Why are Writers so Mean to their Characters?

Authors do awful things to their characters, don’t they? They burden them with intractable dilemmas, cause heartache, fear, misery, and depression, to say nothing of life-and-death peril, often resulting in bodily harm or death. If writers wreaked such havoc on real people, they’d be locked up.

Image generated at www.perchance.org Advice from Authors

This past week, I attended a Zoom lecture given by author Jack Campbell. He said if you get stuck while writing, it’s often because you hav...