On October 19, 2010, Mysterygirl123 wrote, I’ve started to love and protect my character so, so, so much, but I know something (else) bad needs to happen for the story to work. How do I get over that?
We create a lovable main character – let’s call him Sammy – so our readers will love him, and then we fall in love, too. The love we bring into being is a kind of self-love, not only for us but also for the reader, who lives inside that character. When I even think about making something bad happen to my main, I don’t want to do it, although I know I have to. When I’m reading a novel by someone else and a terrible event occurs, sometimes I have to close the book for a few minutes, or I may go forward very slowly.
Many years ago I read and adored a book for adults called Happy All the Time. As I recall, the author, Laurie Colwin, managed to write an amiable novel, catastrophe-free, that was riveting. So here’s a prompt, right at the beginning of the post: Write a short story, an interesting one, that’s upbeat from start to finish. There has to be conflict, because I don’t think you can have a story without conflict, but make it small; keep the stakes low. Picture books for very young children achieve this regularly, because their audience isn’t ready for Sturm and Drang. But your story needn’t be a picture book. If you try the prompt, I think it will be hard, but it’s just an exercise, so how the story turns out doesn’t matter.
Generally, the size of the bad events you subject Sammy to depends on the genre you’re working in. If you’re writing romantic comedy, the problem may be rejection by the love interest. His life in other respects can be fine. One might even want to tell him to Get Over It, but in this kind of story the scale is just right. In a middle-grade contemporary novel, there may be a bunch of problems – not being popular, flunking social studies, arguing with a younger sister – not serious, but serious in this world.
However, the heroine of a thriller would howl with laughter if she heard that Sammy was worried about popularity. In Jill’s story from last week she just lost her whole family in a civil war!
I hesitate to read a tragic book or a horror story. I’m a wimp. I’ve never read anything by Stephen King, for example, although millions can’t get enough of his books. But I’d have an easier time writing horror than reading it, and the reason is that when I write I have control. I may squirm but I recover. Hmm, should I make Sammy’s best friend die by poison, or should someone push her out a window? At this point I may pause in my typing to cackle gleefully. Whether I choose poison or defenestration should have nothing to do with which is an easier death or which will cause Sammy less pain. The decision should depend on what the plot consequences will be for each option and which is likely to better serve the story.
There are ways to comfort yourself, though. You can tell yourself that Sammy is going to prove himself through his suffering. He’ll learn from it and be better prepared for whatever comes next. You can point out that if nothing bad ever befalls him he’ll wind up a shallow person.
I read an article along these lines last week in The New York Times health and science section. Research was done on the happiness and satisfaction levels of people who’d survived a few terrible situations or many or none at all. The finding as I understood it was that the people who’d gone through a few serious difficulties were the happiest, the most satisfied, the most at peace. The ones who’d undergone the most misery and those who’d endured the least were the unhappiest. The theory was that people who’d been relentlessly traumatized became exhausted and lost hope. I don’t remember why the people who’d endured nothing were dissatisfied, but I do remember why those in the middle group were in such good shape. They’d been tested and discovered they could cope; they’d found out whom they could count on and strategies they could use to pull themselves through – valuable lessons for them and for Sammy, too. Your characters need the trouble you send them, but don’t overdo, because you don’t want to wear them or the reader out.
You may be writing a tragedy. If so, there will be no strengthening or happy ending for Sammy. But readers who like tragedy, who enjoy a good cry, will thank you. And secondary characters may be strengthened.
Writing Magic has a chapter on this topic called “Suffer!”, which got the entire book banned from a middle school district in Illinois. Here’s the paragraph that caused the trouble:
“Intensify your brutality. Make sure that we, your readers, know exactly how much your hero is suffering. Plunge us into his mind and heart. Tell us what Robin Hood is thinking and feeling when dire things are happening – and even when dire things aren’t happening. When we read the hero’s thoughts and feelings we are lifted out of ourselves and plunked down inside his skin. We breathe with him. We sigh with him. We see through his eyes, hear through his ears, think his thoughts, feel his emotions. We are in the story, exactly where you want us to be. No way we’re going to stop reading then.”
The banning came not long after the shooting at Virginia Tech University that killed thirty-two people. The Illinois school district administration worried that I was inciting children to violent behavior, not merely to – possibly – violent writing. There may be ill effects from violence in books and movies and on television – I’m not an authority – but I’m pretty sure that writing about writing powerful stories never hurt anyone and that bland writing never prevented carnage.
Mystery Girl123’s question came up on my list today, so soon after the shooting in Tucson, a sad time but an opportune one for this topic. Why is it hard to write a good story without suffering, humorous suffering or serious suffering? Why do we seek out entertainment in which people die, in cop shows or medical shows or dramas or even in comedy? I’m not sure, but maybe because we’re preparing for the worst that life can throw at us. When we make Sammy suffer we’re helping our readers, which should stiffen us to do it. We may hurt him, but we’re helping them.
