When It Bleeds

When I started out, like 90% of you, I did what newby writers do – I wrote a good time for my characters.

Look, most of us – unless there’s something seriously wrong with us – don’t like hurting people. Very few writers I know would consider going up to a total stranger and kicking him or her where it hurts. We just don’t have it in us. Much less would most of us go up to our kids or cats and hit them really hard for no reason.

Characters are somewhere between total strangers and kids or cats. In a way, you feel like they’re independent adults, but in another way they’re created by you and at your mercy.

Now, I was a little better than the average bear because I’d read so much. I was aware that characters had to be put through the wringer and twisted at some point. I just reserved the right to do this for two pages, then spend the next hundred pages letting them have fun and get nice things because, duh, they suffered.

It wasn’t very good. I once told a rape in half a page, and the word clothes let alone the word rape or even assault were NEVER used.

So I had to learn to write the hurty parts out. And this particular book, I’m stuck with characters who are in a world of hurt and trying to fix it for almost the entire novel – it just let up a little on the emotional pain fifty pages from the end, and it feels like a weight was lifted off me, even though they still have to fight for their lives and their world.

And here’s what I’ve learned about writing pain and putting your characters through a tough time (I learned this both from doing it and from reading other people who do it – particularly their mistakes. And yes, some of the ‘mistakes’ were published, just not very good):

1 – Your characters got to hurt. No, I don’t like hurting mine, but if I’m reading a book by someone else where all the characters do is get nice surprises, get patted on the back, pick clothes and have breakfast, I’m going to get bored REALLY fast. Even if these people truly are the bestest in any world. The only books I’ve read that fail at this are not published. The only authors I’ve read who don’t understand this rule will never be published. Study the perennial models for stories. I know Cinderella got to laugh and sing with cute woodland characters in the Disney version, but read the real thing. She gets to suffer quite a bit before the triumph. It’s what gives the triumph meaning. (And no, having all the hurt be in the past, so you get to write the triumph part doesn’t work.)

2- Particularly if you hate writing these bits, be aware that your faculty for sensing “enough is enough” or even “ew” will be blunted. You truly don’t need to give us a 10 page description of how the wounds infected after your character got beaten. Most readers aren’t sadists. They want to read enough to know there was damage (not just be told) but they don’t want to be DRAGGED through it. (I’ll grant you most books that do this are horror.) There is a balance. It’s hard as hell to strike, but you can learn it from reading other people who do this well.

3 – Do NOT have your character “magically healed” or some other dodge after some hellish physical torture or some massive fight. Well, not unless it’s part of the setup. My characters in Shifters DO heal very fast. However I make sure they still feel their hurts. It’s just I can get them hurt to where a human would be dead. Particularly do NOT have your character magically healed by forgetting they’re hurt. (The early Laurell Hamilton did this regularly. She only got away with it because the pace of her action was so fast.) Let us see the character coming up from the bottom slowly. The fact he’s vulnerable for a few chapters will keep us on the edge of our seats, too.

4 – DO NOT have your character make some terrible mistake (and create emotional suffering) and then be told “oh, it’s nothing. No, darling, no one suffered because of your faux pas.” This is the emotional/psychological equivalent of instant magical healing.

5- DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have all your other characters be extra nice to your main character because “he’s suffered so much.” Oh, sure, if your main character is elderly and his sufferings kept his city free or saved a bunch of kids or whatever. Or if your character is a young lady who just got raped. For a chapter or two these get the “poor thing” exemption from SOME of the rest of the cast. But all of them? Forever? And if they’re not in these positions. No. Look, if one of your friends had gone through hell would you cut them slack forever? Or do you at some point say “well, you know, it’s time to put your behind in the past”? (Okay, I like some Disney movies.) And how does an entire city/civilization know about someone’s private suffering, anyway? And why does everyone care? And no one gets jealous? What? Suffice to say I’ve read books like this published, but it’s usually the last thing I read by the author. It’s a newby mistake, where the author is trying to soothe the characters and compensate him for having to hurt him.

6- KEEP PERSPECTIVE. A good test is “if I had a friend this happened to, would it be such a horrible thing?” If you do that, you probably won’t have characters talk about their “great suffering” because they sprained an ankle last year. (Okay, most of this is in romances, but still.) Remember from the ouside the readers don’t care if your baby’s toe is pinching. Imagining you read it in someone else’s book and/or that it happened to a friend of yours will help you figure out how to treat it.

I’m going to get back to my novel. It just feels good to have the characters out of the emotional iron maiden, even if I’m still handling them with brass knuckles…