Step Right Up!

As a writer, it is important to face my fears.  I have a tendency to love and sympathize with all my characters and consequently avoid killing them off.  I even hate it when bad things happen to my characters, although I realize that it is inevitable.  I have to work very hard at making my characters realistic and allowing a natural course of action to unfold as a result of the story.  If my champion falls off a cliff, he or she cannot suddenly sprout wings which did not exist previously.  Now, if my champion were to fall off a cliff from carelessness, I have to say it would be the most horrendous, anticlimactic way for a character to die.  So unless I have misled my reader intentionally about who the champion really is, I will try to avoid untimely and anticlimactic deaths for my champions.   

I am by no means an expert at crafting believable characters, but that is precisely why I can tell you that it is important to face your fears.  What if your favorite character dies?  What if there is truly no believable route of escape, no plans or plots which were laid before they ended up in a bad situation? You might feel compelled to scrap the writing and begin again.  By all means feel free to do so, but hang on to that first piece.  You might compare the rewrite and find you actually do like it better.  Perhaps you do not like it as much, or you may see a completely different option when you compare the two pieces and combine elements of both.  Definitely do not give up on the characters and story.  Rewriting can be burdensome, but also very rewarding.  Sometimes when we feel so attached to our characters, it is difficult to let them go, to allow something horrible to happen to them.  Chances are, if we feel this strongly about our characters, then we have reached one of our goals: to emotionally entangle readers in the complex webbing of a fictional character.  If we cry for our character's loss, then our readers will feel similarly.  It also means they will feel the joy and humor our characters experience.  Balance is not always necessary depending on the type of work you produce, but it is something I strive for frequently. 

I suppose I could say the aspect of "believability" is the antithesis of my "What If" world.  There is a time to say "What If" in your writing, but there is also a time to realize when your story has become unbelievable.  When characters begin to act "falsely" and the storyline feels contrived, we have lost the reader.  It has been said that people love a happy ending, which to a certain extent may be true, but it must be a believable ending.  I would rather have a sad ending that is believable than a contrived happy one that makes no logical sense given the story's history.  Allowing myself to write that way is a different matter entirely.  So here I am, stepping right up to face the challenge issued by my readers.  If you struggle with this as well, I encourage you to try freewriting.  Simply sit and write whatever thoughts come into your head, even if they appear disjointed.  If you use a certain scene from your writing, simply view it as a prompt and write without any boundaries.  It is amazing what you can untangle in your subconscious when you freewrite. Do not worry about spelling, grammar or content.  The exercise should remove a little pressure to "create" something amazing and hopefully get you through some of the difficult parts of your writing.  

Good luck to you all and happy writing!