Every writer has to be at least a little bit sadistic. Why? Because we have to torment our characters. There is really no way around this. We have to thrust them into the deepest depths of hell and then say, well, how are you going to get out of this one, buddy?
Most of the problems I used to face in my books, issues of plots falling flat, or characters not quite working out, were solved when I started taking yet another bit of Laurel Leigh’s advice: “Be meaner to your characters.”
It’s tempting to be too nice to our characters. After pages and pages with them, we start to love them, to identify with them, to need them. For some of us, our characters are parts of ourselves, and being mean to them is like being mean to ourselves. For others, characters represent people they know in real life, usually (maybe not always) people we wouldn’t wish harm on. Hurting our characters would be like hurting our best friends.
But in addition to being necessary, being mean to our characters can actually be fun. Some writers–strange, twisted writers with whom I would never class myself *ahem*–write to express repressed emotions like anger and hatred, and dragging characters through the virtual muck can be a satisfying release. And whether they’d admit it or not, just about all humans enjoy watching other humans struggle against great odds. Otherwise, all of the stories told since Gilgamesh would never have found an audience. I’ve noticed that the harder I am on my characters, the more engaged and interested I am in the story, and therefore, the more engaged my readers will be.
Here are some ways I like to be mean to my characters:
Pressure
A couple of posts ago I mentioned pressure as a way to encourage your characters to change. Pressure can be used in other ways as well. While you’re putting pressure on your character to change or to spur him or her to action, why not make that pressure painful? Put something high at stake for the character, and let that thing pressure him toward whatever needs to happen. For example, a lot of writing guides suggest using a time pressure–X has to happen by midnight, or Y will happen. But the real pressure is dictated by what is at stake. The magnitude of Y is proportional to the pressure on the character. If Y is the character will lose her favorite pair of earrings at midnight, that’s far less pressure than the character’s firstborn child will die at midnight. However, the timing is important to the equation–giving them a week to solve the problem is way nicer than giving them an hour. So raise the stakes as high as you can, turn back the clock as far as reasonably possible, and watch your character squirm.
Obstacles
A huge mistake lots of novice writers make is to not put enough, or big enough, obstacles between the character and his or her goal. If every story is essentially about whether or not a character gets what he or she wants, once they have gotten it, there is no story. This is probably why middles are so difficult for us–its hard to come up with enough realistic obstacles to keep middles engaging. So, as with the stakes, increase the obstacles as much as you can. Don’t put nice fuzzy kittens in the path of the hero to distract her, instead put deadly snakes in her path. Or maybe both. Kitten petting will be entertaining for about five seconds, but we can watch your heroine battle snakes in order to save kittens for hours.
Piggy-back Obstacles
One of my favorite ways to be mean to characters is to make them face multiple obstacles at once. If you establish a pattern in your book of obstacle–>resolution–>obstacle–>resolution, it can get boring, repetitive, and predictable. Instead, throw in an obstacle, then add in the next one before you resolve the first. See how many different obstacles you can confront your character with at once. Pile on the obstacles, and things will start to look truly bleak. So while she’s battling snakes, throw in some killer bees and maybe a few rabid bats for good measure.
Challenging Resolutions
The problem with all of these difficult to overcome obstacles, and probably one reason why many writers try to avoid putting them in, is that once you’ve raised an obstacle, you have to figure out how your character is going to resolve it. For me, this is probably one of the hardest parts of writing and the largest contribution to my log of procrastination hours. One of the biggest disappointments to a reader is when an author sets up a brilliant conflict and the character resolves it too easily. Deus ex machina and MarySue* need not apply. Letting your character get out of a jam too easily is another way of being too nice to them. Be mean, make them bleed, sweat and cry before they defeat the enemy. Even better if victory comes at some great cost. Let them win the war, but lose something precious–lives of loved ones, this year’s crops, a key piece of ground.
Kill off Characters
Not everyone has to be as ruthless as GRRM, but I believe it is important to let go of characters when necessary. Letting characters die is really difficult for me, particularly POV characters I’ve been with for a long time. But sometimes there’s no other choice. Artificially keeping characters alive when their deaths are necessary takes readers out of the story.
How will you know when to kill a character? It usually sneaks up on me. I’ll be writing along, and then a character will die. Or I’ll be summarizing ahead my plot, and suddenly I’ll realize, this character is going to die here. Sometimes, it’s simply in the character from the beginning, like they are fated to die. You’ll know it when you see it, and my advice is, try not to turn away from it because you love the character too much to let them go. Because ultimately, the story isn’t for the characters, it’s for the readers.
In short, if you want to write a good story, you have to be mean. Really mean. You might even have to kill. Or, if you want to look at it another way, you get to be mean. You get to kill, and you won’t even go to jail.
And now, I’m off to torture my characters some more.
Muahahahahahahahaha . . .
Taking the 4th off, Monday we start in on Setting with 101 TIWIK #32: What is Setting?
This post is part of a series of 101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My First Book. Start reading the series at the beginning.
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