In addition to feeling sad over the recent events, I’ve thought about them fictionally. What world could I put what happened in? How could I reimagine it? Who would my heroine be? Could she at least save the nine-year-old girl who was there?
We’re lucky to be writers and to come to grips with these elemental subjects. Maybe I’m being grandiose, but I believe we work with the nightmares of the world and shape them, even make them beautiful, so that we all become stronger and grow in understanding of – eek, a cliche! – the human condition.
So the prompt is to use what happened in Tucson or any other real-life tragedy in a new story. You can pick a news event or a personal one that hardly anyone knows about. The bad thing that happens to your main character is handed to you by the event you choose. You can soften it a little to make it bearable or to serve the story. Don’t feel you have to stick to the facts. Your characters can be elves or jinns or barnyard animals. You’re looking for the essence. Shape your story so that it reaches an ending that pleases you, not necessarily a happy ending but a satisfying one. If the writing makes you sad, that’s okay.
Still, have fun and save what you write!
Lynn Weide says:
Great post. I like your viewpoint that writers shape the world's nightmares and make them beautiful so that others can cope. Nice 🙂
Rose says:
Thank you, I intend to try that prompt. Really, your posts get better all the time.
Intentionally or unintentionally, I think I'm being reminded of our discussion of Katniss last week, F.
Chicory says:
🙂 When I'm reading a book and something dreadful happens -like a favorite character dies- I pretend it's a movie and the `real' character is driving off the set and thinking about how much nicer their bank-account looks.
Marissa says:
I like to read books where the main character is put in lots of difficult sittuations because in the end, as long it isn't a tragedy, the main character makes it through and I think that this gives me a sense of hope, even though the book is usually fiction.
Megan says:
You’re right, it's so interesting how we react to characters suffering. Look at the classic Disney films – everyone always reminisces about how much better they were than the current feel-good, vapid Disney, and one of the qualities that really wrenched the heart was that people died. Yes, the bad people, but also the ones we loved, or who had done nothing wrong. Mufasa's death still makes everyone cry. It seems so unfair when Kocoum dies in Pocahontas. The father of the main guy in Mulan dies as well.
Even Harry Potter – a lot of my family members complained about the sheer volume of deaths in the last book, and of course there were plenty before that. I wasn’t any less sad than anyone else (and I’m pretty sure I cried more than most normal people), but I felt relieved that JK Rowling hadn’t sold out to compassion. It was a war. People die in wars. If no one had died, I wouldn’t have felt like it was real.
That’s another reason why the very end of the Twilight Saga (not sure why I even read to the end, to be honest) also felt like a sellout. Readers geared up for trauma and death and wounds, and got nothing.
I wonder why readers function this way?
Anyhow, thank you for a very interesting post! Lots to think about.
Maddie says:
I have four younger brothers and sisters, and I honestly don't think that reading a book telling you to make characters in your story suffer is going to make someone want to hurt others. Especially not in a book about bettering your writing.
Great post! 😀
Rose says:
@ Megan –
I feel that way too! I'm not sure if this is because I've been raised on Save-the-World fantasy or what. But even when I was little, I would read stories where the characters would get into all these situations and escape without a scratch and I'd sit there thinking, "Where are the CONSEQUENCES already?" Not that I did so in quite those words when I was younger, but I certainly thought those things.
Though when things are dangerous and dire and all that, I go to the other extreme: "DON'T TOUCH SO MUCH AS A HAIR ON THEIR HEADS, AUTHOR!"
In my stories, well, I recently ran a check in my finished-works folder and counted how many had someone getting hurt. The ratio was about half safe-half not. What can I say? I guess I'm a realist at heart (ha, not likely.)
@ Marissa – I completely agree with you. It certainly does give hope. Hope and a feeling of "wow, if they can be brave in big things like that, I ought to be braver in the small things." Btw, have you ever read Clare Dunkle's BY THESE TEN BONES…? It's a terrific book though rather dark in the middle. It qualifies like nobody's business if you're looking for serious situations and hope.
Jessica says:
I have a horrible habit of flipping to a later spot in the book until I see a character's name again so I know they didn't actually die or that they wont be evil or what not. It's a bad one, I know, but I can't stand thinking my favorite character might actually be dead! When I write though, I have a tendency to make the same things happen over and over, but in different ways which leaves lot's of editing for me.
ps: that chapter in your book was by far my favorite and most helpful! Thanks for posting!
Grace says:
This post was quite true: conflict is the essense of every plot. Conflict, I think, is the one thing in a book that will make us all, shriek and shudder, but will have us staying up until 2 a.m. flipping the pages…
Even though Frodo suffers so much in The Lord of the Rings I absolutely loved the ending of the Return of the King because Frodo was no longer just a little Hobbit from the Shire, he is now the saviour of the world, who is now wise and strong and understands humanity, and love and war. Pretty awesome.
