This is so fun it should be illegal: Character Torture.

Why is torturing characters necessary in fiction? Why can't we (writers) just have a nice story in which the characters are happy, nothing that bad happens to them, and the ending is blissful? I'll tell you why, hold on while I yawn. Yep, that's right. It's boring. A story in which the stakes aren't high, the tension isn't mounting, there isn't something of extreme importance at risk, are big fat yawnfests (I'm trademarking that). At least, in genre fiction that's true. Literary is a beast I'm not even going to get started on. Um, a quiet, character-driven beast.

Conflict is good. Tension is good. And I think character torture is an offshoot of that. The characters have to go through hell. The reader has to feel invested enough to keep reading. Now, I'm going to assume this is probably different for other genres. I mean, I don't think a romance novel is going to have someone getting their hand chopped off, but those authors probably torture their characters in their own way too.

Character torture isn't always a physical thing. In my WIP Winner got crippled (his own damn fault, btw), but in The White City Lock doesn't get any physical damage, but in a way his torture is worse. It's all internal. He loses nearly everything he gained during the book, and the one thing he wanted the most is almost meaningless because of it. It takes him the whole second book just to recover!

Now, I don't find any sick pleasure out of destroying characters lives just to see how far I can push them before they break. I mean, who do you think I am?

Now, I'm off to play with Winner. Where is he? Hiding, no doubt. He does that. Strange, I wonder why. . . .