Follow up

Last time I wrote that it’s a writer’s job to attempt to destroy their characters’ lives.  I want to follow up on that this time.  

Like I said stories happen when conflicts arise.  Nobody likes to hear someone tell them about a normal, average, boring day at work.  No.  We want the funny story, the touching story, the rage inducing story.  Those are what get us off our feet, so to speak.

As a writer I have to figure these kind of things out.  It isn’t always easy because most of the time I actually like my characters.  I don’t want them to have a bad day.  That was a problem I had when I first started to write when I was quite a bit younger.  My heroes were just too good at what they did.  There was very little in the way of real conflict for them.  I usually had an overarching villain that they never really had contact with.

I cry a little to myself when I read my oldest works…

Anyway back to conflict.  Conflict is what we look for, even if that conflict is as simple as locking yourself out of the house.  (Yes, that was me).

Where we as writers have to be careful is adding too much conflict.  There is a line we have to walk.  Some writers do this remarkably well.  One example I turn to is Jim Bucher’s the Dresden Files.  Through this series the main character always seems outgunned, but the way the story flows, and the way the character is written helps the reader see, that no the situation just seems beyond Harry’s capabilities.  Only once has that not been the case, but I won’t ruin that story.

There is another writer out there that I feel is a terrible example of this.  (I will not say who, because I don’t do negative reviews here, or anywhere for that matter).  This particular author, in the one and a half books I read, was unrelenting in beating their main character down.  I stopped not even half way through the second because despite a mediocre resolution in the first, the character abuse started up again in the second. It was just too much.

I strive to maintain the proper balance.  I’ve made that difficult on myself with Hero Unit because my main character is incredibly powerful, but as another favorite author of mine said, people don’t care as much about your hero’s strengths.  They want to know their weaknesses.