Kryptonite

hollywoodhatesme.wordpress.com

Okay Monkeys, this blog is straight up. No add in with my life. (As much as you love to here about it.)

Kryptonite. It's Superman's weakness, right? (At least, according to his wikapedia page.) And people tend to use it when they talk about weakness, it's a term that's thrown around. And personally, I think that weakness is severely underrated. In life. In books. In comquates.

What most people don't realize about weakness is that we're drawn to it. There are whole books, TV shows, fields of study that go into weakness. And why is this? Seems sadistic, doesn't it. We love things that are smaller then us, we crave for some sort of control over someone.

But that's not exactly it. Not that I can see anyway.

I think, for the majority of us, it's about finding something to relate to in another. Humanity is judged by the difficulty of their pain. The most revered people in the world are ones who overcome adversity, who struggle through weakness. People who are too perfect, well, they're fine for the most part. But let's face it, you secretly hate that guy, am I right? Or maybe you feel over protective of them? It's because they have it easy. They are weak, because they don't grow. Makes them a bit unappealing.

And there in lies my point. Your characters need challenges. True challenges, ones that are skin deep. Ones that they can overcome only through blood sweat and tears. As authors, I figure our natural inclination is to make our characters invincible. I mean, on some sort of level, they are our babies. We want to coddle them, give them everything they want, hide their evil from the world. (Unless your like my neighbor, whom I'm relatively sure eats children. Doesn't really help that her house is made of gingerbread... I don't know. Food for thought I suppose.)

But in order for the reader to keep interest, they need to feel a connection to the character. They won't be able to put themselves in the character's place unless they been there themselves. And when you can't put yourself in a character's shoes, it's just not that great of a book. So you're not doing anything for your characters by shielding them. All your doing is making them boring. I mean, come on. Even fairy tale princesses have to live under the constant fear of getting kidnapped. Your has no excuse. Wuss.


REASON 52137688888888888 WHY SADISM SOMETIMES WORKS!