Thanks for the post Ms. Levine 🙂
Mya says:
Now I'm quite curious about Happy All the Time. Mus check that book out someday.=) I always wondered if it really was possible to have a book without conflict, major or minor. I guess its just not possible.=) I'm having a bit of trouble making my characters suffer, lol even my villain! But this post has given me a bit of courage, so I'll dive into the conflict soon.=) They always seem to come in at the right times.
@Megan: Couldn't help replying lol. I completely agree with you about the disney films, and serials, these days. Though, the latest offering Tangled was touching and beautiful, its a comeback to the old classics, so hopefully things might change.=)
@Jessica: You're not alone there.=D I need to stop being such a coward, even with Ella Enchanted, I was so afraid for Ella when she was sent off finishing school, that I just had to skip to the last page. The happily ever after was a comfort.=) But I guess that's a sign of how good a book is.
Off to try the first prompt. I have a feeling I'll be working on this for a while.=)
Erin Edwards says:
A great post!
Regarding the banning, I think that is an interesting case of things taken out of context because here I don't read "brutality" as "gruesome torture" but I can see how it could be interpreted that way. But even though I don't always agree, I do understand a community considering what their children are reading.
@ Chicory – I like your idea of the happy actor! My mom likes the play of "Fiddler on the Roof" better than the movie, because she said the end of the movie was depressing but in the play all the actors come out smiling and bowing to the applause. 🙂
Maddie says:
Jessica- my habit is similar. I almost always read the first and last sentences of a book before reading it, because i have to know that there's a happy ending! 😀
Megan- I totally agree about the Disney movies! I always have to fast forward through the sad scene in The Lion King, and I usually end up sobbing anyways! They're sad, but that's what gives them their charm and beauty.
And in regards to Harry Potter, I understand why JK Rowling had to kill off all those characters, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
I didn't read the Twilight Series either… 😀
marveloustales says:
Thanks for writing about reinterpreting, and therefore dealing with, real life events by writing about them. It's something I often find myself doing, but it's not so easy to articulate or explain! I think it's very much about the matter of control–in the world of the story we have control in a way we don't in the real world, which allows us to deal with a situation in a different way. Now I sound like I'm talking about something that's practically therapeutic…and maybe it is, but it's much better if you end up with a good story too!
As to making characters suffer, I like stories where characters don't suffer TOO much…which maybe is why I still read a lot of Young Adult even though I'm theoretically past the target age. I have mixed feelings about making characters I'm writing about suffer–sometimes I want to be nice to the ones I like, but other times…it comes out just the opposite! I was part of a fanfiction writing community for a while, where I learned the concept of "Favorite Character Mutilation Syndrome." In other words, you always hurt the ones you love. Torturing the characters is how you get the most emotion from them, and for a writer sometimes that's the most exciting part…and, for my stories at least, I always know it's going to come out all right in the end anyway! 🙂
April says:
I had that prompt in a writing class once. I picked a news article about three girls who had been abandoned by their single mother (she decided she couldn't take it any more and left them in the apartment and moved out on her own). The girls were a baby, a toddler, and a young girl (five or so, I think). The oldest girl had been desperately trying to take care of them by herself, but they were all malnourished and sick by the time they were found.
The article talked about how a social worker visiting someone else in the building found them. I think one of the girls was wandering around trying to find something to eat. The mother had been gone for weeks. The cops found her later though, and she got her due!
That story still shakes me to my core.
Chicory says:
Wow. That's a really sobering story, April. I'm so glad the kids were found!
In my creative writing class, I had to write a story based on something sad from my own life. I ended up getting so upset remembering that I turned the story in half finished. Guess I'll probably never write a great memoir. 🙂
Erin, I love that about plays! No matter how tragic things are, the final bow cheers you right up. The actors always seem so happy to have done a good job.
layrenelement says:
Hi Gail! I bought your book Writing Magic with some of my Christmas money. I just thought I would let you know I really enjoyed it. I know how lonely it can be in the trenches some days writing. If you needed an ego boost on a day where getting words out seems more like going to the dentist and getting a root canal, I hope this gives you one. 🙂 I wrote a short 250 word story based on the prompt in the book about turning someone you don't like into a bug. Since you inspired it, I thought I would post the link to my tumblr to where you can read it. 🙂
http://lmorbison.tumblr.com/
Happy writing!
Lauren
Mysterygirl123 says:
Wow. Three things just really surprised me.
1.That my question was blogged about.
2.April's story about the three girls.(how can someone be that cruel?)
3.My cat squeaking outside the door. Yes, my cat can meow, he just seems to prefer squeaking.
Hmmmm….