Are you mean to your characters?

[Pumpkin the Bird]

Bad things happen to almost all of them, but I don't think of it as me being mean to them. I think of it as me translating the logical series of events involved in my story, that lead to some of them being unfortunately harmed ._.
I love them all. Butbut. s**t happens.

[BadassUke]

My characters are abused as if they were female characters from a 90s shonen anime.

[Bedaizled]

Yes. I give them angst and am not afraid to kill people off

mrgreen

[Nezyl]

I'm mean to my character from the very beginning. He's a young crow who fell out of his nest, and a "helpful" couple decided to "save" him.

[Aevona]

Perhaps my orininal question wasn't ideal. Too easily is it cast aside with a "no, but..." or a "yes, and..."


So. I think it would make a more interesting discussion to ask:

Does writing a good story make it necessary to be mean to your characters? (past what the plot requires...)

[Nezyl]

Aevona

Perhaps my orininal question wasn't ideal. Too easily is it cast aside with a "no, but..." or a "yes, and..."


So. I think it would make a more interesting discussion to ask:

Does writing a good story make it necessary to be mean to your characters? (past what the plot requires...)

I don't think it's necessary, but I feel like it would take a skilled writer to make a good story while being not being mean to the characters.
I couldn't imagine being nice to my characters all the time though. I can't seem to think of a way to have a problem/solution in a story without being mean to them.

[Aevona]

Nezyl

]

I don't think it's necessary, but I feel like it would take a skilled writer to make a good story while being not being mean to the characters.
I couldn't imagine being nice to my characters all the time though. I can't seem to think of a way to have a problem/solution in a story without being mean to them.

Well, a certain amount of strife is necessary for a conflict, and hence, a plot. But do stories without hardships, without trials ever really draw readers in?

If an author doesn't subject their charactes to some sort of struggle, what you end up with is something that is blatant escapism--or, in some scenarios, blatant self-indulgence. This kind of story is easy--easy to read, easy to forget.


Agree? Disagree? Let's try to have a discussion here. razz

[Nezyl]

Aevona

Nezyl

]

I don't think it's necessary, but I feel like it would take a skilled writer to make a good story while being not being mean to the characters.
I couldn't imagine being nice to my characters all the time though. I can't seem to think of a way to have a problem/solution in a story without being mean to them.

Well, a certain amount of strife is necessary for a conflict, and hence, a plot. But do stories without hardships, without trials ever really draw readers in?

If an author doesn't subject their charactes to some sort of struggle, what you end up with is something that is blatant escapism--or, in some scenarios, blatant self-indulgence. This kind of story is easy--easy to read, easy to forget.


Agree? Disagree? Let's try to have a discussion here. razz

I agree that it'd be generally easy.
I'm trying to think of an example of a story where the author is nice to their characters, but I really can't think of much. Characters in children's books even have struggles.
Without trials or hardships, it would be difficult for readers to draw personal connections (as everyone has something bad happen, whether it's big or small). This, I believe, would make it nearly impossible to draw readers in.

[WHOAnellie]

Yeah, I have a tendency to abuse my characters. My FMC this year has an abusive father, will be raped, and will try and kill herself.

I'm terrible gonk

[Aevona]

I'm beginning to wonder how much of the hardship authors inflict upon their characters is for the sake of the narrative, and how much is just the authors sublimating their angst (for lack of a better word.)

Personally, I love making my characters' lives hell.

[Tanabata Wish]

I'm mean to my characters, yes. My main character gets stranded halfway through one book, waking up to find that her right leg is missing and so are all her memories of who she is. Just when she learns to walk again and finally returns to her old life and things are going good, someone very close to her is ordered to kill her and actually tries to. She escapes, goes to find her real family, who end up getting killed by the villain four chapters into the second book. By the end of the second book, she's been betrayed again and lost her best friend as well. Things go a little better for her in book three, as far as I have it planned anyways.

