Leave Them Swinging in the Wind

Leave them swinging in the wind, or torture your hero/heroine, then torture them some more. That's the best piece of advice I've ever received.

Yes, those are pretty sadistic words. I have it on good authority, from Shannon K. Butcher, that will heighten the suspense and keep the reader's nose buried in your book. Don't believe it? Read one of her Sentinel Wars, or her mercenary Edge series. She's a master of torture. Just when you think it can't get any worse for her characters, she throws them in a seemingly impossible situation. Survival looks grim.

My hero.

Granted, it doesn't have to be real torture, no thumb screws or iron maidens, but the premise works no matter what genre you write. Even in a book, or story rife with comedy, pain can add another layer to the humor.

Take the 1962 comedy, That Touch of Mink. It was released before the pill and the sexual revolution. Marriage, children, and a woman's virginity, were still held up as the gold standards.

Cathy Timberlake, played by Doris Day, is rushing to a much needed job interview in New York City. A Rolls Royce blasts past her, and her only good outfit is splashed with mud. Cary Grant plays Philip Shayne, a man of power and position. The moment they meet, she see's the man of her dreams and Philip wants Cathy in his bed. He wines, dines, and dazzles Cathy. When he asks her to go to Bermuda, she's imagines wedding rings and he's thinking ring-a-ding-ding. After much soul searching, Cathy decides to go to Bermuda with Philip. The long awaited night approaches, but she stresses to the point where she breaks out in hives. Cathy can't go through with it. Once back in New York, the humiliated Cathy once more decides to give herself to Philip. Off they go to Bermuda again. This time she gets drunk and Philip calls off their rendezvous.
The black moment in the comedy is her attempt to rid herself of her hated virginity. She wants to prove to herself that she really is a woman by going to a motel with a sleazeball named Beasley. Once Philip finds out what Cathy is up to, he races after her, declares his love, and they marry. The final irony comes at the end of the film when they are in Bermuda on their wedding night. This time, Philip is the one who breaks out in hives.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and her sister Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, are prime examples of just when you think it couldn't get any worse, it does. Rochester and Heathcliff are classic tortured heroes. In Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, no matter how many times Mitchell twists the knife in Scarlet O'Hara's gut, the woman will not stop. Scarlet raises up her fist to God and declares that she will never go hungry again. It's a roller-coaster ride of epic proportions.

Your readers want the hero and heroine to overcome the obstacles you've put in the path to true love. That's the payoff. You'll make fans and have a them lined up in the bookstores to buy the next book with your name blazoned on the cover.

So, torture away.

Dyann Love Barr