forum Dose anyone torture their characters? Or am I really cruel?

Started April 23, 2018 by @TheGoldenLegend

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In your dreams or in writing? Do you do it? Or am I the only one?

I DO IT AND I'M NOT SORRY MWAHAHAHAHAHA

MEEEE AND I LOVE IT

Not to be a downer or anything, but calling it torture is kinda skeevy imho. I don't take sadistic glee in ruining the lives of my characters. I love my characters, even the villains, and when bad things do happen to them, it's only because it helps to further the narrative. Idk, it's probably just because I'm old, but I believe that when you write, you're supposed to write from a place of genuine love for your characters and story. As long as you do that, it's never really torture when things start getting bad for the characters, unless you do genuinely like to torture, but that's when stories become less stories and more just a trauma conga-line made for the observation of the audience.

Let's take for example my main character. She goes through a lot of pain, and I do mean a lot, to the point where it's really just a countdown until the next bad thing happens to her when she's in between bad things. But am I doing it to torture her? Not needlessly, no. It's part of her character progression and it serves her story. There's an in-universe explanation as to why these things happen to her. Part of it is cosmic and another part systemic, but a huge part is self-infliction, which fits into her characterization. There's another character who, spoiler alert, dies in the end, and she is the one who deserves it the least. But I didn't do it because I hated her or wanted to torture her or her loved ones. Just the opposite. I did it because I and many characters love her dearly, and her death was perfect to further a growing narrative.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm supposed to be going with this; I'm pretty much rambling now. If you can forgive me for getting up on my soapbox, I think you'll agree that characters should be celebrated and loved, not tortured for the sake of.

Cool!

I know @AmmyPajammy, I don't torture my character in my writing, but dream wise? Its kind of interesting, seeing how much your character can go through without snapping!

And when it come to writing about them, you know how they will deal with it, and what they will do in the situation… And plus, I love how the others characters react when they get the person out of the bad place.

Other question- Is it usually a girl or a boy you're torturing?

I guess I don't take GLEE in it, but it is very interesting….

I guess I don't take GLEE in it, but it is very interesting….

Yeah, I made myself cry in my sleep by doing this… Like, a lot, I cry in my sleep a lot… Not always by hurting people..

I cry a lot. period. Mostly just to see if I can make myself. Geez that sounded weird…

I don't do it to see if I can cry, usually when I'm board and have no other plots I can run through my head I do it, but yes, this is weird.

I understand that you all didn;t mean it that way, but I just always had a problem with the kinda sadistic way people refer to how they write crises in their stories. Although, the torturing them in dreams bit, you might wanna unpack that @TheGoldenLegend

I do that too. Its…entertaining? That sounded wrong but its true….

I don't really dream about it, but as always, ideas come from the head and some times though thoughts are not all that happy.

In hindsight, I saw the edit that you made so I understand where you're coming from to an extent. But I will say, my fiance edits my work and helps me with my ideas, and if there's anyone who likes to put characters through the ringer, it's that guy. No matter what story I write, his go to ending is "and then everyone dies and/or the world gets destroyed".

oh yeah I agree. the thing is, I usually give the character I love the most angst. I don't know why that is…

I DO THAT TOO!!! ARE WE JUST NATURALLY SCREWED UP???!!

Well, drama is the driver of (most) storytelling, so it's not exactly unnatural.

I like seeing my characters survive the things that would kill a man in minutes, I like seeing them pull through the hard time even when they are losing everything! it's interesting, and even though it's a little villain like, we're all writers and we have a ton of other things that might be worse than torture. Now, I don't know what those things are because I'm not you, but I know everyone does it so there's nothing wrong with asking.

^^AMEN

@writelikeyourerunningoutoftime I DO THAT TOO! One of my characters gets hurt a lot because he’s clumsy and also fighting in a war, so he gets shot, stabbed, and breaks things. What’s weird is the most dwelled on injury is the one he gets my tripping.

Lol. I had this character who's mom, brother, and foster sister died at different points in the book (and each time was lowkey his fault), then his best friend had her memory erased, then he got tortured, shot, his nose broken, his arm broken, his dad dies, his memory gets messed up… honestly there was probably more I just cant remember anymore… (I used to suck at writing as you can tell)