I like when bad things happen to good people.
It’s true. I mean, not in real life. I’m not a complete psychopath, according to most people. But in fiction? Absolutely. I root for it hard. I may have been the only person who watched 24 religiously (at least for the first few seasons) while consistently hoping for Jack Bauer to die. There’s almost no one I don’t want to die on The Walking Dead. I’m the same way with movies, though I think it’s a bigger deal with suspenseful TV series. If you’re going to repeatedly put Jack Bauer into these insane situations where the presumption is supposed to be that he can’t possibly escape, it mutes the whole “suspense” thing if you always know he’s going to kick enough bad-guy ass to keep snarling at people and screaming “We’re running out of time!” at some bloodied, tortured baddie in the next episode. In movies, it’s not quite as important, given you’re typically only asking me to accept two hours’ worth of improbable escapes, instead of endless season after season of zombies just barely missing eating the core characters’ brains. But still, I’m all about the black hat.
As I begin work on my first novel, I’ve been thinking about this a bit with books. Yes, I enjoy when horrible, unspeakable things happen to people who really don’t deserve it — in fiction (Do I need to keep specifying “in fiction”? Because I’m probably going to keep doing it). But, even with TV and movies, any money-grubbing film studio exec will tell you I’m pretty seriously in the minority there, and he’ll show you his latest focus group report to prove it. What about with books, though? How far do I want the books I read to go with that? Am I committed to putting my own main characters on the chopping block, to keep up that suspense that I want to have in the fiction I read? And, if so, am I alienating a lot of the readers, who — perhaps thankfully, depending upon your perspective — don’t exactly share my penchant for fictional chaos and suffering?
I do think books, particularly long ones, are a bit different. People often spend a good chunk of time reading through a 300-page novel, perhaps a month or more, depending upon how much free time they have, how much of it they devote to reading and how fast they actually do read. That’s a long time to devote to learning about a protagonist, her goals, motivations, dreams, faults, only to see her die a grisly death at the teeth of a rabid puma — or, ya know, whatever. And, with a book, unlike with a TV show that can run indefinitely — ratings allowing, of course — a book can’t reasonably just keep going interminably, and character building is tough. You’re probably not going to have the time and energy to introduce a new protagonist to take her place, and actually make the reader care about him too.
Now, if I’m reading a book, I’d probably still be fine with that. Surprise me, authors. Let the black hat walk off with the victory, at least some of the time. In my writing, though, it’s certainly not something I feel like I need to force, just because I get a mildly guilty thrill out of it. Not only would that turn off some readers, but it’d be just as predictable as the stories I’m complaining about — if the bad guy always wins, it’s not exactly a mystery at that point, now is it? At some point, though, I’m confident I’ll kill off the protagonist of my story. It’s gotta happen. Hell, it may happen in this first book. And some people won’t like it. I’m OK with that. Maybe there are enough me’s around to sell some books anyway.
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