I have a writing question, I often hear the advice “in order to keep the plot interesting imagine the worst thing that could happen to you or the ones you care about and do that to your character.” in varying forms. My question is: do I have to? Can the pl

That’s a great question! There are a lot of components to keeping the plot interesting, such as tension, conflict, and unexpected twists, but those elements don’t necessarily need to be driven by something that is personally tragic to you or others around you (though having the experience in what you write about is helpful if you’re new to writing). What I’d say is more important is the impact that situation might have on the characters themselves. These are the areas I’d look at first:

First, character development. You need strong characters that readers are invested in. Think about their goals, their beliefs, their backstory, and what’s potentially keeping them from reaching those goals. Characters will have moments of ups and downs, things going right and wrong. So while it’s a good thing to let them have those moments of joy and triumph, it’s equally important to balance them out with miserable moments. How they respond to a situation can say a lot about their character, and if you can create well-rounded characters that readers care about, you’ll have even more potential for keeping readers hooked from the start.

Second, look at conflict as it pertains to a character’s goals. I know it probably sounds like I’m spending a lot of time talking about character development even though your question is about plot, but the two are closely related and, in truth, they drive each other. For instance, if you have a character whose goal it is to travel the world, infinite subplots could be spun from that using conflict, especially if you couple that with world building and environmental struggles. Here’s one example: If your character is fulfilling their goal of traveling the world by boat, things can break, storms can cause a shipwreck, supplies could run out, the character could get severely wounded–tons of external conflicts can arise from the environment alone, which certainly always adds to the plot. And if you throw in internal conflicts to that, resulting in character growth and/or change, that will further the plot as well.

Lastly, I would definitely recommend giving your character trials and letting them make bad choices. Those are two things that make them both relatable and realistic, because without that, they’ll experience little growth. But you can use those trials to your advantage by turning them into a character flaw. If a character is resistant to facing the realities around them, avoiding dealing with tragedy as you mentioned above, but you use overcoming that as an area of focus in the plot, you suddenly have a character whose flaw becomes their burden, a roadblock to reaching their goals. Does that make sense?

There are also characters with flat arcs who can remain essentially the same but have a tremendous impact on those around them, which still furthers the plot. K.M. Weiland has a great guide for creating flat character arcs on her website the might be useful if you decide to go that route: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/flat-character-arc-1/.

Hope that helps, and happy writing!

-RMNS