Smite! Smite! Ice Cream, Sunshine… Smite!

Within the world of the story, the author is God. You plant all the trees, paint the clouds in the sky, and breathe life into every inhabitant.

And then, you smite.

Your job is not to win the adoration of the creatures you create. It’s to make them hate you. If you let them fall in love, you must also tempt them to stray, or place vast distances between them. If you give them fortune, it cannot bring them joy. Okay, fine, they can get a taste of happiness now and then, but you can’t let them stay that way.

In the Writing Cave, as we discuss how to make some character’s fate more interesting, we know we’re on track when they give us the stink-eye and a sarcastic, “Gee, thanks.”

There is another side to this omnipotence gig, of course. If you grind everything down until it’s all just a gray paste, that’s just as boring as across-the-board sunshine and leisure. Monotonous suffering or monotonous bliss, either way is bad from the readers’ vantage. You have to let some characters off easy, relatively speaking, to give your hapless creations hope. Maybe they’ll be one of the lucky ones who doesn’t die in a fire! Maybe theirs is a love that can really last!

Well, maybe. Maybe not, though. Letting them hope is the key to making them really despise you.

A writing partner is someone to plot with against your own creations.