Psst. Hey.

Yeah, you.

Want to know a secret?

Sure you do. Well, I’ll tell you one. C’mere so I can whisper.

Okay, here goes. Be cruel to your characters. Be capricious and dispense pain. Make them suffer.

It’s all in service to the story.

So often I read a book where we are supposed to feel the hero/heroine is in Dire Danger, and yet (most often with a generous helping of Mary Sue/Gary Stu) the danger isn’t…well, all that dire. As a matter of fact, the danger is boring, because we know the violet-eyed virgin heroine will pull through with grace and elan.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a foregone conclusion as much as anyone–why else would I read Sherlock Holmes, or watch bad kung-fu movies? But as a reader, I find myself resenting authors who think their characters are too fragile and delicate for real pain. It could just be me–I am the one who screams “Send in the man with the gun!” at every opportunity. (God bless Elizabeth Bear for coming up with that one.)

Really, it could just be me. After all, I batter my characters with alarming regularity. It’s just not an apocalyptic battle between good and evil (or evil and less-evil) without bruises, screaming, dislocation, bullets flying, and other edged mayhem. Unless someone’s bleeding bad and there’s a real chance the victory will be Pyrrhic, I’m not playing.

Characters are tough, and if we’re going to live vicariously through them it should be full-throttle. Like I’ve said before, I’m not sure how much of an enjoyable reading experience is Schadenfreude, but I’m willing to believe it’s a large chunk. Nobody likes a character for whom things come too easily in real life. Why should they like them in fiction?

I call this the Sitcom Syndrome. We’ve gotten used to conflict with no risk and precious little real resolution. Remember Dawson’s Creek? (Okay, so I’ve just dated myself.) Dawson had Everything. Both the girls wanted him and he was tall and cute and blond. He didn’t suffer worth a damn, so I stopped watching and only tuned in for the finale, where Pacey (a secondary character who got beat up and rolled out) really came into his own. And I ended up loving Pacey because he had suffered, grown, and truly changed. It should have been bloody Pacey’s Creek.

Conflict can be done right (Firefly, The Ninth Gate, The Last Seduction) or it can be done halfheartedly, with a Mary Sue/Gary Stu saving the day by virtue of their purple-eyed-virgin-who-loves-unicorns blood. (Plenty of Harry Potter fanfic, that horrible movie treatment they did of Starship Troopers–you get the idea.) What is worse are the stories that could have been great, not just good, if the creator/author had just not backed away from the conflict and instead engaged with it, and beat their characters up a little.

I say “beat the characters up” but physical pain is the least of it. (That’s also another blog post.) Still, if you’re writing action urban fantasy with guns and swords, letting your hero/ine get off without a scratch is crazytalk. The hero is the hero because there’s a risk when she’s facing down the lion. We don’t like hero/ines because they sail through a la Ace Rimmer (who is a deadly funny stereotype, and very well done, I might add.) We like heroes and heroines because they risk, and if there isn’t a real risk or danger to them they just don’t satisfy as heroes. We’re left feeling empty and cheated.

So be mean to your characters. Bash them around. Put ‘em in a bad part of town and make the engine fail. Let the bomb go off. Send in the man with the gun and the guts to use it. Get out your nastiest, most dangerous plot twists. Bloody them up and beat them down. Dislocate a few shoulders, give a few black eyes, eviscerate if you’ve a mind to. Give us real deadly danger and let your characters derring-do with a broken arm.

After all, it’s fun. And it makes a better story. At least, in my ever-humble opinion.