|Your character wants something badly. Your reader wants your
character to get what he wants. Your job is to disappoint both
of them. | Ironic? Sure. Narratives are driven by desire: 1) the
character’s desire, 2) the reader’s desire that the character
succeeds, or at least, the reader’s desire to see what happens
to all this yearning, and 3) the author’s desire to thwart both
the character and the reader. It’s this thwarting of desire that
beginning writers need to cultivate. It doesn’t come naturally.
Far too often, writers are unwilling to let their characters
make mistakes and get themselves into trouble that has both cost
and consequence for which the story holds them accountable. In
stories with this kind of trouble, the protagonists are too
passive, too coddled by their author, to make the kind of
graceless mistakes born of the yearning and desperation that
create good fiction. You, the writer, can be as poised as you
want, act with aplomb, reserve, tact, polish. But your
characters can’t. Your task is