The next post in our series brings us to the reason many people read stories, especially adventure and fantasy stories.
We love to see our heroes emerge victorious, don’t we? She’s battled all of the author’s rocks, and at least once or twice it looked like defeat was assured. But she overcame.
Or maybe she didn’t.
Victory wouldn’t be as sweet if it was guaranteed – we wouldn’t worry so much about the hero. We may keep turning pages to see how he wins, but it’s the threat of defeat that keeps us up past our bedtimes.
That’s why heroes have to lose sometimes.
I’m a Marvel geek, and last year a movie came out that managed to assure both victory and defeat.
Credit: imdb.com
Captain America: Civil War pitted team Captain America against team Iron Man. There were some pretty epic moments – Spider Man stealing Cap’s shield was a personal favorite. But in the end, for us, it was good guy vs. good guy. The real bad guy set it up so they were fighting each other, and one of them had to lose.
I think that’s why it’s my favorite Captain America/Avengers movie so far (though I really didn’t like how things ended up for Wanda). It was going to be bittersweet no matter the outcome.
Even if our heroes win the war, they will likely lose battles along the way. Or maybe they win with complications. The victory is less sweet and perhaps more memorable if it comes with a little baggage.
Let’s back up one movie and talk about Ultron.
Credit: imdb.com
Remember how that one ended? The Avengers defeated the deadly machine that Tony created, but a whole city was destroyed in the process. The conflict springing from that helped launch the premise for Civil War. And that wasn’t the only “they won, but…” scenario. Scarlet Witch joined the team but Quicksilver died. Vision was created but Hulk disappeared.
Victories and defeats happened all along the way, and they kept us glued to our seats and holding our collective breath for more than two hours.
So how do we apply this to our stories? I love to write twists, and using unexpected victories or defeats is a great way to do that. The hero wins some battles and loses others, and maybe – maybe, she wins the war.
How do you use victories and defeats in your stories?
Allison Maruska 
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The flip side of that is, building on Dan, if everything continually goes bad, if the character is always beaten down and the victim, that’s worse than boring, that’s depressing. Hope adds tension. The hope that they might get out of it alive, is what makes us stress/nervous/fear, and read on.
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Also true. The key is to not be predictable. Not always winning but not always losing either. Predict what the readers will expect and do the opposite.
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It’s too easy to gloss over something very important you are stating in this post. It’s what new authors don’t do and what people really appreciate about a well written story. Even Dr. Seuss knew this.
The cat in the hat causes a lot of problems for the kids he visits, and the kids keep stressing while the fish keep saying how bad this is and that the cat should leave.
Yet too many stories start out with a decent promise and interesting characters but small if any hurdles. Everything goes exactly how it should as for the main characters, so it tends to be a relatively uninteresting story.
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That’s so true. I beta read a book that had an interesting premise and twist at the end but everything in between was perfect for the characters. It was predictable because nothing went wrong.
Words of wisdom from Dr. Seuss! 😊
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I’ve read SO many like that, and sadly the writers can’t see it when you point it out. To be fair, I was that way starting out. But one must embrace the lessons and learn.
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