So, let's say that you've killed off a character.
It might've been an important side character to heighten the emotional stakes, a Red Shirt to set the stage of your story as well as the physical dangers your characters will face, or even your Big Bad, to help bring the story to it's logical conclusion.
Whatever the reason, characters, both minor and major, die all of the time.
However, that doesn't always mean that their death has to be permanent.
Maybe you want to show off someone's powers and abilities (i.e. necromancy). Maybe it's because the character was incredibly popular and killing them off was a bad move, at least in the eyes of the fans. Or maybe it's because as you were writing, you suddenly realized that killing off this character was a mistake.
Regardless of the reason, you now need to bring this deceased character back to life. And there are several ways to pull this off.
To start off
Fitting with the theme
Say for example, you're writing a gritty and realistic wartime story. If you were to start resurrecting characters, it would drive a good portion of your audience away because they came here to experience a gut-wrenching and emotionally driven story in which Red Shirt after Red Shirt, as well as a main character or two, are killed. That's just what a war story is about, after all. And so, bringing a character back from the dead is something you should most certainly avoid doing in this case. All of this is especially true if it's an Historical Fiction story based on an actual Real Life war.On the other hand, something set in a science fiction and/or fantasy world might be able to get away with resurrecting characters a bit easier. However, you should not equate "easy" with "plausible". There are still several ways to bring a character back from the dead in a way that might not sit well with fans, such as killing them off and then resurrecting them several times, instead of just once.
Foreshadow, foreshadow, foreshadow!
Having characters solve a problem by whipping out some previously unseen spell, tech or item is never satisfying, and doing it to resurrect a character is no different. Whatever method you use, make sure you set it up before it becomes relevant to the story, just like anything else.Of course, this can be an issue if you never intended to resurrect the character, only deciding to do so after the fact. If you haven't yet published the character's death, then you're fine - just go back, edit and redraft to include appropriate foreshadowing. If that's not possible because you have already published the chapter/book/episode/whatever where the character dies, then it's much harder. In this case, see if you can "reverse engineer" some foreshadowing - look at what you have already established, and ask if there's a way to use that to accomplish your goals. Do the characters have an uneasy alliance with a demon? Perhaps he can be persuaded to take them to the underworld to rescue their friend. Is there a healing spell? Maybe it can be supercharged to "heal" death. Does their space ship have nanobots to repair electrical faults? Maybe they can be reprogrammed to restore vital organs.
