250 Things You Should Know About Writing Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the
uttermost
importance that we know what it is. How else will we know how far she's come? How else can we see the stakes that are on the table? How else will you frustrate the piss out of the audience by standing in her way?
     
6. Not About Likability But Rather, Livability
    It doesn't matter if we "like" your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even "
like
-like" your character. It only matters that we want to live with him. We must see something that makes us want to keep on keeping on, following the character into the jaws of Hell and out through the Devil's lava-encrusted keister. For the record, the "Lava Keister" sounds like either a roller coaster or a Starbucks drink.
     
7. The Give-A-Fuck Factor
    It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to
give a fuck
. Ask this up front as you're crafting the story:
why will the audience care about this character
? You have unlimited answers to this. Look to the narratives all around us to find reasons to care. Anything can fly. We love underdog stories. We love tales of redemption (and takes of failed redemption). We love bad boys, good girls, bad girls, good boys, we want to see characters punished, exalted, triumphant, rewarded, destroyed, stymied, puzzled, wounded. We gawk at car crashes. We swoon at love.
     
8. Rub Up Against Remarkability
    You must prove this thesis: "This character is worth the audience's time." The character must deserve her own story -- or, at least, her own part within it. You prove this thesis by making the character in some way remarkable. This is why you see a lot of stories about doctors, detectives, lawyers, cowboys, bounty hunters, wizards, space rangers, superheroes... but you don't see quite so many about copier repairmen, pharmaceutical assistants, piano tuners, or ophthalmologists. The former group is remarkable in part by their roles. The latter group can be just as remarkable, however, provided you discover their noteworthiness and put it on the page or the screen. What makes one remarkable can be a secret past, a current attitude, a future triumph. It can be internal or external. Infinite options. Choose one.
     
9. Act Upon The World Rather Than Have The World Act Upon Him
    Don't let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. We grow weary of characters who
do nothing
except react to whatever the world flings at their heads. That's not to say that characters shouldn't be forced to deal with unexpected challenges and left-field conflicts -- but that doesn't prevent a character from being proactive, either. Passivity fails to be interesting for long. This is why crime fiction has power: the very nature of a crime is about
doing
. You don't passively rob a bank, kill your lover, or run a street gang. Simply put:
characters do shit
.
     
10. Bad Decisions Are A Good Decision
    Nobody ever said an active character had to be a
smart
character. A character can and perhaps should be
badly
proactive, making all the wrong moves and affecting the world with his piss-poor decisions. At some point a character needs to take control, even if it means taking control in the worst possible way. In fact...
     
11. This Is Why Jesus Invented Suspense
    Tension is created when characters you love make bad decisions. They lie, cheat, steal. They break laws or shatter taboos. They go into the haunted house. They don't run from the serial killer. They betray a friend. Sleep with an enemy. Eat a forbidden fruit. Jack off in a mad scientist's gizmotron thus accidentally creating an army of evil baby Hitlers. Tension is when the character sets free his chickens and we know full well that those chickens will come to roost. But the chickens will come home changed. They will have knives. Prison tats. And evil wizard powers. Don't let tension wriggle free, soft and pliable, from external events. Let the character create the circumstances of