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« Advice to Aspiring Co-Authors | Main | Chain That Muse to Your Desk »
Monday
Feb212011

Torture Your Protagonist

The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don’t. This is your protagonist, not your kid.

JANET FITCH

Posted on DateMonday, February 21, 2011 at 12:05AM
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Reader Comments (4)

Absolutely. Have just finished 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and the two brilliant protagonists in that book would serve as excellent examples of what you are saying!

February 21, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterChatbocks

Can't agree more! Just finished reading the Princess Bride to my kids. The endless torture of both Princess Buttercup and Westley was thorough, superb, and never-ending - right to the very last paragraph. We'll read it again and again.

February 22, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterJustin

One of the writer's greatest commandments: "Do unto thy characters the most deranged things humanly possible." I like to stick to this code, much to the horror of my poor abused protagonists (and anyone else I fancy on picking on, for that matter xD)

February 28, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterSpookOfNight

Totally agree. My poor protagonists's life is like a horror - abduction, almsot killed a few times, car accident, blindness, stab by knife, a few fights...:). But this is still something like a romance, thriller and a few more literary genre in one book :).

March 8, 2011 | Unregistered CommenterBlackFalcon

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