Harold Crick, in the end, is not killed, though he has a couple close shaves and ends up in the hospital. There is also some tension at the beginning where he goes to see a psychiatrist who tells him he has schizophrenia, but that ends up not going anywhere; he just leaves and seeks out a literary scholar instead. He also has a relationship with a woman that he's auditing, and they get off to a VERY rocky start, due to the narrator putting sexual fantasies into his head when the two meet. He later apologizes to her for it.

There is also suicidal ideation on the part of his author, as she ponders ways to kill him off (and also express her own despair at ever doing so).