My favorite character from the story (the same one who tried to kill the main character) becomes extremely depressed by his actions and hates himself for trying to kill her. He sincerely tries to make things right, but she rejects him and that hurts him a lot. He places a lot of his self-worth in how well he does his job, so when his boss finds someone to replace him, he becomes more depressed. He's someone who doesn't really know how to deal with life's trials and lets them negatively affect him all the time. I'm afraid he may end up committing suicide in the end rather than go to jail and probably be sentenced to death, but that's still undecided

My villain has his own issues. His father was abusive to him and his mother until he got big enough to protect them both. He fell in love with a girl and they got engaged, but she ended up cheating on him with his best friend (who is also a character in the story with his own twisted issues.) Then his dad had her killed, and the best friend tells him she was pregnant but didn't know who's kid it was. The villain then kills his father and takes over the organization he ran. His mother, who he believes should have been grateful that he took her abuser out of her life, is completely horrified by what he's done and rejects him. All of this causes him to become a very bitter and angry and cold person. He really has some good ideals and goals. His methods for accomplishing them, though, are ruthless.

[Tanabata Wish]

Nezyl

Aevona

Perhaps my orininal question wasn't ideal. Too easily is it cast aside with a "no, but..." or a "yes, and..."


So. I think it would make a more interesting discussion to ask:

Does writing a good story make it necessary to be mean to your characters? (past what the plot requires...)

I don't think it's necessary, but I feel like it would take a skilled writer to make a good story while being not being mean to the characters.
I couldn't imagine being nice to my characters all the time though. I can't seem to think of a way to have a problem/solution in a story without being mean to them.

I agree with this. Conflict is required for any good story, and that usually implies that one or more people is going through a rough time or losing something important to them in the struggle. All those things we do to our characters that are 'mean' are just obstacles they need to overcome that will hopefully move the plot forward and/or shape our characters into the people we need them to be.

[MissSweet77]

I'm not mean to them so much as I make logical things happen.

For example, I have a character who at one point was addicted to heroin. She quits eventually, but finds out later that she contracted HIV from sharing needles.

The main character was sold into marriage by her family and forced to move away with him. He turns out to not be all there mentally, and she runs away with her daughter, who he has kidnapped to get her back years later.

I don't think I'm mean, I think being mean to them would be cranking the wangst up to 11 and I don't really do that so much as they suffer from real life problems. (Well, at least things that are real life problems where they live). Their suffering is not unique to them in their universe.

[Leetaxeni]

I'm usually neutral towards my characters (bad things happen, but there's usually something good to balance it out, though this sometimes doesn't happen to the character that the bad thing's happened to). This year's novel, however, I'm being absolutely horrible to my characters, or at least a couple of them.

For example, three of my characters (the main three) are immortal. One of them has died 4000ish times before the start of the novel (so far, just once in the novel, but this will change as I'm just 10K in at the moment). He is hyper sensitive to touch (a papercut feels like a stab wound) and has total recall (he remembers everything that has ever happened throughout his lifespan).

The other main character, the villain, happens to find the two other immortals and torture them (well, one more than the other). He's only immortal because of the Elixir of Life which is wearing off and, as it wears off, he begins aging, feeling pain, recovering slower from injuries, and becomes able to be injured; he's also slowly losing his mind while the elixir wears off. He's got his own issues in the past, but that certainly doesn't excuse him from his actions during the course of the story.

In answer to your second question, no, I don't think that writing a good story means that you must be mean to your characters, but the conflict that arises from being mean to your characters creates a good story. Being mean to them just for the sake of being mean, however, is not necessary (except during NaNoWriMo when you can use this to boost the word count).

The trick to writing a good story is finding a happy medium--a balance between being mean to your characters and showing the audience that you're not pure evil, that there is something good going to happen some time in the story, even though there's going to be some pretty horrible events before it.

[Rilech]

Yes, I'm very cruel to most, if not all, of my characters.
Though there are a few happy lulls in their life, it's the strife and the anguish that really bring out their deeper motives and show what kind of a character and person they really are. It allows them to shine in moments that the reader might have other wise found them despicable, and to strut their strength- or maybe crumble into a pile and reveal their weakness of being just as human and as relate-able as everyone else.

There is a quote I'm quite fond of - "Don’t give the protagonist anything that they didn’t earn… unless it’s tragedy and pain. They get that for free."