You Can’t Win Without (Your Main Character) Suffering

All through National Novel Writing Month, published authors will take the whistle, take over our official Twitter account for a week, and act as your NaNo Coach . This week’s NaNo Coach, Martha Brockenbrough, author of The Game of Love and Death ,  shares a few words of wisdom on making your main character suffer:

You want to win NaNoWriMo. I want you to win NaNoWriMo. You know who doesn’t want you to win?

Your main character.

Why, you ask?

That is a fine question, and the answer is contained in the novel you are about to write. Your character didn’t ask to be in this book. You character didn’t ask to suffer. To be humiliated. To be confused. Lost. Scared. Denied. Kissed passionately.

Wait! That part, if it’s in your book, is something your character did want, and it was probably preceded by all of the suffering I just mentioned. Consider it a consolation prize to life. Sometimes, there’s kissing amidst the calamity.

A novel examines what it means to be a human being: the full catastrophe of it. People want stuff. We want love, food, shelter, and a whole bunch of other things that are less essential but can feel wildly important.

People also fear things. Death, suffering, humiliation, failure, even forgetting to wear pants (we’ve all had that dream). As we pursue the things we want and run from the things we fear, we bump into other people with their wants and fears, almost all of which are unexpressed, and many of which exist in contrast to ours.

This is the soil from which stories grow. It’s full of complexity and conflict, and it feeds drama that makes for good reading. Good reading is often made of painful living, and just as no one asked to be born into suffering, no character asked to be put into a book.

But this is what you have to do to your character. You have to give her something she wants. You have to give her something to lose. You have to fill her with fears she can either overcome or be swallowed by. You might not know all of these details at the outset of your book, but the more you have them in mind, the clearer your progress will be.

Does she want a new car? Then show her saving her money. Finding the perfect car. And then show her losing the money in the most exquisite way possible. What does she do in response to that loss? That reveals more of her character. You’ve already made us feel how much she wants this car. You’ve made us feel the challenge of saving for it. The agony of losing the money (or maybe of needing to spend it to save her dog’s life).

What happens next? I can’t wait to find out—and your job is to take her for a ride, but most definitely not in the car she wants so badly.

Good luck to you. Bad luck to your character. Write on!

Martha Brockenbrough is the author of two books for adults and five books for young readers, including The Game of Love and Death. She’s also the founder of National Grammar Day.