• • Opinion Essay
• June 2, 2024

How To Break Your Characters

Now, one of my favorite things to do as a writer is to break my characters, and by that I mean I like to kind of crack open a character, figuratively speaking… sometimes literally. Okay, a lot of times literally, but we’re strictly talking figuratively today… mostly.

When I say break your characters, I mean to push them to their emotional and mental limits. Hit them where it hurts, and bring them to the point where it’s questionable as to whether or not they might recover. Again, all these are vague because they can take just about any form. A character who is irrevocably changed but still able to physically go can still fall into this category. 

This point in the story can technically come at any time, but it’s usually during the rising action in the lead-up to the climax. I’ve seen some stories show their characters fall apart in the inciting incident of their story, but it’s less common and in my experience as a hobby writer pretty difficult.

But you have to do it because breaking a character shows the character and the audience what the character is truly made of. Anyone can stand up to the same threat they’ve faced a hundred times. It’s not incredibly impressive to walk into the climax at 100%. Sometimes, a character has to threaten to fall apart and question their resolve, to find what kind of person they truly are.

And there are right ways to do that, and there are bad ways—tropes and cliches if you will. Today, I want to talk about my favorite ways to break a character, and maybe I’ll do a video about my least favorite. I make no promises, I don’t do well with making videos I said I would make in prior videos. 

Kill Your Other Characters

You know what really sucks, losing someone you care about. It’s such a terrible, mind-numbing, heartbreaking thing… that I absolutely love to put my characters through. You can see the strongest, toughest, meanest tough guys just absolutely fall apart when the group dog dies, the party’s weakest and sweetest member is killed by the villain, or maybe the mentor figure finally succumbs to the disease and being old.

And these moments, when characters are grieving loved ones, you learn about them by how they mourn. Do they cry in the face of loss, or do they start contemplating the end? Does the headstrong lancer, who has been nothing but confident and full of aggressive gusto, suddenly start to feel fear after the death of a party member? 

Or maybe they don’t break down at all. Maybe they shove their feelings deep, deep down, killing a part of themselves to push on. The story then reveals how deeply broken and repressed a character is this way, or maybe it just reassures you of what you already suspected.

A character reveals their true self when confronted with a surplus of emotion, and I eat. That. Shit. Up.

There are a lot of bad ways to kill off your characters, and sometimes you don’t need to ‘quote-un-quote’ actually kill them, but when done right, a good character’s death can really push the story forward. 

Just don’t kill the protagonist’s girlfriend, that’s just uninspired when his best friend is standing right there.

Have Them Face Rejection

Everyone has to handle rejection. It’s demoralizing, debilitating, and just so… defeating. Whether it’s a job, a social group, a parent, or even that girl who is definitely out of your league… Rejection fucking sucks… unless it’s happening to your main character.

Then it’s great.

Rejection is one of those things that happens and immediately derives a very harsh response from the character and the audience. It just gets the blood pumping, and narratively justifies characters making snap decisions they’ll regret.

When they’re rejected, how badly do they take it? Do they reveal that they’re not that great of a person? Do they have humility and show that maybe whoever rejected them will regret it because they’re so great? Or do they nod their head, accept it, and walk away, because they’re used to it?
How a character responds to rejection can tell you a lot. It rarely completely breaks a character wide open – unless they’re a megalomaniac of a villain – but it’s great at showing who hides beneath the facade.

Make Them Terrified

What you’re scared of, tells others a lot about you, and it’s doubly true for fictional characters. What a character fears gives you insight into their state of mind and their backstory, and sometimes, it just builds suspense. 

There are so many different ways to make a chill run down your character’s spine. Do they start to freak out at the sight of clowns? Are they questioning death? Maybe the villain really has them re-evaluating their quest and their own righteousness. Maybe their mom calls them by their full name, and they have a full-on panic attack.

All of these things, whether mundane or world-ending, tell you something key to their character.

For example, if your badass protagonist only cowers in the face of clowns, that tells you they’ve probably never had real problems, and that they’re not worried about the plot. It could also reveal a deep psychological flaw where the main character isn’t able to sense danger and is constantly at risk of getting themselves and their friends hurt.

Or it’s a funny gag. Sometimes that’s all it is.

When it comes to a character’s greatest fear coming to terrify them, there’s always something to learn about their character. No greatest fear is meaningless. Sometimes you just have to think about it more than others.

Now Go Break Your Characters

I hope you enjoyed my foray into making videos about writing. I’m serious about eventually making fictional writing my future. Even if it’s just a part-time thing, I want to do what I love more than anything in the world, and that creates worlds. If I want to do that, I should really focus on developing an audience for it.

This means you should expect more videos about writing on Something Central, with comic book reviews too.

If you want to find out if I’m talking out of my ass about this stuff. Right now, The House of Asmodeus: A Trial by Fire can be read in its entirety. It’s a story I wrote originally in high school that I’ve rewritten and modernized. It’s about the Demon Lord of Lust, Asmodeus, and his house dealing with the discovery of angel and demon hybrids, but can this discovery stop a war between Heaven and Hell? You can read the entire first book on my site.

I’m also finishing the first arc of another fantasy story, Raydorn: The War in the Black. I originally made a homebrew D&D campaign with my friends set in the magical world of one of my manuscripts, but as it turns out, it’s hard to run a D&D group and I don’t like DMing. So, I took the plot of a mercenary band trying to survive a world war, with all the characters my friends made, and tell the story of how they basically fuck around and find out. 

I’m also doing my own superhero book. It’s semi-episodic, with different arcs how a group of superheroes just out of high school come into their own and deal with each other. It’s a bit of silly, violent fun, with characters figuring out exactly what they can do with their powers, while a bunch of fucked supervillains make their life hell.

Don’t forget to check out the Youtube Channel either!