Friday, June 05, 2015

On the Advice that Authors Subject Characters to Continual Torture

I recently read yet another article warning authors against "nice writer syndrome," and exhorting them to make things as awful as possible for their characters.

Am I the only reader who prefers a judicious dose of difficulty and danger to an unending horror show of "But wait, there's worse"?

And doesn't a single hard blow have more impact when it isn't just another beat in a hundreds-of-pages-long beating?

2 comments:

D Goska said...

“Chase 'em up a tree and throw rocks at 'em."(When asked about how he approached character development in his books)”


― Mark Twain

Unknown said...

I bailed out of the whole Game of Thrones series at the end of the first book because GRRM had taken this advice too literally. The thought of another 5 or 6 volumes of the same was torture.