lheticusvidere asked:
So, I read your ask from behold-a-cat, and not for the first time, it occurred to me that as an aspiring author with a major project to pin his hopes on, the whole thing I've heard so many authors having, this pleasure they take from inflicting suffering on their characters...I don't...really, have that. Like, at all. Do I put them in Situations(tm)? Absolutely, there's hardly going to be a story if I don't do that. But having them SUFFER during these Situations is incidental, if extant at all. I take much more pleasure in making these situations then having it revealed to me how they're going to overcome them. And I've come to enjoy building the world of the aforesaid major project immensely.
But yeah, you do hear authors talking about making their characters suffer and readers feel for them that way, quite a bit. Especially very famous ones. Being in my estimation rather not un-famous yourself, I'd appreciate assurance that alternate approaches like mine are still very valid?
dduane answered:
(sigh) Yeah, we hear a lot of stuff along these lines. From both the theoretically famous, and the non-. (And frankly, some of the theoretically-famous, when they discuss this, are talking through their hats. Writers are mostly as non-usefully-introspective as the rest of the general population. All of us are running “black boxes” inside our brains, as far as writing goes. Some of us, gods help us, are unaware of the fact. What can even be said about that….) 😅
Anyway. First of all: in my opinion (ideally, not necessarily to be considered authoritative), writers who too deeply enjoy causing their characters suffering may have a problem. This problem may be founded in a misunderstanding of what constitutes the basis of drama.
Of course drama is the heart of our art. (At least when we’re working in the Western paradigm. There are obviously others.) The heart of drama is conflict. Does conflict involve pain, and/or trauma? Yeah, sometimes. …But the far side of this conflict (and ideally: katharsis… both a dramatic and a psychiatric term) is the relief of pain.
Those who spend too much time concentrating on inflicting that pain/trauma on their characters are in danger of not spending enough time on relieving/assuaging it.
The pain is not the most important thing. Its chief value lies in pushing a character to the other side of the trouble they’re trapped in, with whatever insights they’ve acquired from the anguish. At which point the pain (ideally) ends.
So briefly: your approach is ABSOLUTELY valid! “Situations,” as you describe them, are one of the most important things that drive good fiction. (I remember one of Mike Ford’s editors asking him what he was working on at a manuscript, and he said, “Complications.” “Removing them?” Mike’s editor said. “Adding them,” said Mike. The man was an absolute master.)
So anyway: you’re fine. Do what you’re doing. And go well on the journey!
dduane