More on making the characters suffer

So after writing the blog last Thursday, and then spending the rest of the day thinking, on Friday I sat down and started writing it.

Was going well – got it written, and didn't have to change much else in the book. Yay, says I.

EXCEPT – in the process of researching how this would work, I came across the truly nasty thing I could do. Awful. Horrendous. Extremely doable.

And I turned away. 'Nah,' I said to myself, 'what I'm doing is horrible enough.'

Except it's not. It's neat and it's easy and comfortable for me, but it's not the true test of my character that I need.

So today I sit down and I take out what I wrote and I go back in and write the REAL thing that will happen to her. And it's gonna be bloody awful, and she'd going to be traumatised and it's going to involve a lot of changes to the rest of the book but I'm going to do it because I want the characters to prove themselves as worthy.

I'm also going to do it to test myself – can I step outside the zone, let my books and characters be everything they need to be? Can I write this well enough?

Time alone will tell.