Tormenting Characters

Do I torture my characters? Do I ask myself...'What's the worst possible thing that could happen to this person?' Unfortunately the answer is a big fat yes!

Why would I do such a thing you ask? Why would someone want to inflict pain and heartache onto someone in which they spend so much precious time with? The answer is really quite simple. Or at least that's what I told my sister when I added a slight issue with her very favorite character. I didn't even tell her what I had done, simply added a little don't hate me when you read this...

So my reasoning was simple...I needed to breath new life into the pages. I have a soft spot for this particular story...it's actually my very first manuscript, but it was in no way ready for human eyes (my sister doesn't count). It was missing something. There was a missing element to this character that my sister had already fallen in love with. So...I took the plunge and am thrilled with how the story is now unfolding.

Of course I have opened up a whole can of worms and created an over abundance of work for myself. But isn't that what we do? It's like overcoming some sort of hurdle for me. Pulling the ms that I had once shoved under the bed, thinking it was hidden away forever and turning it into something even better. Will it ever be ready for public consumption? Who knows? But that's what I love about writing...creating things in my mind and twisting and molding it's contents the way I envision them. The way I want events to unfold.

Of course now I'm waiting for the wrath of my sister and that phone call from my mother asking me what I did to her this time. But hey, it's all worth it in the end right? Anything for a great story.

So tell me, am I the only twisted person out there that torments their characters all in the name of writing? How do you add that little something extra when you hit a wall? Or am I the only one who has this problem?