I was complaining to aionwatha about how I stupidly love all my secondary characters more than my main ones. It’s frustrating having to wait 2~3 chapters before I can introduce the character I wanted to write about all along.** Told her I needed to get out of that habit and start making MCs I actually like.
She said “But then you’d want to hurt them, torture them emotionally and physically, then possibly murder them.”
I responded, “I do all that anyway. I just can’t enjoy it when I don’t like them very much.”
** ((Neil is the exception to this unwritten rule; after falling out of favor from drafts #3-#???, he came back into first place in the last two rounds of rewrites and outranks even Andrew.))
*taps the mic to check it’s on*
*adjusts tie*
“So, is it correct to assume that the characters you like more than others are the ones facing harder tortures?”
True for the characters and therefore for the stories as well. You can tell how old a project is by how awful I am to its characters—the more years I’ve held onto them, the more dear they are to me. The more dear they are to me, the more I want to break them. The harsher the story is, the more satisfying it is to write, and the more I like it. See also: the relics.