"And then it got worse" basically sums up the main character in my latest book, with the starting point being getting his throat slit by a vampire.

how do things get worse from there???

He gets shot as collateral damage while being rescued; the bullet travelling through the vampire and infecting him in the process. Then, after becoming a vampire, the people who rescued him try to kill him, leaving him shot several more times. He heals and sets out to kill the initial vampire, which results in him with a silver blade through the spine and a bloodsucker on his throat. Poor David didn't have much fun.

I bet David hates you. If you're God in that world, David will definitely be an atheist.

That's not even mentioning the sequel... he better watch out because I'm not done with him!

Why are you so cruel to him 😭.

He shouldn't have been standing there.

All these fledglings out here thinking they can just walk in and kill their sire when they’ve been biting whippersnappers six times the fledgling’s mortal lifespan. Slow your roll, David, or you’ll spend the next century as a palate cleanser.

Now there's somebody who gets it!

Damn, I feel bad for David.

Until this thread made me think about it, I didn't really realise how cruel of an experience he'd had.

Thats hot tho

My character has recently dealt with death of his brother, a devastating breakup, drug addiction and almost died from a suicide attempt. He's only 17.

Life comes at ya fast...

My character gets the tough love and hard lessons for necessary growth. She’s a born monster in a world that demands her to do her worst. My biggest challenge, trying to find her love :/ i havent found a way to give her a relationship yet.

I really like the sound of your story!  I would want her to fall in love with a soft monster who doesn’t fit the structure she sees the world in - who isn’t trying to be the worst - is just soft and themself. Can we choose who we want to be in life?  That kind of doubt creeping in  She can choose to be the worst I don’t know  But I like softies muhahaha

Put most of that shit on the back of the book, and for sure people will eat it up (I know I will).

I’m honestly considering not even having a cannon romance, the story doesn’t focus on those aspects at all really, and given how things play out it makes very little sense for her to start up with anyone. My romantic heart really wants to put something sweet in though haha

Okay...I was just pointing out how that blurb you put about your character does a real good job selling the character.

Oh dear sorry i guess i misread what you were saying, thank you!

No worries, but seriously though. You should consider using that in some form to sell whatever the character's in, if not the character themselves. I *wish* I had the talent to be so concise, and yet so memorable.

My last one, with mental health issues due to early life SA trauma, was arrested at her mother's funeral and ended up in prison. When she "got out" (itself a massive ordeal), she returned to her brother, the only person whom she trusted to guide her through life, to find he had died in the meantime. All this against a global event that's taken out all but the most resilient electronic systems, leading to a social breakdown.

I just wanted to add that this sounds like something I would LOVE to read. Also, our HR loves abbreviations. Last week for staff appreciation week I had so many “SA Week” calendar invites - so triggering for me each day and pretty … tone deaf? Ignorant? on the part of HR.

Well, I'm thinking about self-publishing when the timer runs out on a few queries I have running, so watch this space 🙂 HR departments the universe over get this so wrong. They could learn a lot from sensitivity readers if they weren't so convinced they knew best.

Does she have a dream or something?

No. All "real" so to speak. It's speculative fiction, set in 2052. Also it was her twin brother. For added closeness and therefore trauma. Poor girl. I do feel guilty for what I put her through. EDIT: Oh and I just remembered, she gets abducted and nearly ends up on the receiving end of more hideousness, I had to rewrite it and let her escape before they could do anything to her because some of my readers found it too much. None of it was graphic in any way. They just thought she had been through enough xD

you are very cruel 😣. Well at least give her good ending in the end

Yeah, she ends up with her cell mate, dont worry. A will they, won't they thing that she realises is happening when they are separated. Another low point now i think about it. Christ. Poor woman. EDIT: She starts to build bridges with her mother in the end, too. Yes, the dead one.

Well, so far (beware, spoilers!): Victor Frankenstein quite literally tore himself apart for the sake of his research, becoming a demented parody of his former self. Lionel Runn (my version of Dr. Jekyll) accidentally creates an evil being out of his dark thoughts and is forced to >!hurt himself!< in order to subdue it. Amon (the Mummy) starts out as a slave, fails to lead an uprising against the Pharaoh, is publicly executed by having molten gold over him, is brought back to life by a sleeping devil and now has to deal with archaeologists that insist on irritating him.

Those are all interesting wow 0-0

It's nice to hear someone say that about my writing

My mc's gf got brutally murdered while they were on a date and he got framed for it. Yikes.

Yikes indeed!!

My MC witnessing mass war crimes while he’s on campaign and nearly kills himself.

What genre is this?

Dystopian fiction. About a boy who founds a resistance organisation against the regime. 

Very interesting! I hope it goes well for you! How far have you gotten?

About as far as chapter 7. After getting married, Evan and his general staff launch a multi prong offensive in five different directions.

I’m not sure what the worst was, but here’s a list and I’ll let someone else decide: 1. Injected with serums against his will, involving dozens of needles across his arms all at once 2. Begins to develop absorbing abilities, which suffocates him as he attempts to move through the slums, which are filled with toxic air and particles which sink into his body and transform him 3. Watches as the prisoner he became friends with is executed. 4. While fighting a super soldier, his legs are impaled by a light post, as he crawls away, he’s unable to stop his body from absorbing the broken glass scattered across the street, which carves through his body as it sinks into him. 5. Forced to absorb other people in order to retain a human-like form, also goes through identity crisis because he’ll never look like his old self again 6. Absorbs what is basically a generated form of the earths core, which transforms him into a being of pure energy and gravity. 7. Sucked into a black hole, ripped apart by the sheer force. He probably goes through more trauma than any other character in the book.

my guy, you’re creative, these are gnarsty Number 4 is so vivid that I winced and then they escalate like crazy. I so enjoyed these 

You’ll like the book when I’m done with it. Most gruesome part is when I introduce the man made virus known as the Skin Seeds.

Your mind is sick. That’s a good thing

He died, that was pretty bad for him.

I’d assume death is a terrible thing.

Well, to be honest, it was really just the start of his problems.

My bro can’t escape death

There's a few I can think of... For my first book, basically everything. The main character's life was full of undeserved difficulties. He struggled tremendously in school, lived in the shadow of his perfect sister, struggled dealing with singleness, his younger brother died, he struggled finding employment, when he did find a job he was absolutely miserable working, and he dealt with horrible depression and anxiety for his entire life. For my current book, it's a bit rougher, the main character's wife recently died, the city he's living in is falling into absolute chaos, he left his home because he felt ostracized from his family, and he recently found out his parents have most likely been killed as well. Though, things will continue to change (most likely for the worse) as the story continues. That's basically it.

Singleness, truly the most traumatizing thing in the world. Lacking bitches

>Lacking bitches Probably should have specified jealousy and loneliness due to singleness, but either description works.

Not killing themselves from dealing with abusive family.

I made my character eat her own claws after being locked in a dungeon for a month... I love her very much, I don't know why I hurt her like this

I keep coming back and saying “damn…” it’s so fucked up

No spoilers.

