On Sat, 20 Dec 1997, Bob Schroeck wrote:

One of the best ways to make a truly soulcrushing story is to put the hero
in an upleasant situation. Make a clear shaft of light showing the way out
of it, within reach, and certainly possible. Intensify both the light and
the threat was the story progresses.

Then damn the hero beyond any possible hope of rescue, and turn the light
out completely. And have the hero _know_ this.

Or, as I once characterized Mercedes Lackey's writing, make the reader
love and empathize with a character, then rip that character's arms off.

Oh, yeah, I understand the necessity of this type of development in a
story; I rarely am able to make myself do it to a character, which is one
of my critical failures as an author of fiction.

Yeah, this is a paradox.

The best characters are ones you care about, which is one of the reasons
fanfiction is so successful. This includes the villains. If you really
love and like the character, he or she will come that much more alive on
paper. 

The counterpoint of this is that it makes it really, really hard to kill
them. It hurts. And it would be so easy, thinks the writer, to make it a
happy ending...

It takes a special kind of mindset and writer to love and cherish a
fictional character, and then destroy them. But these often turn out to be
the most powerful, moving stories.

Although moving in an unpleasant way, usually.

- Mike Loader
===/\=====+==================================================================
  /  \    l  "For, look you, there is humour in all things, and the truest
 / () \   l   philosophy is that which teaches us to find it and make the
/      \  l   most of it." - Jack Point, _The Yeomen of the Guard_
--------  l                    mike@thekeep.org
==========+==================================================================
Fnord.
 

-- Bob