Trials and Tribulations

    Trauma makes a character great. It is an understanding amongst the writing community that if you don't make your characters suffer, your story will be boring. But what nobody seems to realize is that there is a right way to torture your characters and there is a wrong way. 

    Let's start by discussing the wrong way to challenge your characters. Something that I find very mundane is when a character can go through hell and come out with a smile on their face. Remember that everyone has their breaking point, and so your character should too. If you want to be realistic, your character will not face everything with a big, cheesy smile. Even the most resilient characters (if written well) will reach a point where they can't seem to go on any longer. 

    The moment your character breaks is the most important moment in your story. It is the moment that they change, whether it be for the better or for the worse. If you rush through this developmental stage, your character will grow very flat. They can't continue to have the same reaction to their issues, otherwise they won't be very interesting. So push them to their breaking point, and let them fall from grace. But make sure they learn from it; It will make them more relatable at the end of the day.

    On the contrary, don't push them too far. Once you reach their breaking point, you should marinate in that moment for a while. Let the reader feel what your characters feeling. Let them go through the process of building themselves back up alongside your character. Once they reach rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up, so don't try to dig any deeper. The only place left to go is their grave, and unless you want to kill your character for the sake of the plot, I wouldn't push them past this point. 

    Now, let's discuss the right way to challenge your characters, and the first piece of advice I have for this is: don't forget the little things. Not every trial has to be ginormous and important, sending them to rock bottom. Minor inconveniences can also be a great way to challenge your character and encourage them to change. How do they react to locking their keys in their car? It's a very minor issue to deal with, but it's more personal to your readers and will make them feel closer to your characters.

    Another important thing to consider is that not everyone is going to react the same to every situation. If somebody in your character's life dies, don't just show us how they're reacting, show us how everybody around them is reacting. Maybe their dad died and they're feeling very angry at the world. But also notice how the mom is so sad she can't get out of bed anymore. Or maybe that the dog only sleeps on top of the dad's shoes. Or how the sister has resorted to dark humor. The scenarios you maybe putting your main character through is not only theirs (unless for some reason they're on their own), so let us understand how their companions are also reacting, even if we're not in their point of view. 

    I'd like to leave you with one final thought: think of the events in your story as a graph. Sometimes it goes down, sometimes it goes up. Certain events drop it further than others. But once it goes down, it should always come back up again. Nobody wants to read a story that continuously gets worse. There should be moments where things get better, where your character learns. Up and down like a mountain range: that's how trials and tribulations should go.