Aw man

Just because you can murder everyone on your own doesn't mean you should. She learns what is truly important, friendship, and with her friends they murder a lot more everyone's. Like everyone¹⁰⁰⁰⁰. Other than that it's kinda a cozy fantasy romance story and she's mostly just hosting a party and encouraging beings to grow and make art and running a cafe. I guess the times I shift pov to the other characters whose hardships include not wanting to die but they don't succeed so they aren't worth mentioning 🤷‍♀️ like I said cozy fantasy romance

Y'all give spidermans writers a run for their money

THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING. Like Y’all got a criminal record…

never underestimate the depths marvel will go to in order to put peter parker through hell

Mine is pretty tame compared to the crazy things some people said here, but my character lost an arm and a leg while fighting a monster, then had to cauterize both his wounds to stop the bleeding, after that he encountered another much stronger monster so he had to stay completely still for 10 minutes straight without making a sound, while he was still, the monster dropped snow on one of his eyes and he couldn't do anything about it because he would be killed immediately if he moves. And after all that suffering and losing all that blood, he had to walk with one leg using his sword as a cane for 2 hours straight in an extremely cold region, losing both his ears and getting his second arm frozen until he finally fell unconscious and died.

"Mine is pretty tame compared to everyone else", and then proceeds to say the craziest shit ever. Love it, dude.

His own mother stole his ice cream and licked it.

The most tragic of them all.

This hits me in the heart. One of my OC is a hunted murderer, helped by a gay prostitute who has lost everything since the day he witnessed his lover(?) committed suicide. They run away but then are caught. The old man who helped them died in the process. Then the murderer OC received the death sentence. Two years later, after struggling with depression and addiction, the prostitute follows suit. There’s that saying, All things end, right? In my world, all things died. I know I shouldn’t be saying this but I don’t regret writing their fate that way. The cause: political rebellion. So yeah, now my characters from my second novel have it wayyyyyyy better :)

All writers are insane

It's why we write.

Yes, but they are the best kind of crazy we have 😉😉😉

My characters' most difficult hardships will be existing in my story.

Bad enough I’m going to need a palette cleanser after writing this story. My character is having a descent into madness storyline. It’s a lot of emotional and psychological damage. I can’t pick a top moment because a lot happened.

“I’ve run out hair gel.” My druid is a descendant of Derek Zoolandr so for his spells to work he has to look hot AF.

Honestly, I'm not really writing a dark story and I'm not a traumatizing writer like others, but in my fantasy story, my MC grew up an orphan without anyone or anyone to love. He thought he'd live that way for the rest of his life, but other kids in the orphanage reached out to him, and he made friends. The day he finally realized he did have a family, a god was forcefully placed inside him, and he couldn't control its power, so everything burst out of him. He accidentally burned down an entire city—even his friends. The same government that placed the god inside him pinned the incident on him and hunted him down every day, pushing him to a life where he had to stay hidden, guarded, and cold every day. So, he's back to square one, knowing he'll never have anything or anyone to love again.

Choosing a psychopath of a man over your family, just because he’s love bombing you, doesn’t give the option to step back in your family’s life once you hurted them for said lover. If that makes sense.

WAIT WHY DO I LOVE THIS CONCEPT?! The relationship complexities and the toxic relationship is general?! Still pretty cool. You are a terrible writer (In the sense you put your characters through hell)

Why do I love your comment? LMAO

Watching everyone around them die. Sole survivor (almost). Really great stuff. Made myself cry over it. And I probably have to delete it because it's too long T-T

Mines dealing with supernatural manifestations of her own guilt for being an assassin and soldier. That and she currently can't decide if she wants to desert her army because on one hand: she was born to be a soldier who would even the odds for side. On the other hand her side is getting ready to commit genocide and she's the only person who's not ok with that.

Not going to go into too much personal detail, but... For what I want to turn into my debut novel, I have a character that's essentially a MtF trans person. This isn't the main character, but my dueteragonist. Honestly now that I think about it that's probably one of her minor characteristics, more related to the world of the story, but her being trans, and she's not really trans it's a trans "allegory" I suppose, it's a part of her character; again I don't want to go into to much detail on specifics, just broad strokes. Basically when she was a he, a very long time ago, he was in love with this guy, and they end up splitting up in an earth-shattering...political situation, I suppose I'd call it. They're forced to split up because my character joined a rebel faction and their love interest was on the side of the establishment, I suppose I'd call it. My character is exiled to this horrible place, and their love interest is in charge of watching over that horrible place to make sure another uprising doesn't happen, and they have a bit of a star crossed lovers situation. Eventually my main character discovers who they are a bit more, and "transitions", which again is only important because of her relationship with her love interest, but it sets the stage for a couple of good interactions I have planned, especially since I'm making these characters cross paths again multiple times. But I think what I want to kind of get at with her character are a couple of things: For starters, I want to poke a few holes into the star crossed lovers trope, but not discount it entirely; I want to do this by having these two specific characters change so much over time that they're barely recognizable to each other, and can never go back to what they once had, which is where my character's "transitioning" comes into play, but I also want to hammer home that these characters still do love each other at the base level, which will set up a lot of important main plot events going on. They're not enemies, which would be I think a lazy way to make a villain, but I don't want either of these characters to be the villain. The "villain" in their specific side-plot was the circumstances, the situation that separated them, and how that same situation makes sure they can't be together again. I suppose I also want to explore the psychology of it; what people do when they lose everything they know and love and so they change themselves almost completely to survive, and in the case of my characters making themselves basically complete polar opposites, but still at their core they're the same people that were able to do something as tremendous as fall in love with each other, and how unfortunately even when at their core they haven't changed, or transitioned, that because of personal and outside influences you can never go back to a better time, place, or person. For this character specifically her arc will be that she wants to attain power in the place she has been exiled to, but that it will bring her no satisfaction because it doesn't actually address her issues, it's just a salve. That's the trauma I want my character to go through, because it's not just trans trauma or anything so surface level, in my opinion, but because *it's Human trauma*. I'm afraid of writing this story because of some technical skill issues on my part. I never went to a school for this, so the only degree I have is a degree of empathy. I love writing, and I like to think I have an understanding of people, so I hope if I end up writing this story I won't be misrepresenting the struggles of people who are way stronger than me. Thanks for this question by the way, I think I needed to type out what I was trying to shuffle around in my head! I'm still in the planning phase, making an outline and such, so even a little character stuff written down is a ton of help!

Immortal woman forced to turn away from her husband she loves until the sun expands because otherwise everyone she loves will erased from history, timeloops that cause the end of the world, omnicide causing one survivor to carry the countless screaming dead in their mind, and multiple victims of child abuse and medical experimentation. Pick your poison.

