Today, we practice being EVIL.
Let’s come up with the worst possible things that can happen to characters in stories every step of the way!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we do the “it just gets worse” exercise, where we come up with conflicts that just get progressively worse for a character.
The best way to make a story compelling to read is through conflict, but unfortunately many writers feel scared to make too many bad things happen to their characters
So to practice that, we came up with a bunch of different characters/premises, then chat voted on them, and we wrote out a list of conflicts that “just get worse” for that character.
Something like this is not only good practice for creating conflict, but also great for crafting a decent outline too!
The first one chat voted for was this: You are negotiating your salary at work, and on reviewing your contract with the company, they discover an odd clerical error.
Here’s how we made it worse:
– Your name was misspelled, and you were never supposed to be employed at the company to begin with.
– The company fires you and hires the other person they were supposed to go with, even though you’ve been there for years (the manager has been wanting to get rid of you for years and now has an excuse)
– Later at home, jobless and confused, even your dog doesn’t like you anymore. It throws up all over the carpet and now you have to deal with that too.
– Then you get a phone call that somebody has been embezzling money at work, and it looks SUSPICIOUSLY like you did it. You’re under investigation
– Your bills and loans are piling up, and you have no way to pay them now (it seems like you have a motive to have been embezzling!)
– You’re arrested and interrogated by the police, they present you with tons of evidence of tampering with the company accounts from your computer.
– You’re sentenced to three years in prison.
– Nobody visits you in prison because they’re so ashamed of you, your girlfriend leaves you and takes your dog, the only person who visits is your old manager.
– He tells you that he set you up, he was the embezzler, and you’re just the fall guy.
– By the time you get out, the interest on your unpaid loans is going to be so high you’ll basically have to work like a slave for the rest of your life at dead end jobs because no one hires a convict!
– Also he’s going out with your girlfriend now, and they’re taking care of your dog together, and your dog loves him way better than it ever loved you.
Excellent! It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?
That could be a fine story as is, but if you wanted a happier story you could stop at any one of the conflicts and turn it into something positive instead. Like maybe the main character somehow gets his old manager arrested, or maybe the dog somehow proves that he’s innocent, etc.
Next chat voted for this one: You are in charge of the mac n cheese for the barbecue but you never made it in your life.
Here’s how we made it worse:
– But! Your kid just learned how to make mac n cheese in home ec at school. It seems to involve a lot of foil and a microwave, but you trust your kid to help out…
– …and end up setting the house on fire.
– Fire spreads to the neighbors, some of your family is horribly burned, you see their charred bodies screaming as they roll on the dry grass, igniting it even further.
– Seeing what you’ve done, you know that your life is over. It’s time to leave, begin the life of a fugitive, so you run away with your kid (the only witness to YOU being the one who did it)
– You see reports on the news that you and your kid are being searched for, since your bodies were the only ones not found. To hide your appearance you go to buy new clothes, but you’re spotted in the store and have to run away.
– In the woods, desperate, you know that there’s no way you AND the kid can survive. He’s even still holding onto a box of aluminum foil that he swiped from the kitchen, not understanding what’s going on. He’s like a little alarm waiting to go off.
– So you tell him to close his eyes and prepare to strangle him. At least this way you’ll have a chance of surviving.
– But when you lean in to do the deed, the kid takes the box of aluminum foil, rubs the sharp edges across your eyes, slicing the open. He calls you a terrible person for what you’ve done, and screams for help as you lay there bleeding on the ground, permanently blind.
– During your life sentence in prison, the only job that you can do without being able to see is working for pennies at a mac and cheese assembly line in a factory.
– The smell of burned cheese forever permeates your pores.
Hooray!
Again, this story outline is deliciously grimdark as is, but it could be changed at any point to become more of a normal story too. Maybe it turns out one of the relatives was actually trying to claim insurance fraud and it went wrong, so you get off scot-free. Or maybe you and the kid so somehow make it living a life incognito, etc.
Lasty, chat voted for this one: You’re a doggo. Your momma dresses you in all these horrible, tight clothes, shines bright lights at you, and shoves a camera in your face. All the dang time.
Here’s how we made it worse:
– You develop an allergic reaction to the fabric of the tight clothes, and feel itchy all over, but momma doesn’t realize
– Mom gets so caught up in photo shoot that she forgets to let you pee, so you pee on the backdrop, and mom punishes you by putting you in your crate, still not taking off the tight clothes so you’re trapped in them all night
– The next morning, momma finally takes off the tight clothes and big clumps of hair comes off with it thanks to the allergic reaction, you look like an alien rat
– Mom buys tons of hair regrowth for you, but thanks to the inflamed skin they cause lesions all over, now you look like roadkill/leper
– You’re no longer photogenic enough, so mom buys a new dog, and when the fresh puppy arrives, you get completely ignored
– Desperate for attention, you try to jump in front of the camera during the puppy’s photo shoot, but end up breaking it, and then momma throws you out onto the street
– In the pouring rain, you find a small shelter with a homeless man in an alleyway, he holds you like momma used to and you find yourself drifting off to a warm, happy sleep for the first time in forever…
– …until you wake up to the man slowly devouring you from the backside up. You have no strength to fight back, only whimper as you disappear into his gullet, praying for the darkness to take you quickly.
– But the man has not eaten in weeks, so he takes his time to really enjoy you limb by limb by limb.
There ya go, friends! The happiest story ever told.
But again, this outline could easily become something more “normal” too. Perhaps the old puppy and new one become friends, or the mom comes searching for the dog after she throws him out, or the dog and homeless man become friends, etc.
Coming up with a “horrible” outline first can be a great way to get a “normal” outline next.
…or just a great way to write a grimdark story too!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso