07-07-2006, 09:46 PM
Why is it everything starts out bad? Why not have things begin by being upbeat, and cheery, only for events to take a horrible turn and ruin everything?
You see, if things start out bad, you have a character who just moans all the time. "My life is so bad. I've tried to kill myself." At that point, a reader thinks "Oh, just shut up." It's hard to feel sympathetic toward someone so negative. However, when someone's practicly singing in the street, only for something awful to happen, that's when you trigger symphathy. "I'm on a roll today! I have a girlfriend! It looks like I'm going to get an A* in that Geography test, which is really good because it's intenally examed and I'm convinced Mr. Bothergirbil hates me! Things are looking up! Wait... Dad... is that my girldriend in your lap?" Or, as in Lord Tarsisk's Overdose series, he uses this see-saw convention of up and down situations.
My point is, to make something this tragic appealing, we have to care about your character. We have to have symphathy for him. Put more thought into that than this whole relationship thing.
You see, if things start out bad, you have a character who just moans all the time. "My life is so bad. I've tried to kill myself." At that point, a reader thinks "Oh, just shut up." It's hard to feel sympathetic toward someone so negative. However, when someone's practicly singing in the street, only for something awful to happen, that's when you trigger symphathy. "I'm on a roll today! I have a girlfriend! It looks like I'm going to get an A* in that Geography test, which is really good because it's intenally examed and I'm convinced Mr. Bothergirbil hates me! Things are looking up! Wait... Dad... is that my girldriend in your lap?" Or, as in Lord Tarsisk's Overdose series, he uses this see-saw convention of up and down situations.
My point is, to make something this tragic appealing, we have to care about your character. We have to have symphathy for him. Put more thought into that than this whole relationship thing.