling through the story. Kill off an important character at the wrong moment - like before they've reached anywhere significant in their arc - and you get a sour note in your composition. Discord. The reader will feel vaguely disappointed in that character's death, and will often be unable to explain why, but it'll just feel 'unnecessary', or like 'they shouldn't have done [whatever caused their death]'.

Of course, there are times when you can invert that to your own purposes - show the tragedy of someone who was cut down before they reached their full potential. Then the discord turns into an exquisite counterpoint to the main melody. But such a feat requires a lot of planning, and a lot more emphasis than a throwaway death will allow you.

Now, yes, of course there are exceptions to these four. And likely other categories that I didn't think of. But like everything else, you only get to break the rule if you understand exactly why it's there, and how to compensate for the detrimental effects caused by breaking it. So be careful with your choice and timing of lambs.

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