How would you continue a story after you killed off the main character of a story?

I can think of many things you could do, the actions of the main character can cause the secondary character to behave in a certain way because of a past incident involving them. This could be written in flashback.

The main character could drive the plot through a journal that he or she wrote before they died, which has now fallen into the hands of another character.

You could write the main character as an inner dialogue for an other character, this is a bit schizophrenic but I thought Quentin Tarantino's screen play for the film "True Romance," used Elvis as a character well in this way.
There's the ghost method, used in "The Sixth Sense," which I personally think is kind of dumb unless this sort of supernatural framework has been set up beforehand.
Or you could go the Dallas route in which the entirety of season nine was revealed to have been a dream of one of the characters. The main character isn't really dead because!!!
Personally this sort of thing really pisses me off when I read of see it, I feel cheated somehow. It almost as irritating as the baby swapping scenario's used in soup operas. Not that I watch those things (much).

 

This is pretty much my answer in a nutshell. I've never tried it myself, but I would say that this is probably the best method.

 

I like how ‘The Hero of Ages’ does it, but from the beginning of the story, I had the feeling he was not really the main character, but the girl was. Maybe that was part of the plan.

This can be tricky though.

One novel I am working on atm, is told in first person from the protagonists pov. 75% into the story, he dies.

After that, the story follows his friend, in third person limited, when he finishes what they started.
I made it work, I think, because

1 – The reader knows this character very well and is interested to hear about his way of dealing with the situation.

2 – There is no big difference in voice between the two, although their actions are very different.

3 – The death is not sudden. From the beginning of the novel, there are hints to that there is a reason why the protagonist is remembering his life. (as in it is plot related, that what kills him, eats his memories first)

I hope that this helps

- Julia

 

I've never read the book No Country For Old Men, so I'm not sure how it differs from the movie, but I have seen the movie and it handles this concept pretty well. The main character dies near the end, and the rest of the movie basically wraps up the other characters' plotlines.

 

I'd say that if the story continues after the main character dies there will probably actually be a new main character, not an absence of a main character, unless, of course, you are thinking of focusing on a whole group of people or doing something even more outlandish. A character the reader, or even you, think's the main character might die, and the story may go on. Or the actual main character may die and you just add a little bit of story from someone else's point of view before you finish. You as a writer decide.

In my story the character which is (implied to be) the main character at the beginning is murdered very early in the story. One of his brothers then becomes the main character of most of the rest of the story, and a third brother even becomes main character at one point (before he, too, is murdered). The story ends with/from the perspective of the main main character's girlfriend, who attends his funeral (and so all three brothers are dead, which brings the story to a fitting close, and there are other reasons why I end the story this way as well).

Be creative. If you happen to have (accidentally) "killed off your hero" before you were finished you might just want to end it there and not let things get too weird. Or your could make prequels instead.