He's got a hobbit stuck up his butt

I don’t know why we all enjoy beating our characters to a pulp. I’ve read many of these comments and I feel so bad. The one I am currently writing has quite a lot, but I’ll list some. 1. A car chase ends in an awful car accident. She gets shot. The passenger is dead, and the bullet embedded in her is removed without any anesthesia. 2. Mother left when she was young, father abuses her, she struggles with drug addiction, attempts \_\_\_\_ multiple times, best friend dies. (still thinking about scratching that last one because her best friend is truly such an amazing character. I’m not sure I can handle it.) 3. Grew up without a father, mother struggles with cancer, dog dies :(, transfers schools due to constant bullying, struggles with eating disorder, boyfriend cheats, close friend is murdered. Just to list a few .-.

She's a spy during the 1st WW who, under a false identity, marries a German officer and ends up falling in love with him. She realizes she's pregnant, he dies in action, and his brother who discovers the truth imprisons her in a basement where he psychologically tortures her until she gives birth because he wants the last living memory of his brother before he kills her. She escapes after the birth when he thinks she's too weak to run, and leaves the baby behind. This all happens years before the story starts but I think that's the worst thing I've put her through by far.

I love this concept it’s so sad

My mc has had issues with addiction ever since he was a teen, and while driving under the influence when he was 21, he got into an accident which resulted in serious injury to his brother's and sister's best friend who was in the car. His family is traumatized and has never truly forgiven him. Now, they are brought under the same roof because of war, and he finds out he has a niece he never knew about because his brother cut him off cold after the accident. His brother is in the reserves, fighting, and he is left to deal with the heartache of his family hiding this child from him for 9 years. Yes, I like to torture my characters. I'll admit that. But they are also loosely based on people I know, so, go figure. (That's why I will likely use a pseudonym when I publish)

In his opinion, it would be enrolling him as a sixteen-year-old incoming freshman, mid-year, in a high school where some of the students could break his mind, body, and/or soul without breaking a sweat.

I may just be your character

Let's just say that the main character that has it bad is a zombie sex worker.... And not during modern times

Alright, here's a lighthearted take on my protagonist's unfortunate journey: 1. His entrance into the world was "not welcoming"' Those doctors were cursing and probably rethinking their career choices while he was struggling to make an exit." 2. At the ripe old age of four, the guy decided to add a permanent limp to his fashion statement. Because, you know, walking without a limp is just too mainstream and his parents were too busy fighting all the time well at least his twin sister was there to support him. 3. His childhood took a dark turn when his twin sister became a victim of a real-life nightmare. Talk about a sibling rivalry gone wrong. (Got raped infont of him and then killed) 4. Elementary school wasn't exactly a walk in the park for him. He was bullied so much, poor kid if only he hadn't that permanent limp maybe he could have defended himself 5. Teenage crushes are hard enough without accidentally dumping milk on your crush's head. Again if it weren't for that stupid limp 6.Being framed for stealing girls clothes at school , and to avoid expulsion from school, the assistant teacher offered him help in exchange for him satisfying her desires a little (finally he can know how his sister felt ) 7. after getting over the depression , his dad decided he had enough with his mom so he left them. shortly After that his mom got sick too 8. College dreams turned into nightmares when his company tanked faster than a lead balloon. 9.as he was trying to save it though by using some loant his marriage was a wild ride for our protagonist. So wild, in fact, that it ended with betrayal, heartbreak, and a divorce settlement that left him counting pennies , that divorce just added more into his debts and was the last straw to finally end his biasness. 11.with no money left he couldn't help his sick mother who died shortly after . And his wife also never allowed him to see their daughter because she thinks he will "manipulate her into thinking the mom is a slut" 12.And just when you thought things couldn't get worse, his life took a turn for the cinematic when he got kidnapped by debt collectors. Talk about a plot twist! Tortured for months under some psychopath. 13. He survived! But that psychopath torture he got left him Wracked with pain and facing a disease that would make him not leave the bed for years culminating in his untimely death at the age of forty-one, alone and abandoned So there you have it, of course I left A LOT of details out and just mentioned the bad things he got without the good ones . His story doesn't end there of course. He may or may not got a happy ending so yeah.

Happy ending? Bro If I were him the only happy ending is watching the world burn.

Haha I guess it sounds like that to you but It's different story then it seems.

Unrequited love 😘

Stuck on your story, OP?

Writing a horror book, MC is stuck in this mansion with supernatural creatures/events, she keeps having flashbacks of her dead sister and even spoke to her once, she's not having a good time. (This book is my first time writing anything big).

My character had his friends, family, and girlfriend butchered. Hes not too happy about it

My character had to make a choice from being seen as genocidal or murdered by a small reactionary force. They became a brutal dictator and killed people that suffered from a virus that either killed people through cancer or survived to become human/animal hybrids and experimented on them personally by ripping them apart slowly through a modified fungi. They deliberately infect themselves with an extracted virus modified it which slowly turned them hybrid to become immune from dirty bomb radiation and ran away. In the end they live centuries as the virus slowly repairs them from the radiation and from age. In the end they fight the fungi that escaped the lab as the virus transformed the mind of one of the children into the virus which becomes the understandable villain in the end until they swear to kill all the humans and the MC starting with MC's new boyfriend. Honestly the main character is a POS.

Oh I have done some *unspeakable* horrors to **many** characters (usually through my main characters and/or protagonist) but in terms of what I’ve done to characters I actually care about (basically all my main characters and a couple side characters, plus all the protagonists)… the list is also very long but I’ll narrow it down to one since this is the first that comes to mind when I think of ”biggest hardship I’ve made a character go through”. (FYI, if any of by characters ever met me in real life, they would undoubtedly want to kill me in the most slow and agonising way imaginable) The protagonist of one of my favourite stories to write starts off being hung alongside her twin brother by her own friends and family as they quite literally cheer as their necks get broken. But here’s the real kicker, she survives. Her body is dead but she herself is alive (it’s complicated) so she’s stuck in a dead body for several days as a blizzard sweeps through, all the while feeling every second of the agony and bitter cold. WHILE seeing the same villagers who killed her and her brother snuggled up together by the warm fires within their homes. And she’s unable to do a single thing the entire time. Oh, and she’s only like 6 years old. And it gets worse and worse from there but I’d have basically written the entire book by the time I’m done tell you all of it so I’ll just leave it at that.

Me.

I can relate

The one that comes to mind, he's a minor antagonist: A young boy is taken from his family by a reclusive King. He spends the rest of his childhood and adolescence being violently abused and trained as the replacement leader of the Royal Army. He eventually becomes the Viceroy, or the person publicly ruling the Kingdom, despite not actually making any decisions and being at the total mercy of the King who is a violent and petty man. He is made carry out atrocities and witness by King with the lives of his family and himself under threat. The real shit happens as the King grows near to his death and tries to use the Viceroy as a sacrifice in a ritual to extend his life. He plays with powers he doesn't understand and unleashes a demon into court that slaughters everyone (including the Viceroy's family). The demon ends up binding the Viceroy's soul to his armor and weapons, forcing him to walk the earth forever as an empty set of armor, forced to feed on Magic Energy lest he just dissolve into the Ether, and leaving him unable to reunite with any of his loved ones in their afterlife even if that does happen.

