I’m not really blogging today. Not in any meaningful sense. This blog while it appears to be a blog is really a bunch of disgruntled musings.
“Why are you not blogging today, Sarah?” Well, because I’m laying down words very fast on my Nanowrimo novel and writing non fiction might pop me out of the mood. Also because frankly I am still in shock from having to seriously hurt a character yesterday. “What do you mean having to seriously hurt a character, Sarah? Don’t you know they don’t exist? Don’t you know that hurting them is a needed thing for the plot?” I mean shut up, shut up, shut up. Yeah, you’d think after almost thirty years of writing I’d treat my characters as disposable widgets that go in and do what they’re supposed to and then die or go off or something, or at least stop existing for me. Ah! You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.
Oh, there is a certain distance I can achieve in short stories, particularly. I can write a story where the character really is there for the purpose of x. But the novel characters?
Look, I’ve got no illusions about myself. I am primarily, if not exclusively, a character writer. The last twenty six years have been a long, slow, often hopeless struggle to learn how to plot because I realized no character exists in vacuum (well, unless it’s my short story In The Absence Of Light published by Naked Reader Press recently — coff) For the character to show to best advantage, you need to show him/her pitting him/herself against something — usually adversity. The exception — sorta — is my refinishing mysteries, which are truly “novels of the quotidian” with the thinnest of plots as excuse. Weirdly, no, I don’t want to write those all the time.
So, I must write characters facing adversity. (Note for the religious — this is how I view the problem of evil in the world. Without it, G-d would be up a creek for a plot!)
But here’s the rub — to me, if not to the readers — the characters exist pre-plot. And if they weren’t fascinating people and most — though admittedly not all — of of the main characters are people I’d like to know and be friends with (though some of them I’d need to keep thorazine handy for.) That is why they are my main characters, because I couldn’t resist playing with them and spending time with them. Heck, look at Athos, who isn’t even MY character and whom I’ve now stolen to have my wicked way with in TWO series. (And in Sword and Blood my way is VERY wicked indeed.)
Does it hurt when I have to hurt them? You bet. Do I hurt them even harder in consequence? Oh, yeah, because I know that will make their eventual triumph tastier both for me and my readers. Does this mean it’s easier to drag them through hell by their heels? Oh, heck no. Really no.
I just had to seriously hurt one of the main characters in the current book AND have the other one feel guilty for it and unable to do anything — at least unable until I run him into a corner and he snaps, when we’ll get… explosions, blood and mayhem.
I prefer the explosions part. I feel beat and battered and need to go write them out of this fix, but I don’t want to go back there.
(Incidentally, and a subject for a post when I’m not feeling emotionally rubbed raw — part of this relationship with characters is what made writing proposals and only selling at best 75% of them so grueling. You had to love them, bring them to life and live them. Not good for any creator. On the good side, I now have about 20 novels where the plotting and the first three chapters [i.e. half the work] is done and which are ready to finish and bring out. I’m so looking forward to 2012 and the possibilities it brings.)
Now I’m going to shower, and then I’m going to spend the afternoon dragging my characters through hell (The current book section is called Come Hell.) Not literally. This is the Earth of Athena’s time. But … close enough.
Pity the poor writer who must hurt her creatures…
According To Hoyt 
At least people pay you for “hurting your characters”. [Wink]
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Heh, now i know why I’m a plot writer. I gleefully think what’s the last thing my characters wants to happen, then I throw it at them. If there’s any solace to be had for the reader it is the assurance that like Job in the end, the suffering protagonist will be restored to health, with a new family and twice as much livestock.
Maybe this will help: Though you may love your characters, what’s the best way to make your readers hate them? (Hint: Wesley Crusher die die die.) When C.S. Forester has all those terrible, unfair, UNJUST and painful things happen to Midshipman Mr. Hornblower, he creates a yearning in the reader’s breast that something good will happen to the lad to restore karmic balance.
Same for the story of Joseph in the Bible. We are annoyed with the proud teenaged dreamer in his coat of many colors. But by the time he’s spent almost two decades in slavery/prison, we’ll root for him. There’s nobody in the OT I like better.
We all want to be loved, and we want our children to be loved. If you want ME to love your brain-children, you must heap injustice upon them by the truckload.
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But what about the ass-kickers? I mean that particular character with whom you wait with baited breath for him/her to get to the bad guys, starting with the minor versions and ending with the Mr Big Bad himself, and giving them what’s coming for them. Sure, they need to have some snafus on the way too, but isn’t the main attraction there the humiliation and defeat of the baddie? And isn’t it always better if at least some of those are the easy cases for the hero, where the bad guy starts overconfident, puffing his chest and sure that he will have an easy victory, as always, and then getting the crap beaten out of him (literally or figuratively) while the hero takes a few moments off in the middle of the fight to do her hair or polish his nails?
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The Saint model? I prefer putting my characters up against their limits, but it is a preference.
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Is it not through adversity that character is revealed? A story (whatever the length) about sunshine & lollipops might be lovely for a character but hardly seems likely to involve a reader. In my household we have an adage: does the katani enjoy the fire, the quenching, the beatings? No, but they are necessary to make it strong.
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It’s so nice to read someone else who feels the way I do!
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I must be a sadist. The scene I wrote last night? Dolly getting her ass kicked. (Sort of.) As I was writing, a little voice in the back of my head was going, “This is good stuf!”
M
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Mark
It depends on the kind of ass kicking and also the character. This particular character is walking a fine line to breakdown, which I’ve done to characters before, and I don’t WANT to. After you drop too many walls on them, they don’t get up again. Mind you, part of me is sure he’s not at risk of that, but…
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Ooooog, yeah. Damaging a character is one thing. Breaking them is another. (And, from a very callous point of view… A broken character tends to only come across as emo, not as an interesting character to continue writing about — or continue reading about.) Figuring out how to damage them without breaking them is… hard. Especially if one needs a certain set-up, and that set-up needs to have teeth in it. And then there’s figuring out what form the scars will take.
*offers condolences, and possibly commiserations*
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I broke a character in one of my books — early on. And he just sat there and did nothing. Then I had to kill him. OTOH Nat and Lucius, frankly, seem to get more vicious the more I throw at them. Maybe that’s why I like them and feel bad about hurting them. I can’t help but empathize.
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A lot of my characters are teenagers. As I think the universal solvent for teenage life is perpetual embarrassment, I always think, what would be the most embarrassing thing that could happen to them in a crisis, and then I do it.
If a situation is horrible, that’s when I reveal the secret crush one has on one of the other characters in front of everyone else.
It’s fun.
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Does anyone else fall in love with their douchebags? Seriously, I write some awful characters: manipulative, devious, self-centered, vain or just plain icky. I love them more than the protagonists sometimes.
Anyone?
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My villains sometimes. I non-functional broken people often. I have a tender spot for Fuse, for instance. Douchebags? Please. there are enough in life, and I can’t kill them.
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