Stoic Characters and a Bastard Overlord God-Author

So, I was cleaning the stove top the other day, and scraped my finger on a sharp edge. I got a two millimeter cut as a result. Barely even bled. No bandaid required.

But it did sting in the shower that night. A tiny, minuscule cut, and it stung like a bugger.

This got me thinking.

I’ve just edited the passage in my WIP where my poor main character gets his leg savaged by a demon cannibal.

He’s properly wounded (lots of screaming and passing out), but after being patched up by a medicine man, he soon carries on, and a week later gets involved in a bloodthirsty battle.

Meanwhile, I’m still lamenting the scratch on my flipping finger!

It got me thinking about the god-awful things we do to our brave, stoic characters. In this WIP alone I put pretty much all my characters through the wringer. And that’s nothing compared to the emotional trauma I put my very favourite character through (in a fanfic piece I wrote a few years ago). The poor guy was totally emotionally destroyed by this bastard overlord God-author, all for the sake of entertainment.

Damn, we writers are cruel beasts.

So what about you? How brutal are you to your characters?

34 thoughts on “Stoic Characters and a Bastard Overlord God-Author

  1. That’s the fun of being a God-Author. You get to put characters through things you never have to experience yourself. Unless you’re like me with my second book where the main character experiences some of the hells I went through.

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  2. I don’t like to hurt my characters for the sake of it, but sometimes is necessary.
    In the novel I’m currently working on, one of my characters had to get a tattoo to cover the scar I gave her in the previous book, courtesy of the dread shanhui, the green demon dog with a man’s face of Chinese tradition.
    And I might have thrown to the dinosaurs a few of the characters in House of the Gods, but that was part of the fun.

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  3. I put my characters through tons of emotional trauma and often physical trauma, but in my last release, END OF DAY, I crossed a line for one of my MC’s that had me biting my nails on release day. So far no one has slammed me for it, but I still have “author nerves.”
    I think it also makes a difference if it’s a secondary character or an MC. I’m far more free with my secondary characters, but sometimes you just have to push the line with the MC.

    Hope the cut heals, Jess!

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  4. I submitted a synopsis recently where I killed everyone. It was brutal and cruel… and ultimately rejected until I saved some people. I was told it was a little too dark and hopeless. Go figure.

    I put my characters through hell. And probably more emotional torment than physical (which is saying something). But no one wants to read 300 pages of bliss, right?

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  5. I don’t think I’ve put ny characters through too much, at least not yet. I did have a random moment recently where my protagonist was in a fight, and I randonly realized I needed to break their arm.
    It was a strange feeling, this calm, detached realization that was so different from the emotional maelstrom the character was experiencing.
    What’s really funny is I’m co-writing and the other writer asked why I didn’t break her protagonist’s character’s arm, and I very matter of factly told them, “Nope. I’m leaving that for you to do, if you choose to.”

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