There’s a terrific workshop taking place on Romance Divas. It’s Character Torture 101 by multi-published author Linnea Sinclair. Already Linnea’s workshop has reminded me how important it is to make our characters suffer to get to their goal. There are a variety of ways to do this I think.
1. Let your character move towards the goal, only to throw ever bigger obstacles in the way
2. Have them get the goal and realize it’s not what they wanted all along
3. Have your characters face their worst fears in order to achieve the goal
4. Have them reach the goal and then take it away
5. Strip your character of what s/he holds most dear (eg. honor, reputation, respectability).
I don’t have a lot of time to blog today. I would’ve liked to discuss these further and maybe provided more examples. But I will leave them for you to think about. Feel free to comment. How do you make your characters suffer? What books or movies have good examples of characters suffering before reaching their desired goal?
As always, thanks for stopping by and reading.
Comment
Hey Gabriella – I’ll be sending my friend Rhonda over here – she’s a pro at character torture. Really.
For some reason movies and character suffering brings to mind Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. I’m not a big Bond fan – but in part because of the suffering he went thru in that story I really enjoyed the film. Ummm – wait a sec – that sounds kinda warped. Aw – you know what i mean.
Comment
Great topic. I think you have to keep in mind the type of story you’re writing. Not all suffering has to be like torture, emotional or physical. For instance, I write Womans’ World stories, and in my last story the goal was to knock on the hero’s door and offer him cookies, and the suffering she went through was just nervousness. LOL. In my shorter erotic romance, I sometimes keep it light, too. Not as light as the WW stories, but not too angsty either. Sometimes your word count doesn’t allow you to get into too much deep suffering. The deeper the suffering, the more room you need to resolve it. At least, that’s my opinion.
And I LOVED Casino Royale. The man has an ass to die for.
Comment
Okay, now I have to go see this movie! I’m behind on the Bond movies. Going to have to stock up on the DVDs.
Love the discussion. Kate raises a really good point. I’m currently working on a novella and realized that I didn’t have room to go into a very deep emotional soul wrenching conflict. Space sometimes does dictate what you can do.
But I have to say that the books that really dragged me deep into the story were those where the internal and external conflict wove together so tightly that every decision or action seemed to lead to another turn of the screw. Kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Comment
Danny Craig’s ass – shuddering in ecstacy.
Comment
Ok, that comment, “Danny Craig’s ass–shuddering in ecstacy” really made me pause a moment b/c the District Attorney in my hometown is named Danny Craig and I don’t think his ass has made a public appearance. It just struck me as reeeeally funny.
This is a good starter list. When I started writing novels I found it difficult to keep the plot moving and I read something like this and I haven’t had trouble since. I know think of my plot as an obstacle course.
When Rhian said I should come over, though, I really thought it was going to be about torture scenes..heehee!
I once had a John Dufresne quote on my fridge that said, “Only trouble is interesting.” It reminded me of when Zorba of Z. the Gk said, “But Boss, life IS trouble!”
You have a beautiful site, btw. Very magical looking. ~ Rhonda
Comment
ROFL Rhonda! Thanks for stopping by. Funny how knowing someone with the same name can kill those fantasies (unless said person is the stuff fantasies are made of…sigh…don’t know many of those)
Know what you mean about obstacle courses. I’m always looking for ways to make life difficult for my characters. You have to.
I’m going to have to drop by your site and see what you write and get hints on torture. I think Rhian mentioned you were good at it.