How to make someone “go missing” effectively?

[LunarScyphozoa]

Ok, so I’m working on something and I need some help. Basically, character A’s family is really REALLY toxic so Character B and Character C are trying to get her away from them ASAP without them finding out that she essentially ran away. How would they do this? I’ve been trying to think, and the only thing I can think of is a fake death but that wouldn’t fit at all. Any suggestions? If it helps, the setting is pretty Victorian, so they can’t google her.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Why won't a fake death, without a body found, work?

[LunarScyphozoa]

There’s not many ways she could “die” where it’s clear she’s dead even without a corpse where they are, and she isn’t very fond of the idea of pretending to die

[samvv000]

I guess it would partially depend on the tone and the actual intended structure/development of your story. Off the top of my head, there's a few things like:

• Trick the family into thinking she's been invited to go somewhere/meet someone, and have characters B or C escort here there, after which they just stash her away, send a few letters to get them to think she made it there and have them off her trail, and then just leave it be when she's settled into her new life and far enough away.
• Just flat-out have her run away in the middle of the night. You could probably get some mileage storytelling wise seeing the lengths the family goes through to try and find her, and maybe some episodes that go into how far the cast needs to go to avoid detection.
• Finding that their options are limited, instead of covertly making her disappear, have characters B or C make a very real and serious threat to someone in the family where they basically go "she leaves, you don't follow, that's the end of it". A variant of this is having A make a display of some kind, to the point where the family has no choice but to disown her, at which point she simply leaves out the front door.
• Characters B and C convince or blackmail someone in the family/household help them maintain the illusion that A is still in the household when she'd escaped ages ago. By the time they realize the deception, she's already long gone.
• Fake death is still kind of an option, but I agree that depending on the type of story you're trying to tell and the fake death method itself, it could be seen as either over-the-top or cliche. Grand house fires are usually effective for this sort of thing, though.

[LunarScyphozoa]

The second one is a really good idea, thank you so much!

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I suspect that whatever magic is used to make her disappear, there would be some kind of investigations, police, etc., involved so that a plausible reason for her disappearance (like drowned in the river, body not recovered) would satisfy those investigators & they'd not keep looking for clues about where she went.

If persons B & C claimed they delivered her to a destination but she's known to have not arrived there & can't be found there, persons B & C will soon be arrested as suspects, complicating the story a great deal.

[samvv000]

sure, but a lot of this depends on the focus the author intends to have on that investigation storytelling-wise vs how important it is to just make the disappearance believable and consistent with the atmosphere and the general narrative. most i can give out are ideas as starting points, they'd know best what works for them

for instance, in the case you specifically bring up, i can't know what the involvement of characters B or C is with the family, how well of a position they're in to deceive the investigators, what the fake destination would be, how long they'd be sending the letters for, if they'd be willing to disappear themselves, etc., etc.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

For sure. As the OP noted, it's not easy to contrive a believable disappearance that doesn't require a good deal of additional storytelling of its own. The victorian setting at least reduces the tools investigators can use to uncover the deception. But it's been done. Mark Twain & A. C. Doyle surely offer some examples.