Not the worst thing

“I might only have one match
But I can make an explosion.”

– Rachel Platten

Writers who are trying to get a reluctant protagonist moving in mid-book often look for the “worst possible thing that can happen to their character.” Quite a few of them do this to get revenge on their characters (“You want to loaf around in the bathtub instead of getting on with my plot? I’ll show you – have some torture and a possibly crippling injury and…”)

This kind of thing can be cathartic for the writer in th...