it is now your moral duty as an author

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You ever have that thing happen where you write something, stop and look at it,
and it tells you, "Because you have said that, it is now your moral duty as an author to totally screw up your character's life."

Here's what happened:

At our regular Saturday morning meeting of our local Creative Writers Group a thing we often do is a 20 minute timed writing exercise to provided prompts.

My autoimmune disease body wasn't feeling 100% today and merely getting to meeting was an accomplishment.
Didn't expect to be able to create anything but eventually the brain cells produced a beginning for something.
Then at lunch at a local cafe after our meeting I worked on it a little more, added another sentence or two.

My notes on the prompts & then what I wrote

June 18 prompts

character who wakes up in past life or as future reincarnation of themselves

somebody breaking a cycle

character who keeps ending up in the same place

repeat same line of dialogue, from the same character, three separate times

character who's expected to follow in someone's footsteps
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“What do you think they are going to do?” Marlene asked as she sank to her neck while stirring water with extended arms.

“Dunno, and remember, I'm still jet-lagged,” I said while stepping in to the pool. Once fully in I rolled on my back and kicked up a spray of water.

The sun sparkled in maybe a dozen drops of water which had landed on her floppy hat, now upside down relative to my eyeballs' internal horizon line. Still on my back I dove and kicked underwater to surface beside her.

“There is a lot of talk but not much data.” Marlene watched her hand move below the surface. “We don't know where they are from, who they are with, or how long they will be here.”

I had been out of town on business for a couple weeks and had returned just last night so there was those week's worth of local news and gossip to get caught up on. Since I was taking this week off, that catching up could be done at the same relaxed pace I intended the rest of my life to move at during the week.

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"Oh, your character expects to have a slow and peaceful week?
You know that because you have said that, it is now your moral duty as an author to totally screw up your character's life for that week."

Makes sense, A character has to go through some personal tribulation in the story otherwise there's no personal growth. Imagine a story where there isn't something that screws up the character's life. They wake up go to work, go home and go to sleep. Doesn't make for riveting reading.

There has been enough personal tribulation in my life that I would be quite content to have it restricted to only being in stories from here on out.

Most readers don't want a character to live a happy, successful life without turmoil. Make the characters go through HELL!! ! Your readers will love you for it.

In that case you would be able to add a touch of authenticity to any story/plot line involving a tumultuous life.

They arent real people. So its okay to be cruel to them!

But if there is no challenge to them then there is no story.

Even so, I do sometimes feel bad about how mean I was to my characters at the beginning of the sci-fi book I sometimes play at writing.
I hurt them deeply in heart, soul, spirit, and hurt them bad.



Truth. The story is about how they live through that hurt and what they do about it, do within it, do because of it.

Maybe God is the Great Author, and we're just characters in his drama; hence the crap we get put through!

God has some sense of humour