Writing advice you never asked for: Make 'Em Suffer

“Life is suffering and suffering is life.”

~sounds like a quote from an Ingmar Bergman film~

No life is worth living in which we are not challenged in some way.

No book is worth reading when the characters are not similarly challenged.

I’m sorry to say it, but there are some bad days ahead for all of us. It’s true. Know what though? There are plenty of bad days behind us, too. But we survived those bastards, so we can sure as hell survive whatever the future has in store. Because we’re smarter now, stronger somehow, and maybe a little bit braver. The bad days have helped define who and what we are just as much as the happy days.

A tale with characters that learn nothing, fight the easy fight, and come out unscathed is worthless to me. You have to make them suffer in some way to bring about change. You have to show them at their worst before they can be their best. You have to break them before they can ever be whole.

That’s not to say that everything need be depressing. You don’t need to pour that suffering on like syrup over pancakes (I like the Butter Pecan syrup the most myself -- but that's not important, I suppose). You should get an idea of a reader’s expectations before you decide to make the main character a one-eyed little girl who can’t walk or talk and lost her puppy last year to Tropical Storm Billy. Different genres have different expectations of a character’s crisis. For example, comedies full of death can either be bold or off-putting. Know what you write and write what you know. You know?

A character’s suffering can come in many ways. A divorce? A zombie horde taking everything the hero has ever known? The super villain who wants to reveal the hero’s day job? The serial killer who works in such a way that it’s driving the protagonist to the edge? The death of a loved one? The painful misunderstanding that led to the loss of a friend? 

Crisis. Sadness. Suffering. Madness. Pain. Depression. Oppression. Love/Loss. Whatever.

We can draw from our own lives if it’s applicable or we can draw (carefully) from real-world happenings or fictional dramas. There’s no rule for where you have to get your inspiration. Suffering can be very real or very unreal, but it’s required in some way to make the characters real. 

It’s the fuel that drives all fiction.

Without it, your fiction is born lifeless, with nowhere to go, with nothing to learn, and without a reader who cares.

So give ‘em hell.