However, after reading The Road, I think that this is one of those tips that I'm going to toss by the wayside. The story is grim, brutal, and has no "hope" in it, whatsoever. And it's spectacular.
What are you thoughts on this style of writing?
Also interesting is McCarthy's lack of punctuation marks for the most part (he uses periods and capital letters, but that's it. Few apostrophe's, and no "" around spoken words).
I remember Fitz, from Robin Hobb's Farseer Chronicles stumbling from one mishap into the other. He never got a break from all his misfortunes, but there was hope; also needless to say that I liked Fitz a whole lot and kept cheering for him.
But abuse for the sake of abuse? Nah.
[This message has been edited by Foste (edited February 06, 2011).]
I strongly disagree that the viewpoint character in McCarthy's story "has no hope". If anything, he has nothing but hope - it practically sustains him. The only thing he has left is his son. The father is dying, and his only desire is for his son to be safe. It is sad from his POV, but there is reader satisfaction in that his goal is achieved.
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited February 06, 2011).]
Something I learned from Bujold -- if you want to do something nasty to a character, just DO it. Don't beat around the bush. Power comes from experiencing events in the raw and immediate, not from prettying it up or pretending it didn't happen or almost-doing it.
You don't have to show every gory detail, but don't pull your punches.
Yeah, sometimes it'll get too ugly for some readers. But if you write to satisfy everyone and offend no one, you wind up dumbing down your story, and making it unmemorable for everyone.
I'd rather read ugly than bland.
The line between ugly events and abuse for its own sake (akin to yonder thread on sex scenes) is much like the line between erotica and porn -- sometimes you can't quite say what marks it as one or the other, but you can tell the difference.
Don't sacrifice good characters and good storytelling for the sake of making every bad situation worse. Good stories are paced well, and include breaks in the action so the reader can catch his/her breath from time to time.
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...so the reader can catch his/her breath from time to time.
And so can the character. If we are to make life-like characters, we must understand that there is only so much abuse a person can take.
And yes, good things should happen or that person would never have the strength or reason to continue. I think the rule came as a guideline that most beginning authors don't put enough into their novels as far as hurdles for the MC to overcome, whether it be an intense life and death action or inner conflict to tension in dialogue.
One story that I'm working on at the moment is just brutal. That's just the world she lives in, it's part of what she's fighting against. My first time through I tried to make things "prettier" because I didn't want to put some readers off, and it really just didn't work. Now I'm sure a lot of people would say that it's over the line the other way. Somewhere there is a happy middle ground, I just have to find it.
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited February 06, 2011).]
McCarthy definitely abuses his characters. He's mentioned in interviews (my paraphrase) that he seeks to portray the deepest of human emotions, and death is one of the greatest catalysts. Even his MC's aren't free from that punishment.
PS: I'm a huge McCarthy fan and I HIGHLY recommend Blood Meridian. The Road won the pullitzer, but it is far from his best and in my mind is surpassed by Suttree and The Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses et al.)
[This message has been edited by Wordcaster (edited February 06, 2011).]
<eyeing that, and pondering the subtle difference between "admitting when you're beat" and "admitting defeat">
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I hit, kick, bash, even bite, until they change and grow a spine, to stand up and turn the tide against me.
Yeah, I grok that one... tho sometimes they're slow learners! Took my MC six books to grow up and figure out that if he'd take charge of his own damn life, less crap would happen to him... and that it's always better to be the one making crap happen than having it happen to you! 
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But if you write to satisfy everyone and offend no one, you wind up dumbing down your story, and making it unmemorable for everyone.
Well put. If it works for the story you want to tell then do it. Tell your story and those that want to read it will and those that don't won't.
I have been careless with my characters from time to time. I once wrote something where one character was discovered by other characters when she was, well, kind of strung up and crucified and in a great deal of pain. At the end of the scene the other characters just left her up there...I corrected that in revision, but I wonder what things my characters have done to each other that I haven't noticed...
You as the author are kind of like God in your world. What gets me through my hardships is the certainty that God will recover everything that would have been lost. Even if you don't believe in God, it is that hope in hope that keeps you going. Why else would you get up on a bad day unless you believed it was possible that in the future it would be worth it?
I used to think ressurrecting a character was cheap, but then I thought about Batman (or George Bailey or some other sacrificial figure, which really that's what hardship is, sacrificing something for something else). I think about how Batman gives up his whole life to help the people of Gotham, and then what? In most stories, he dies a lonely crippled bachelor?
I'm like, how can there be justice when someone gives their all and they get nothing in return? When I read a story, I am looking for that reckoning. To see that in the end he really will have a wonderful life, the trial will have meaning.
That...or, the story is a warning about the consequence of a choice.
Other than that, its just a story saying "there is no reason to get up again today." It's just anti-life. Stories have to be about life, not about death. There is no story in death.
I think the problem I've seen in unpublished manuscripts is an assumption that if a character suffers, it will build reader sympathy. Unfortunately for human nature, the natural reaction to the suffering of strangers is to look away. Or maybe that's not such a bad thing. What would be like if we found the misery of strangers attractive?
Often I see a writer trying to write tragedy but ending up with a Grand Guignol style burlesque of blood. If that's not what you're after, I think building sympathy for the character is probably the best place to start, no matter where you take him in the end. That means showing him dealing with understandable problems he appears to have some chance of solving.
I'm not saying the burlesque of blood route can't build reader identification with a character, I'm just saying I haven't seen it. I've seen writers get people so invested in a character they'll follow the character to the bitter end, but that's different. One of the best examples I can think of is the movie "Wag the Dog". We identify with the Dustin Hoffman character as he overcomes obstacle after obstacle, but when he comes to a bad end it underscores the difference between fantasy and politics.
And I don't think it's as simple as that people look away... it's more that in "polite society" they don't want to be caught being the voyeur on someone else's suffering. (The popularity of public punishments throughout history quite negates the idea that we don't want to witness the suffering of strangers.) But when you're reading, that's private -- no one can see you do it.
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If you consider fanfic as "what readers/watchers WANTED to read/see more of, but didn't" -- it appears that what they really want to see is more suffering.
Oh, there was plenty of suffering...but that wasn't all there was to it. My experience in reading fanfic, and in particular one kind of fanfic from one specific TV show---an ongoing experience, as opposed to writing the stuff---led me to stories that ran the gamut from starkly serious and tragic all the way to funnier than the show itself. With stops along the way for SF / fantasy, crossovers with other shows or movies or whatnot, songs and poetry, out-and-out parody featuring the familiar characters, and a bunch of stuff that's unclassifiable.
When I wrote the stuff, I had to keep on my toes just to compete. In the end, I seemed to have made a substantial impression with at least two things I did.