forum Obstacles in a story, the suffering of characters

Started January 17, 2018 by @jeremyknoxknowswhathedid

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I need advice on making my characters suffer, and how to write pain. No one reads a book without a character suffering etc. and I love them too much to do so. Any advice?

personally, i love inflicting pain on my characters! it's too much fun.

but in all honesty, pain can come in many forms. it doesn't always have to be physical pain (but when a character is spitting blood on the floor and wipes their mouth with a grin and GETS BACK UP, that's awesome). it can definitely be emotional pain (seeing someone they love die, being emotionally manipulated, etc.).

if you're not keen on putting your character through too much, start slow. start with things that you think you would be able to handle, and then write it how your character would react. maybe they stub their toe, maybe they squish their finger in a door, maybe they hit their funny bone. Bearable pain. Then go deeper. Did their toe break? Did their finger get cut off? Then go even deeper. Did someone push them into a table and break their toe? Did someone slam the door closed on their finger? THEN GO EVEN DEEPER. A FIGHT. SHATTERED GLASS. BLOODY NOSES. BROKEN FINGERS. Throw in a knife or two. bonus points if one character dies from a stab wound after making some witty remark.

we love our characters, therefore we break them.

Wow @Cami that got really dark really fast. XD

Rather than having a character face physical damage that will inevitably heal over time (especially during the span of a novel that often takes place over weeks or months) is to have psychological damage. I'm not even talking about psychological torture—I firmly believe many genres overuse that to the point where people become desensitized to it. I'm talking about having a character be faced with realizations that everything they know isn't as clear as they thought or that their deeply-held beliefs are wrong.

[spoiler] Think Javert from Les Misérables: his deeply-held belief that criminals were always and forever bad people was broken when Jean Valjean, a former convict he'd been chasing for upwards of twenty years, spared his life. Javert was broken beyond repair and didn't know what to do with his life, so he… you know!

Some of the greatest suffering comes from the loss of one's own identity. People can get over the loss of loved ones or even the loss of body parts with time, but it can take years and years and sometimes the rest of one's life to form a new sense of self and adopt new values that they once harshly disagreed with.

Another way to face conflict is for a character to grow in a society that doesn't accept them because of society's own problems. Society might mistreat them despite them knowing that their beliefs are right—only society won't acknowledge that and refuses to change. The character may have to deal with misfortune due to reputation damage or be forced to assimilate into a society that holds immoral values.