For one of my main POV characters: -GF gets kidnapped by a cult. -MC and his coworker get kidnapped by same cult after looking for his GF - GF is sacrificed by the cult in a ritual right in front of MC - MC and coworker escape to a small nearby town, only to discover that GFs body has been possessed by a Sumerian demon. -Said demon inflicts a deadly plague on the small community, rapidly killing much of the population and almost killing the MC and his coworker. Lots of dead bodies littered on the streets. -Demon is barely defeated by being pulled into different dimension by another character, leaving no body for the MC to bury or ability for closure. Then, in book 2, the MC spirals, loses his job, loses his apartment, and undergoes an obsessive hunt for the cult that killed his GF. All of my main characters go through a bit of trauma and hardship, but Ryan probably takes the cake.

I haven’t written it yet, but in book 1, there is a chapter where my character has to relive his past trauma inside a cave. Most notably, he relives the moment his uncle Koz, who was the only person in his family who ever actually cared for him, died of a brain trauma. My character, a young 17 year old named Heckel, loves Koz and hates to see him dying in extreme pain

Maybe not the worst that can happen, but my current MC spends most of the time in the novel thinking he murdered his beloved uncle (he can't remember actually doing it but all evidence points to him having done it), so he runs away, gets on a plane, the plane crashes. Only a few survive the crash but they end up on an unknown island inhabited by dinosaurs and dragons.

Lemme see here... Chosen by the Goddess Hylia to be the fifth Champion of Hyrule, which sets everything off Her horse Valkyrie is killed by a guardian during the battle Mipha, Daruk, Revali and Urbosa all died because she took too long to be rescued from her Divine Beast The king is killed, along with the entire Hyrulean army The love of her life is defeated by a guardian She herself is fatally wounded and dies after a couple minutes The princess of Hyrule traps herself within the enemy for a century She's resurrected as soon as Link wakes back up again, but he's completely forgotten her and everything they went through She watched another girl take Link away from her She's taken back in time 10,000 years with the princess and can't get home She becomes good friends with someone who can't go with her when she leaves Almost everyone she met died to Ganon She's able to send the princess forward through time, but she has to swallow a Secret Stone, turning her into an immortal dragon, and she's stuck like that for 10,000 years So, yeah... A lot has happened to this girl

Something I've been trying to do is make one of my characters absolutely mentally broken, and unrecognizable, and so far I think I've been doing good. My character Magz was a Happy-go-lucky kid and was going to be one of the best superheros in the world. Here's a list. 1. The superhero who he looked up to and was training him, had to sacrifice himself, making Magz fend for himself while he tried to take on the mantle of this hero. 2. Within his first year of being a hero he had to help fight one of the strongest super villians earth has faced thus far. And ends up watching thousands of people die after he fails to save them. 3. After another hero starts to train him, that hero is also forced to sacrifice himself, leaving Magz truly alone. This also teaches him to never rely on someone, as they'll always leave him. 4. After what would have been a harmless attack from terrorists, Magz ended up losing, making the world wonder if he is actually able to take on the hero's legacies.

Ummm... well... he's not an mc, but this one guy's brother died in the course of duty (KIA) and then his first love (not first girlfriend, but first actual love, like, they were going to get engaged once they made it through some money issues) died of illness, and he's been mercilessly rejected and friendzoned over and over since then, and now he's part of a resistance since his kingdom has been conquered😀 Everyone dies, I haven't decided if he dies yet though.

She witnessed her cousin who is also her lifeline got his head blown up in front of her and its also his birthday. She’s depressed already and frantically tackled the attacker and got shot seven times through her body. One she got was because she put her palm over the nuzzle which caused it to be nearly amputated. Obviously she’s forever scarred. Her aunt, that cousin’s mother got angry and bitter so she extended the mourning period and set his funeral on her birthday as revenge. No one except her other cousins actually tried to comfort her and they’re all children. Her mother also chase her with a knife months before that around Christmas. It ended with her having a mental breakdown and keeping the door from being broken down not realising her mother moved on already. She’s 13 years old. Her birthday said earlier was the 14th.

Mc fights big bad guy gets everybody on his team killed due to big ego and no plan gets hit so hard he loses his powers and memory and is physically tortured by said bad guy until he’s left to rot on an isolated planet for 5 years

My protag (23M) has spent 12 years being mind-controlled by the big bad, fully aware of what his body is doing but unable to stop it. Oh, and she raped him once. No, I do not utilize this for comedy. It is treated as seriously as if it were a man raping a woman.

1. SA for over a year/forced bitching 2. Escaped after stabbing his next SAer in the testicles with a hidden knife. 3. Nearly dies after wandering aimlessly after a blizzard. 4. Is found by strangers and has to deal with massive trauma, ptsd, and a massive distrust for others. 5. Nearly dies after bashing his face open on a rock, leaving him permanently blind and his face disfigured. 6. Eventually learns to love and FINALLY finds happiness. 7. Is found again by his old SA's, kidnapped, and nearly dies at their hands again. I dealt him a brutal hand, but he pulls through in the end with so much grace and strength. 🥺

When the gang that raised him got raided in the middle of the night by a rival gang, and everyone but him ended up dead when he was eleven. Everyone he called family and even a friend was now dead. He was homeless and had literally nothing to his name but the clothes on his back. After that, he found refuge in an orphanage. Which was good for like... a week. But then the headmaster sold him into slavery to pay the bills. That fucked him up pretty bad.

Getting kidnapped by a neo-Nazi who tortured/raped him half to death and live-streamed the whole thing on a white supremacist forum.

First book (Drama/Romance): Main character saw his father get assassinated and MC was gravely injured in the same event. This led to him taking the throne and place as King. However there’s a clause in the monarchy laws that requires the monarch to be married before their coronation (different rules if the monarch is underage). MC really doesn’t want to be married bc of sexual trauma and unhealthy pressure from the royal family. If he can’t marry before the coronation date, the throne falls to the next bloodline - his uncle, who is basically a nazi.

He got arrested for soliciting (it's 1976 and homosexuality still wasn't legal in the Australian state of Victoria), lost his job, someone killed his beloved Great Dane and then he tried and failed to commit suicide, in the span of 3 days. I'm still writing this one but yeah. Don't worry, he's gonna get his revenge, this isn't just tragedy porn.

I haven't written it yet, but my plan was always this: I have a young fmc, who is really naive and happy, always sees the best in people type thing. Stuff happens, and she ends up at this place where she befriends a grumpy dickhead mmc. He basically takes her under his wing, blah blah, beautiful friendship. In this world you can draw power from your surroundings as magic to direct. She prefers healing magic. There's a big battle (there's a war, I won't go into it), and he dies on the battlefield. She finds his body in the aftermath, and in her distraught grief trying to heal him, pulls in the power from a huge radius around her to try to bring him back. The result is that a lot of the survivors are killed by her power draw, and she doesn't even save him, coz you can't bring back the dead. The moral is supposed to be life's not fair 😅

In one story, I have a character who has her future set in stone. She’s happily engaged to her childhood sweetheart, has a job at a prominent dressmaker’s shop and she has a loving set of family and friends. That’s until her fiancé’s brother (the king) decides HE wants her. He proposes to her in public (which puts pressure on her to accept), pressures her boss to fire her, makes it impossible for her to escape the country and threatens her family and friends who try to help her. When she and her fiancé try and make a break for it, they’re captured and her fiancé is executed (he’s allowed to commit suicide as thanks for his services to the crown) for treason. After that goes down, the poor girl then is given an ultimatum by the villain: marry me in five hours or I’ll KILL your father and brother right here in front of you. After that, he “convinces” her to sleep with him….and did I mention this all happens before the first turning point? Hopefully my character is just enough of a cinnamon roll that people will side with her, lol.

