Writing Wednesday: Torturing your Characters (for fun and profit)

Part of character writing is to make a character who you love and you want to spend a lot of time with, and then torture that character mercilessly until they get the strength to break free and save themselves. It is part of what makes for good reading.

Without torturing your character to their breaking point it would be a pretty bad novel.

Imagine a novel where the main character was a high school girl who moved to a town of 3,000 and went to the local school of 4,000 students, on her first day became part of one of the most popular cliques in the school, and in her first week she’s giving her rejects to the other girls and her only problem is having to decide between bestiality and necrophilia.

Okay that was a bad example. But unless you can hit a cord with an audience that no one knew existed a novel should show the character’s depth, not just what the character wants and desires, but what they hate and fear as well.

I’ve been bogged down with a chapter in my latest book because I hit a spot where I needed to torture the female character mercilessly. She’s a Bipolar/Schizophrenic and she did the thing she fears most in the world, she took her mood stabilizers.

While writing that 5,000-word chapter I managed to do a 30,000-word revision on my other novel, write two short stories, and get a lot of work done around the house. Luckily I am now done with that chapter and my girl can go back to being her fun crazy self. It would have taken longer if I wasn’t forced into my office by 100-degree weather.

As I wrote it I had to keep reminding myself that I needed to torture her to show the conflict within her and the conflict that my hero has as he has to tolerate all her craziness.

I was wondering how other writers deal with making a character that they fall in love with and then have to torture them mercilessly. For me this was one of the hardest chapters I ever wrote.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Temper Tantrum Tuesday: What I’ve learned from the Teabaggers

Teabaggers claim they have seen no evidence of Racism at their rallies.

The teabaggers are having a wonderful time educating people about things that go against the liberal bias of reality. For instance they let us know about threats that if you just paid attention to the real world you would never know about. Like these horrible threats.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, says, "This (health care) bill is the greatest threat to our freedom in the 19 years that I've been in Washington."

Nuclear proliferation? Not as big a threat as allowing children to remain on their parents insurance until they are 25.

Dependence on Foreign oil? Not as big a threat as not allowing insurance companies to set lifetime caps on coverage.

The Great Recession that devastated the middle class? Not as big a threat as not allowing insurance companies to deny payments based on unrelated pre-conditions.

Terrorism? Not as big a threat as allowing workers to keep their coverage after they leave their jobs.

If you look at the world through the liberal bias of reality you would think there were bigger threats to freedom but the teabaggers are ready to set you straight.

Other teabaggers think there are other threats as well:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says "that (the gay) agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today."

The liberal bias of logic would tell you that allowing gays to serve in the military at a time when our forces are stretched to the breaking point would preserve freedom, but luckily Tom Coburn is impervious to the liberal bias of logic.

Ex-Republican congressman from Arizona and now full-time nothing Tom Tancredo says President Barack Obama is "the greatest threat to the U.S. ... the greatest threat to our liberty" today.

The liberal bias of math would have you believe that because Obama got an overwhelming majority of the votes he should be allowed to be President, but the teabaggers know that numbers have a liberal bias.

The teabaggers have changed the way politics is debated as well. Instead of using the liberally biased way of looking at a politician’s record to see how that politician might vote they have found a simpler way, play the Hitler 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon, if Kevin Bacon was Hitler. Here’s how it works:

Mother Theresa had a moustache, Hitler had a moustache, therefore Mother Theresa is Hitler.

Any facts in the matter are irrelevant.

They have also changed the way to leave messages in comment sections. Instead of reading the article and pointing out what they agree or disagree with they just look for the word “change” and leave a message in all caps, socialism. Example.

“I like how Dominos changed their crust from the cardboard tasting crust to the new garlic crust.”

“SOCIALISM”

Finally they have taken the rallying cry from someone they despise to use as a slogan.

When Chief Running Bull yelled, “I want my country back.” He literally wanted his country back.

When teabaggers say it they have no clue what they mean.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts

Shut-up Stupid Sunday: Organic Foods

I grew up on an Organic Food farm, so you might find it strange that it is the topic of my Shut-up Stupid Sunday post. But the people who go to chain supermarkets and buy foods based on the “Organic” label have been duped by the hype.

Reasons people buy “Organic” foods.

1) They think it is better for the environment.
Fresh off the farm this is true. True “Organic” uses about 20% less fossil fuels to produce. However if that “Organic” food needs to be shipped across the nation then that advantage is quickly lost and if it comes from another country then its using a lot more energy than regionally grown “traditionally farmed food”. If you want to help the environment look to see where your food comes from it’s more important than how it’s grown. The best way to get food that helps the environment is to shop at the local farmers market, there the word “Organic” actually means something. The second best is find out which grocery stores buy from local farms and shop there on the day they receive the produce from them.

2) They think they are helping small farmers.
Like I said before I grew up on an Organic farm, the large food distributors don’t buy food from small farmers. They have Organic Mega-Farms that are every bit as brutal as the traditional farms.

3) They are worried about the chemicals in their food supply.
This is a semi-legitimate concern. The less chemical exposure you get the better. However the traditional farming has been around for over 60 years and most of that time it was well regulated by USDA. The chemicals they use for fertilizer are designed for the plants to break down quickly, they wouldn’t be much good if they weren’t. As far as the herbicides and pesticides, unless there is a pest panic they don’t spray these just before harvest and they are all water-soluble so a quick washing will get rid of it. As far as anything that is left, the pollutants in the air from our industrialized society pose a greater threat.

4) True Organic tastes better.
This I totally agree with, if everything else is equal. You can taste the difference in fresh true Organic crops and fertilized crops on the day they are picked. The next day not so much, three days later not at all.
At a Farmers market getting Organic food will make for tastier meals, in the supermarket if that Organic food has to be shipped across the country all that flavor will be gone.

5) They think the label “Organic” means something.
It doesn’t, there are organizations that certify “Organic” foods but a farmer doesn’t need to have that certification to place an “Organic” label on it. “USDA Certified Organic” has some pretty lax standards to for food to get that label but just an “Organic” sticker means nothing, and “Organic” from another country means absolutely nothing.
The best way to get something that is actually organic is to go to the farmers market and ask the farmer. The other farmers at the market will get pretty pissed if a farmer is passing off traditionally grown food as organic. Of course this self-policing only works at the very local level of a farmers market.

Pretty much all the benefits of “Organic” food are destroyed if it needs to be shipped more than a few hundred miles. Instead of buying food that has the “Organic” label on it, try to buy food that was grown in your area. Here is a tip for finding the freshest (therefore grown closest to you) produce. Look at it and feel it. With produce all the marketing in the world can’t replace your senses.

So to the people that only look for the “Organic” label and nothing else, I say, “Shut-up Stupid, looking for the label and ignoring everything else about the product usually undermines the exact reason you’re trying to buy organic food.”


By Darrell B. Nelson author of Invasive Thoughts