Especially for LDS and Friends!

Wonderful!

I agree with the character thing. I have a friend/fellow writer who dubbed me as "cruel" to my characters. The ones I love most are the ones who are destined for some serious rapids! Have you ever hear the concept of how when you have your hero caught in a tree surrounded by the enemy? And how that's not the time to call in reinforcements to rescue them - that's the time to start throwing rocks at them! And I think that after the rocks, then you set the tree on fire and give the enemy chainsaws. Then maybe about that point I start thinking of ways to save the good guys. I've written a nice action sequence and get my Husband to read it and he gets to the climax where I leave my Hero seconds from utter demise and he keeps trying to scroll down only to find that there's nothing. Then he glares up at me and demands, "what happens? How does he escape?" I don't know how many times I've scratched my head and admitted, "Yeah, that's what I'd like to know too!" Then I have sat for hours staring at my computer trying to figure it out.

I believe that you can get a character to do just about anything. You don't have to short cut it and make them do it as the author. All you have to do is know enough about what motivates them and create a circumstance where they just can't say no. That's much funner.

-Renegade