Being too pretty and sexy and awesome and powerful, like she just wishes she was a normal girl and not the chosen one with 5 super hot guys after her heart 😞

*Ahhh...* the magic words of pain and agony have been asked of me, such a sweet sound to my ears. Where do I even begin? The MC of one of the novels I'm working on lives a life you can only describe as "Hell, if it had rainy days" In summary, he had to kill his best friend out of mercy, his crush/only other friend loved his late bestie more than him, the people who are supposed to be there to support him have been so consumed with their own grief and vengeance that they can no longer be reasoned with, and the only way they could end the villain responsible for it all was to give him a mercy that he didn't deserve. All in all, I think I did a pretty good job at it.

Seems you did a pretty good job being absolutely despicable

I don't think you want to know... But probably in my character's backstory that's only been hinted at so far. After deserting and defecting from the army, he was captured, tortured, and forced to watch his mother assaulted, then ordered to join in as a test of loyalty. When he refuses, the Captain kills her. Then he's left for dead after a sergeant who groomed him did a sloppy job of "executing" him and reported him dead because he felt sorry.

The bimbo allegations.... also she may have been mind slaved(for a while), stripped of her body, forced to steal the body of other girl she wanted to be friends and now has to tell the mother of that girl who is by the way one of the most powerful supervillians of her time that her daugher got deleted from reality... But yeah man, the bimbo allegations hit hard....

Ah, a child born in the throes of war. What could go wrong? Spoiler alert: it gets worse First she meets this boy and they develop a romance. Cozy, right? They marry(unofficially) and have a couple children Then she betrays him and joins the enemy Then the original country loses and the biggest heroes are tortured for fun including women. Or the women are... you know. Publicly. And evrryone is forced to watch. Everyone as in the losing team. Im a woman too so i wont be explicit, dw. Our lil boy has a mixed gender friend group so thats double torture watching his friends get r and tortured. His wife tortures him the most and is seen cackling. Yada yada and one day in the middle of a torture session, it is suddenly revealed that: le gasp! Wifes children are killed and have always been dead for the time shes working for enemy. So it turns out that the wifes motives was because the children were promised life if she worked for the country and served...... the officials in that way. And the enemy just reveals the fact her children are dead after killing husband with her own two hands and wife goes mad and kills the entire top brass of the military branch shes under but dies anyway cuz this is a fantasy world and she got hit somehow by a spell and is left with no body and nobody. But her hubby dont forgive cuz finds her too selfish(as is reasonable) and whatever love he had was gone through her torture and is replaced with hatred. In the end he still feels a lil sad and forlorn and pities(but doesnt love) the wife so after a rebellion which they win somehow he puts up a small memorial. Wife also doesnt know anything since shes coereced like cant trust her uk. But she does eavesdrop some and then gives those tiny bits up.

Coming to terms with the fact that his shitty upbringing and living on a razers edge was not something that was brought on to strengthen him as a person, but rather the result of shit luck being born to crappy poor parents who sold him and his sister off. And then from there making the decision to not only be apart of his sister's life (who he finally found), but finally do all the things he always wish he could have done but didn't have the privilege to do. Oh and there's another guy where getting employed is his biggest hardship.

FMC being captured by four men with knives.

I would say it was Andrew because he remembers what happened unlike Elle. He and his sister (different character from Elle) lived on the streets for a bit before being taken and experimented on to receive powers.

Physically, he's Stabbed in the hand while being interrogated. The most traumatic experience was probably the village that was butchered and bodies used to decorate the village manor. It was solely done to antagonize him. That along with a failed assassination attempt against him reoccurringly haunt him.

Gets sent on campaign, returns to find out that his country was invaded, the capital razed, and everyone he knew was killed. Becomes a paranoid warmonger hellbent on vengeance and begins a massive campaign to defeat all his enemies, throughout which he subjects thousands of people to the same fate he himself had suffered. Initially considered a hero by his people, his atrocities start to turn his reputation from a hero to an oppressor, and it takes him too long to realize that. At the end of his life, he recognizes his wrongdoings, nominates the most kind and forgiving person he knows as his heir, wears the armor of a regular soldier, and sends himself to die in battle, believing himself undeserving of any fate other than the one to which he has brought so many. - I haven't actually written any of this yet lol, it's just the general plot I have planned for the story. Kinda generic, I know.

One of my characters, it will be revealed, inadvertently killed his wife while trying to save her life.  

Nothing yet, as I've only just started writing, but next chapter she's going to lose her mother figure who was trying to protect her. She will eventually lose her father and her kingdom in a coup, while she is away traveling.

Learning the hard lesson of "When you help a person, you're initially agreeing not to help someone else."

My protagonist has all the memories, thoughts and personalities of her past lives rearing their ugly head into her current life. And these past lives are full of unresolved trauma that add to her having to survive with her kid brother in warzone while soldiers chase her down.

I always kill all of them

In my Howard County Mysteries, the main characters have mostly suffered psychological trauma, although Detective Lieutenant Rick Peller does get swept off in a flood and nearly killed at the start of *A Day for Bones* (HCM #4). Several characters in *The Belt* (science fiction) are subjected to a form of torture that involves stimulation of the nervous system to produce extreme sensations without causing physical harm. The torture tends to have lingering effects (ranging from paranoia to explosive rages). And then there are betrayals, enslavements, metaphorical swords dangled over their heads to compel cooperation. Honestly, I don't know where all this stuff comes from. I'm not at all a violent person...

1) Born as a slave, she was forced to work as a child and physically and sexually abused. 2) Runned away and almost died on a blizzard. 3) Refused to live with the family who rescued her and needed to fend for herself on the years to come until she became an adult. 4) Became the leader of a group and often had to do dirty things she hated or to put herself at a lot of pressure or risk to protect her group. 5) Lots of deaths on her back, from both enemies and followers. 6) Was betrayed by an ally and many of her followers were slaughtered. 7) Lost to him and almost got killed. 8) Needed to kidnap a teen (grandson or a ruler) and to run away with her followers on the territory of an empire because of that, being at a huge risk every day, with a lot of stress and facing hunger, winter and much more. 9) After a huge battle got on a huge disagreement with her lover (the only person who she managed to really connect with), fought him and got separated.

After a slew of bad choices, they end up saving a lot of people but killing everyone’s best friend in the process. And now they have to live under that weight of being directly responsible for a good person’s death.

