I hate fiction where the worst thing that can happen, will always happen.
A lot of writing books tell you “Make it worse! Did you? Now make it worse, again!” This is done as a technique to increase tension in a story.
But when the worst thing and the worst thing alone happens consistently, it starts to erode my suspension of disbelief (or, the believability of the story goes down). No matter how bad someone’s life is, no one has the single worst possible thing happen to them in every and any situation.
(Unless you’re Job from the Bible, but thank heavens that was only one story and not a trilogy!)
It doesn’t make logical sense for a character’s parents to die, then his mentor, his dog, his best friend, then his girlfriend turns evil, his leg is chopped off, (actually, this is starting to sound like an interesting story and a bad analogy). I’m trying to say it doesn’t make sense to look at all the possible outcomes of a scene and to ALWAYS pick the single WORST potential outcome. There are times, many times, where you want to pick the worst, or one that’s pretty bad. But to feel a little more REAL, you need to sometimes pick the good outcome, or, more often, the OK outcome.
This problem, however, usually isn’t enough for me to shut a book. Though my suspension of disbelief and my trust in the validity of the story are damaged, I usually see that as a plot problem. If the writer has done his most important job, I still care about the characters enough to want to know what happens to them.
The true problem comes from thinking “What’s the worst?” to thinking “What’s the next logical thing to happen with everything here?” Part of the problem is foreshadowing, but sometimes, you wonder why the enemy arrow always hit’s the throat. Or the character makes the wrong choice every time. Or the bad guy wins every time. Mix it up. Make it make sense.
And most of all, don’t feel you have to always make it “THE WORST.” Also, don’t feel you have to listen to my rules either.
Booyah!
Thomas Fawkes 