Characters often get in trouble.

Templar's Creed said:

Characters often get in trouble. When was the last time you found yourself in a situation that was hard to get out of and what did you do?

What do you think?

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Instigated a fight.
Killed someone off.
Blew something up.
Introduced a different obstacle.
Had everyone sit down and talk about their options.

Kind of depends on the story, yes?

Templar's Creed said:

Characters often get in trouble. When was the last time you found yourself in a situation that was hard to get out of and what did you do?

What do you think?

Click to expand...

Well, I killed a man in Reno.

It didn't end well for either of us.

Helix said:

Well, I killed a man in Reno.

It didn't end well for either of us.

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Just to watch him die?

Dropped a huge rock on him. Seriously.

Templar's Creed said:

Characters often get in trouble. When was the last time you found yourself in a situation that was hard to get out of and what did you do?

What do you think?

Click to expand...

At my last job, I made a tiny error in procedure that wasn't really an error. I was actually following the standard procedure, but because the management were so incompetent and changed their minds all the time, it was sort of an error in retrospect.

But I was stressed about it, so when they asked me if I did that thing, I lied about it to their faces. Two executive managers. Hard to go into specifics, but basically if I had been found out I would have been fired on the spot (particularly annoying because I hated the job and wanted to quit at the end of my contract, not be sacked earlier).

So what did I do? I maintained a complicated web of lies for about 2 days while I worked out how to get everything straightened out. And I did. It was all fine in the end and I totally got away with it. But my god, it was stressful. I rarely lie, and it reminded me why I don't do it. Way too stressful.

But it did make me think it would actually make for quite a good novella. What started as a clumsy, stupid lie kind of blew out into this complicated web of BS. Anyway, alls well that ends well. After I left, I told my colleague about it she laughed her ass off.

I try never to get into the situations my characters do. That said, my characters... well, variously, they have:

Melted someone.
Skinned someone.
Insulted someone.
Destroyed worlds.
Caused earthquakes.
Bankrupted a business or several.
Instigated riots.
Usurped a throne.
Plunged the world into war.
Ripped apart space and time.


That's the mild list.

My characters aren't nice...

--I put a bug in a rapists ear while he was asleep. When it started itching he poked at it with a wooden awl, which caused him to die of massive infection.
--I shot three men and am thinking about murdering another.
--I broke a good man's leg so that his traveling buddies would have to hole up in a rock city until he died.