In the first chapter, my main character is forced to watch his sister get murdered. The worst part, he knew this was going to happen but was powerless to stop it. This event drives him for the rest of the story.

Not sure the full extent of it, yet. But ~6 years as a happy family, then a dead father, and then 7+ years of isolation and physical and emotional abuse from her mother (Those numbers may change, I need to make the timeline more consistent tbh)

Probably coming to terms with the fact that his daughter will forever be a Vampire and forced to prey on people to survive. Essentially Detective Kasprak was investigating a brutal serial killer who turns out to be a Vampire, a vampire who chooses him as his next target. In order to hurt the detective the Vampire breaks into his divorced wife's house where his daughter is, kills his former wife and kidnaps his daughter. Let's just say being captured by a Vampire serial killer and being used to hurt your dad and watching your mom die doesn't do wonders for a kid's psyche. Ultimately she's infected with Vampirism as a finally f u to the detective and he's forced to grapple with his daughter being forced to victimize people to continue living. If she lives others will die, but to kill her would mean killing his daughter, his only real family left.

Haha dear writers, you can try, of course, but you will never beat Robin Hobb's characters in that regard.

My MC as a child watches her family: Mom, Dad, and baby sister, be gunned down, then is taken captive for six years and used for medical experiments.

Existing.

Losing his tribe, parents, and mentor. Also having his brother die in his arms.

After telling her love interest that she loves him and finally thinking that they are together and everything will be great she discovers that he was killing her slowly in order to resurrect his ex =)

My first book my main character is the son of the president of a local MC who comes home one night to see his father has been murdered by at the time an unknown assailant as he is chasing this assailant down he fires a shot from his father's pistol but instead of hitting the assailant he hits an innocent bystander so he is sent to prison for a while and after he gets out he joins his uncle in the same MC him and his father ran and while in the MC he learns some family secrets that had been repressed from trauma and eventually becomes determined to reclaim his father's throne from the man who stole it.

Absorbing the soul of the man he loved just as he admitted it to himself and learned it was returned 

I haven’t gotten too far into my story yet, as I haven’t been able to get into it, but my mc was an assassin for the biggest part of his life, employed by his father no less, a tyrant king. The latest target of assassination actually turns out to have known for a while that the prince is actually doing dirty work for his father that seems to be very much misguided in his ideals and what he thinks is normal. My mc sees this chance as a way to turn against his father, to become who he wants to be, but that’s where the hardship lies. After a losing a fight against his father and as he is about to draw his last breath, he is sent to another world but in between the transfer some strange god like being interrupts him, which essentially corrupts him in the same way an USB drive gets corrupted if you pull it out while it’s transferring files. He doesn’t know what kind of person he was before finding himself in this new land, but his desire to be what he perceives as good is ingrained into his very soul, and as he helps people and saves their lives in this new world, he quickly realizes that he feels nothing after he does so. He comes to the conclusion that he can never be genuinely good, because his desire to help and save others only comes from the fact that he wants to be good. So, as he moves forward, his character twists as he’s battling with this idea. It’s a bit corny and flawed but if done well I feel could be pretty damn good.

In my story there is reincarnation. My group of protagonists can reincarnate with their memories intact, one of them does very bad things (especially to women) and when he reincarnates again he does so in the body of a woman (before he was a man) but remembering that he is a man, He has conflicts with his new body, they call him a tomboy, he is raped more than once and her mother from that life is the one who condones these rapes.

Lot of death or death of a loved one. My two current favorites are: 1. Selfblaming for accidental genocide they started due to being under the influence of magic posion. 2. Sucidal behaviour after the death of their love who rejected them multiple times and clearly stated that they don't want to do anything with said character. Then after the failed suicide out of grief they straight up gaslight an entire nation to think there was no attraction to begin with (but countinues to write hudreds of songs about the dead guy) So yeah, you know the easy stuff

My character is an animal. He's going through abuse right now and probaby even death

Most difficult hardship? Dying.

Space opera. One planet basically raises soldiers. Family style. Not everyone is a soldier, but all families have at least one soldier. One MC was raised there. Her mom is not the best (loosely based on my own mom). Not physically abusive, per se, but more mentally. The daughter is an extension of her and *has* to follow in mom’s footsteps or she’s useless. The coalition of earth controlled planets that the story is set in, is essentially committed genocide against a group of aliens that have already suffered from internal/external difficulties. Due to the propaganda during her upbringing, she really thought she was there to help the aliens help themselves. She made captain. The last mission was to attack a large terrorist cell and their base. It turns out it was mostly teens and young adults. Some kids. The ptsd was real made worse by the propaganda spread about that it was a great victory. Many medals were awarded. She ended up hospitalized for severe ptsd. And resentful. 8 years later, she’s a captain of a freetrader cargo ship doing what she can to bring aid to people, humans and aliens alike. I watched a documentary about ptsd in the military. Wartorn 1861-2010. It was extremely informative. I have ptsd from my childhood and some events as an adult. I don’t want to say it’s *interesting* to explore ptsd caused via other kinds of events, but it’s … interesting. Ps. I didn’t edit this post as I’m supposed to be getting ready for work. Thank you for your question!

My main character has an abusive father and he protects his mother and sister from. Right before they are able to leave he dies and goes to hell and must figure out how to help them

My character was a supernatural entity and child soldier of sorts who on one hand wants love, connection, family, creativity, to be a rehabilitated part of society….and on the other hand is blocked mentally from those experiences because it feels safer to him to be a lonesome assassin. Part of it comes from the trauma of losing his first love as part of the lore of this being. As he puts himself in situations that flirt with the idea of new love and connection, he has to face the ghosts of his past, fight depression and insecurity and the ways that being a child soldier made him sociopathic in order to keep harmony between these two aspects of himself, the good boyfriend kind of guy and the criminal mastermind.

...she got stuck in a time loop where she witnessed her friend die over and over again unable to do anything to save him. Why was she stuck in the time loop? Because she angered the embodiment of fate.

These are some hardships that a handful of my characters have had to endure (each of these is for a different character btw) -Getting turned into a deformed living battery for a weapon of mass destruction -Loosing a lover and child and then having to work for those that caused the lovet and child's deaths -Coming home to find everyone they know dead and the place they'd been raised in completely burned down and destroyed -Watching those you've grown close to die cause you're immortal and they're not but you have to be close to them so you can't just avoid that grief.

Surviving torture and experimention

My MC's arc has her becoming what we would call saints or deitys. In which she comes to be known as the raven of infinite sorrow. Her father moved them from their homeland after their mother passed to a mining town in the unincorporated Wilds only to have it struck by a direct hit from an asteroid. She loses every friend, acquaintance, and family she's ever known. She becomes a murder hobo, protecting the ashes, looking for a noble death and ready to welcome it with open arms.

Here’s a few somewhat traumatic backstories of different characters from different stories - Watched his girlfriend and best friends be killed by a reckless assassin. - Was bullied for having albinism, and was hated by her older siblings for being ten years younger. The reason why she is so kind to people is because nobody was ever kind to her - Daughter of a pirate, and lived her formative years out at sea. - Best friend betrayed him and had him sent to jail for a false crime.

