[Perry] Grit and Grime

What’s the lowest that you’ve ever pushed your characters?

Like, how far have you pushed them while still keeping them alive?

For me…the answer’s honestly not that far. I have characters that have some terrible things happen to them but who you know will make it out okay. I also have characters that have terrible things happen to them and you know they’ll die.

So far, I’ve never written a character that was pushed to the point where giving up seemed easy.

These thoughts are spurred by an author I’ve been reading lately by the name of Jeff Somers.

He’s got a very…noir sort of flare to his writing so if you think you might be interested in noir-cyberpunk or noir-urban fantasy, I’d recommend giving his Avery Cates or Trickster series/books a try.

Here’s the thing though: Somers rides his main character hard.

We’re not talking Tami’s “Longest Night” levels of abuse here, you know? We’re talking just a systemic onslaught of abuse and horrible luck and bad situations. We’re talking the character constantly going from bad to worse, each time thinking that it CAN’T get worse.

We’re talking about breaking the character down to the last ideal or principle he’s willing to stand for…and then crippling him under the weight of it.

Reading Trickster, there comes a point where the protagonist just…wants to give up. Desperately so. He’s lying there, beaten and bloody after an entire LIFE of being beaten and bloodied and he thinks about just…letting the end of the world pass him by. He thinks about just lying there and letting it happen and how freaking EASY it would be.

…And then he gets up.

He pulls up his beaten, tortured body and continues to take one step in front of the other.

Without this sense of…defeatism? It’s hard to impart that sense of, just…carrying on.

Think of John McClane. Sure, he can save the peoples and shoot all the bad guys…but lock him up in a cell for ten years first. Torture him every day. Kill everyone he’s ever cared about, telling him the whole time that there was nothing he could do to save them, that he was incompetent.

Make him suffer for YEARS…and then throw him into Nakatomi tower and see how well he fares against the terrorists.

Essentially, that’s what Somers does to his main characters and it’s effective.

There’s a sense that the guy’s hanging on by just…the thinnest of threads. A sense that a stray breeze will snap him and leave him a gibbering heap of catatonic jitters on the floor…and yet he goes on.

This is something that’s hard to do when there’s a steady rise and fall in the life of the character.

When things regularly look up, it’s hard to really get across that bleak and hopeless sense that the character might feel.

By no means is this something you always want to do. Like everything else when it comes to writing, there’s a time and place for it and it’s up to you to discern when and where that might be.

But consider it.

There’s always going to be a day after night, but you don’t have to be so predictable about it.

Just think about how wondrous and terrifying the light might seem after it’s been nighttime for years. That’s an impression that’s almost impossible to convey if it gets bright on a regular basis.

Experiment! Try! Play! Play!

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