The Worst Thing I Did to My Character

Let me start with this: my book will probably need a very long trigger warning. Which should already tell you one thing: my characters suffer. A lot.

And before you decide I’m a sadist, or that I did it just for shock value… no. That was never the point.

What I wanted to explore was something else. How far can a person go when they were never given the chance to have a normal life? How much can someone endure before they break? And is there really such a thing as a point of no return?

The title of my book, The Puppet King, already hints at something important. Someone is being moved like a puppet across a board. But what if it’s not just one person? What if all of them are? What if we, as people, are also following a path that was written long before we had any say in it? And what about those who believe they have power? Are they truly free, or just controlled in a different way?

These are the questions I explore in this story. Do we ever truly have a choice? And if we do, what does it cost? What are we willing to become just to break free?

If my main character were real, I would owe him a very, very long apology for everything I’ve already put him through, and for everything I still will. Because this is only the beginning.

So what is the worst thing I did to him?

It’s not the violence. It’s not the humiliation, although there’s plenty of both. (I’m sorry, Alistair.)

No.

The worst thing I did… was give him hope.

Hope that everything had meaning. Hope that the suffering would lead to something better. Hope that if he endured long enough, there would be a reward at the end. Hope that willpower alone could defeat the darkness.

Unfortunately, that’s not how this world works. The world I created is cruel and unforgiving, and Alistair pays the price for that. And maybe that’s the cruelest part of all.

Because sometimes, it’s not the darkness that breaks you. It’s the belief that it will end.

If you’d like to follow the journey of the book and see how it’s coming together, you can find more here:

Click Me