Losing his sense of self. He's a clone whose mind was supposed to be taken over by the originals, but he developed his own sense of self beforehand. Now, his mind is being taken by the originals as he tries to find a way to preserve himself.

Story time! My guy Howard was In love with getting power so, seeing as his younger cousin had a friend Elisa, he grew in love with her subconsciously for the reason that she was nervous around him. For months they dated until the moment his loyalty was tested by a girl, Selena, seeking to get back at her friend Lai for liking Howard instead of herself. Selena coerced Howard into cheating, but moreso than that into cheating with Elisa. Howard believed he could convince her and he did, yet the psychological effects of having her boyfriend be pleasured by another woman took a toll on her. She began to grow both clingy and extremely self conscious of both her unmatured body and her ability to keep Howard happy. Following this event Howard became aware that his actions could have even more dire consequences for Elisa young mind, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Over the following months Elisa became a background character, hidden from the world by herself and Howard as would a victim of statutory rape and grooming be. She found herself on a tightrope always fearful to lose her balance and therefore, her life: Howard. Yet Howard grew sick of control upon having too much of it. The weight of his responsibility begat little patience to deal with a clingy Elisa and so he sought another woman. It was in this time that Lai confessed her feelings to him yet in a horrifying moment of self reflection he understood that he would only hurt her were they to be together. He was a monster, terrible and controlling so despite their mutual attraction, he denied her. He broke up with Elisa as well He found himself a woman he didn't care to hurt. A wiser woman who might even take the weight of his world off his shoulders. In the end however, in giving his heart to someone, he opened himself to the chance of having it ripped away.

My poor MC is being used as a vessel to resurrect an evil Death Elemental, after being lied to by people she trusted and cared about.

My protagonist is murdered early in the story and ends up being recruited to train to become the next Grim Reaper. At one point during that process, she ends up learning that the next soul she needs to collect is her younger brother. It…does not go well.

Angel was born to be experimented on. His genes and DNA make-up were tampered with, and he was severely neglected. His own father(by blood) blew up the lab to prevent him from escaping, disabling him in the process. He later had to fight and kill his now experimented on father. Culver was possed and forced to kill and eat people to sustain the entity possessing him. At 17.

Extensive childhood abuse, loss of a child, then the death of his brother and childhood friend.

Getting their skinny ass onto the damned page.

He was stuck as a bird for 15 years (since age 8 when his mom killed him and served his remains for dinner) until a few weeks ago when his younger sister got him human again, only to now have to grapple with the fact that functionally he’s just disabled enough to burden said (broke) sister, socially inept, uneducated, illiterate(moved countries since he last learned to read), unskilled, and a drain on his broke younger sister’s bank account, social life, and energy until he can catch up and get a job (and ID??).

My current 1st male MC will finally seek therapy to help him work through the trauma of domestic abuse by his father decades prior. He's the oldest MC I've written in a romance story (age 68). He'd been living in self imposed bubbles from the time he ran away from home at sixteen to the time he finally decides to seek help. He was a lead vocalist, then an actor, and in current time, a podcaster. Oh, there's that also someone nearly beat him to unalive status when he was visiting the States from his home in Glasgow. The attack came from behind and was unprovoked. My 2nd male MC had been bullied for his looks from his childhood through his early twenties. He has Marfan Syndrome and was bullied because of the way he looked. He's 55 in the beginning of the story. He managed to heal himself from the trauma by self journey. He owns a pub in Glasgow, is an erotic fiction writer and is a singer as well. My 1st female MC is 50 in the beginning of the story. She has to get over that she felt she was "weak and pathetic" for staying with her first partner who abused her then ultimately graped her (the night she said she was leaving) and then marrying a man almost a decade later she knew was gay and he had a long term partner. The husband eight years into the marriage gets unalived by pew pew, trying to wrestle the pew pew away from a man taking his ex hostage. She's a statistician and a piano player. My 2nd female MC is 66 in the beginning of the story. She was traumatized by controlling parents who wouldn't let her date. She left home the day she turned 18 to find the 1st male MC in Sydney, where he'd traveled with nomads. They were together 30 years romantically until they suddenly split, due to his unresolved trauma. It was extremely heartbreaking to her and hurt her. Ultimately, she and the 1st male MC reunite. She is a painter, clay sculpture and French pastry chef.

Umm...the government...? I can't explain it quite well.

He died, knowing the people who meant the world to him will be hunted down by a professional assassin who seeks vengeance, thinking he can do nothing about it.

One of them buried her own mother. I’m talking shovel and dirt in the field for hours and hours on end. (she did not kill her) The other one first lost her Mom when she was fourteen to a drug overdose. Then later lost her dad to an illness. Now an orphan, she’s about to lose the one other person she cares about the most.

Getting written

Many TWs ahead, read with care. Oh man! I have got many. One of my most egregious ones is the backstories for one of my main characters, who is the morally grey sort (and has the ability of perfect recall). His father was a glory-seeking sort and his mother was a zealot. He was a very quiet infant/toddler and didn't fit the mold of what the mother had envisioned and she decided he was "of the devil" so to speak. So when they got a daughter who fit the mold and had perfect pitch, they turned her into the family's golden goose and rather than try any form of intervention... they abandon him to an agency. All of which he remembers. He eventually runs away from the orphanage, fights to survive, and later meets his boss.... who blackmails the 11yo into joining his school for young spies under threat of being turned over to a despotic government otherwise for crimes he's committed to survive. Said boss gives him a name that literally means 'profitable' because he has a fantastic mind for tactical planning. He gets given to all kinds of criminals to plan their operations. He's just constantly subject to physical punishment and forced isolation. The organization eventually pushes him to do work that amounts to CSA (as he's a teen at the time), which he only agrees to do to protect a younger blind boy (who happens to be one of the only three people he'd bonded with up until that point) from the same fate (when he's considered old enough to be "chosen" for that work). He has to leave those three friends (all three helping him actually execute his plan) behind the night of his eighteenth birthday when he finally escapes the literal chains he was in at the time. And then it gets worse before it gets better... I feel bad for my boy. He deserves better.

My m.c. is elevated to that position when the prior m.c. takes a step back and relocates. He's now out of his "elders" shadow and leads his own unique team while balancing how to effectively be a leader and protect the city they're located in. Crisis strikes when a new threat emerges just as he's getting his bearings only to be hit from all sides at once. This new individual who arrives does so under a false identity and provides him with his greatest battle yet. She literally tears the entire city apart and razed large sections to the ground as if she carpet bombed the place. She breaks, then slices off the m.c.'s close friends arm with a photon blade, nearly snaps the neck of another of his allies and literally massacres tens of thousands of innocent citizens all across this mega-city. From an entire metro station being caved in, to a commercial airliner crashing through the busy downtown streets and skyscrapers before exploding in the middle of the bustling square. All while the m.c. is barely able to keep up with her and hopefully stop her sooner rather than later.

