Making my characters suffer

This week I've been continuing with my rewrite of Genehunter.  I've been leading up to the Supreme Ordeal, where Aris is kidnapped and asked to do something she can't.  In my original version she didn't really come to any harm, and the danger was muted.  She wasn't subject to any violence, and she was rescued too easily.  It was a cop-out, and it was totally devoid of dramatic tension. What was happening to her wasn't even being seen through her eyes.  

This time, I've put the scene into her viewpoint and she is subject to violence, but only a small amount.  They don't hurt her badly, and that's another decision I've made about the scene.  For me, toughening up the story and letting my characters suffer is a balancing act.  I don't do dark and violent.  I'm responsible for the energy I put out into the world, and I don't fill the universe with such things.  The trick is deciding how little violence I can get away with while writing such scenes.

I've read several young adult books recently which have described violence in great detail, violence meted out to the main character on the page.  I've been surprised, and sometimes shocked, by the level of darkness in these books.  I've also read a YA book recently which described the teenage heroine being forced to kill for the first time.  The author has included a lengthy section of the character's reactions to her action, but this still makes the book uncomfortably dark.

The trick is to provide enough danger and challenge to the main character to make what happens to them matter while not alienating the reader.  The stakes need to be high, yes, but I don't need a detailed description of the gruesome death that will await my character if she gets caught by the villain.

I freely admit that I err on the side of being too soft with my characters.  Often I let the violence happen off the page.  My challenge is toughening up enough to make the scene feel realistic versus becoming so dark that it loses my readers.  And I think that getting this balance right is crucial. There is one bestselling YA series I refused to read beyond book one because of the excessive violence at the end of that book.  The right degree of toughness matters.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com