Problem of the moment: If you have a bad guy who's not important to the story, but is only a backstory sort of villain, is it okay to kill him off and use his death as an instrument to set off a plot thread? Or does it mislead the reader to introduce him at all?

If you have to kill somebody in order to set off other events, should it be somebody the readers could care about a little? Or somebody they never heard of, sort of a red-shirt guy like in the old Star Trek? What does it mean, if the killed-off character is somebody the reader doesn't like?

Don't know. Must think.