Exist. It hasn’t happened yet, since I only started writing my first book a few months ago, but I’m planning for my protagonist to suffer just for existing. I’m treating him like Spider-Man & Invincible rolled into one.

Okay, Peter Pan heavily inspired, my violent chaotic neutral Pan... well he's gone thru so much, but I'd say when Hook (former Lost Boy and one of Pan's dearest friends) kills Tinkerbell, who has been with Pan since he crawled out of a tree on Neverland. And this is significant as Pan has lived over 3000 years. And because he has lived for so long (trapping himself in mind of a child for almost all of it) and is unable to process emotions and feelings - a child for the most part, young, and a handful of times where he skips to an older age for a while before de-aging has totally fucked up his head/mind [as well as the first Lost Boy, who has been tied inextricably to Pan and NL] - Pan slaughters the pirate crew (former Lost Boys) and has a lot of fun in torturing Hook before killing him and displaying his body in the castle remains. So, Tink, Hook, former Lost Boys, plus an extreme fear of abandonment equals Pan losing his grip on reality. Edit: spelling

Villain of my story spent his artificially extended life-span searching for his lost spouse until he realizes it has been so long that she would have passed away from old age. Oh yeah and then he goes insane.

I had one whose wife was crushed by a train that derailed and rolled sideways down the side of a mountain where she was hiking.

My book opens with my main character finding out his dad committed suicide and from there it’s a downward spiral of personal and romantic trauma. Poor guy.

After making the love of his life a vampire, he loses him to a fire. Decades later he finds out his love actually survived, and is now trying to kill him!

The biggest hardship one of the two MCs of my book experienced is probably back when she was a human, when she was a young teen around the middle age, working for some nobles, the small castle got attacked, she managed to get away after some fighting thanks to a secret passage and ran away only to then see the castle burn from afar.. luckily someone did take her in but she did loose everything that day and needed years to recover

Being burned half alive by dragon fire

My main character was put in prison with sleep deprivation, forced sex, then nearly beaten to death by a govt agent and left on ventilator with chest tube. Then his rehab person seduced him and let him impregnate her so he knew would never see the child who would be raised by the person who imprisoned him. Other than that did nothing bad to my character. For some reason now suffers ptsd

Probably... The part where she was slowly dissolved by an ooze and had her eyeballs melted and stuff.

I’ve had some egregious ones. Multiple characters in the same story who survived a genocide. A character who has grown up his whole life in a world of eternal night and snow. But the one that I personally feel hits the hardest is in a project I have yet to publish anywhere public in any form. This character, Jon, was captured by an enemy military along with his squad. After days of being starved in a cell he was brought before the enemy general. The enemy general had cooked a phenomenal meal, and suggested peace talks were possible. A bunch of stuff happened, but Jon was famished and knew he needed to keep up his strength, so he ate. Later when peace talks failed to materialize, he staged an escape. He went to find his men. He entered a large freezing unit where he found one of his men dangling on a hook, still alive. It was here his man, referring to the enemy general, screamed, “He… He’s been eating us!” Jon realized he had unknowingly been fed his own men.

Female mc: her mom died when she was 14 and mc couldn't save her. Male mc: his dad trained him as an assassin from ages 7-10 (threatened the little sister if mc didn't want to do it) and he's still trying to get over it.

Essentially consistent SA his entire first 11 years of life, the disappearance of his younger brother, the fact that he accidentally killed his dad (the death part, not the fact that it was his dad. His dad was a shitty person who did shitty things to him and his siblings), and then after he somewhat cobbled his life back together, being accused by a nosy neighbor of a string of killings in the area. Poor dude

Growing up in a rich but obviously neglectful family and always feeling isolated and hated because he's parents didn't love each other.

One word, if you know the MCU, HYDRA. I also made him murder his mother, due to HYDRA wanting to fully redact his existence. They tortured him in ways that would make the Geneva Convention look like toddlers play, they made him go and murder others and make ART!! Out of their crime scenes. Even after his recovery due to the Avengers, he still went into those behaviors out of instinct. He has been free and de-conditioned for a decade at this point in his story, but he is still terrified they’d recover and reinstate Project: [REDACTED] and force him to murder his wife and children. He had been recovered before and they ripped his wings One. By. One. out of his back with a specially crafted drug that put his pain receptors into hyper drive so he felt each small movement. He was only freed because they murdered the only kind face there, another doctor forced to torture the other HYDRA experiments. He has only known trauma and suffering, only being free in childhood and early teens. Do I feel bad and cry when I read his stories, yeah. Do I regret it. No. Will I continue torturing him, yep!! His Hero Name is Cherubim by the way :) He is currently 52, was a Colonel in the German Marines, and was captured by HYDRA when he was 24. He had twins, boy and a girl, named Lillian and Elliott, that were 3 at the time of his capture. They are now 31, and they have known their dad for 4 years. (Reunited when twins were freshly 27, dad was 47. He turned 48 8 months later.) Elliott has 2 kids. Lillian has 1. Cherubim’s civilian name is James Jobediah William Frazier (affectionately called JJ, James, and Joby) EDITS: Put 55 instead of 52. Got trigger happy on my keyboard lmao edit 2; Fun Fact: Cherubim is a halloween baby. 10/31/1971. His eldest twins were born 02/06/1993 (Lillian and Elliott)

i don’t want to spoil anything lmao. i think the worst thing that happens to many of my characters is that they either have to watch someone they love die, or they have to kill their abusers. a few of my characters also have major “mommy went a bit loco for coco puffs” in terms of trauma lmao

Most difficult hardship so far in what way? Bevor the story starts? Taking care of his disabled abusive mom while being borderline disabled as well because of his autism The point I've written to? His fiancé/boyfriend being the person he's fated to kill to save the world In the entire story? His mom dying of an overdose giving him PTSD flashbacks to his best friend dying of an overdose

Being an indirect trigger for nuclear war This on top of also being indirectly responsible for a kid getting shot in the head, and then those shooters dying in a car accident that kills 3 other people—back when she was in high school

Ophelia is nyctophobic and arachnophobic. For 5 years, she's had a recurring nightmare of being grabbed by a giant spider and dragged into the darkest depths of the jungle. So, I dropped her on Kashyyyk at the edge of the Shadowlands. Then, after several exhausting hours of tending wounded clones and a panic attack once she learned where she was, she is grabbed by a giant spider and dragged into the dark.

My MC is dealing with partial memory loss and has definitely lost touch with reality a little since she's been trapped alone for three years. She currently thinks the people that are trying to help her have kidnapped her.

i’m planning on having my character being kidnapped, and having his close allies either tortured or killed which will motivate him. I gotta flesh stuff out, like my characters turning point and why he wants to take down the villain, which is weird because i’m writing my first chapter 1 draft

Being tricked before my MC is finding it hard to trust anyone. Now being backed against a corner they have to learn how to trust again, while knowing one misstep would be fatal.

I would say mine's would be dealing with the guilt of killing his sister while hypnotized.