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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41496
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41496
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

## You need Karmic Justice. Great Pains = Great Rewards.

Readers expect suffering of heroes to be rewarded by success, and suffering of victims to be revenged. If good guys die in war, they want the war to be won by the good guys, so their deaths meant something, or made a difference.

This is part of the psychology of reading fiction. Most of us, IRL, have suffered hardships for no reason, been abused by bullies, mean teachers, mean bosses, and gotten nothing for it. We know (directly or indirectly) good people that have suffered and died of disease for no apparent reason; rich jerks that deserve to die but don't, victims of crime, rape and murder, with no perpetrator ever brought to justice.

Karmic Justice is the Buddhist idea that the evil one puts into the world will be returned to them in kind; in this life or the next. Most people want it to be in this life, of course!

So if your heroes suffer horribly and there is a lot of one-sided suffering, then the payoff of their determination and whatever system or villain they vanquish should be proportionate to the pain they suffered. To the reader, it has to feel like the pain was necessary to accomplish the goal.

Even the people that died. Some may die to prove how deadly the enemy is (or how deadly the hero is). Otherwise, when people suffer and die, it should motivate the heroes in some way, to act, to take risks, to get revenge. That is the value of creating sacrificial companions and friends.

Without Karmic Justice you don't have a satisfying ending. Evil already prevails IRL, we want our fiction to escape the injustices of real life, show us heroes that suffer but (unlike real life) find a way to **prevail.** That's the fun of the fantasy. To be special. To be powerful. To overcome being a victim, and have the courage to risk it all and defeat the greatest evil.

So that is what you need to weave into these tales of suffering. Anger at other people's pain, determination to defy the system, despite the personal pain it will cause. You show the suffering **in order to show** the decisions it is forcing for the heroes. A story needs _causality_, the suffering should _cause_ something to change in the hero, that should cause more things and eventually the suffering is "paid off" by the good the hero has brought to the world, not just for herself. We want the Pain to be dwarfed by the Good.

Original score: 2