I am a storyteller as a writer of fiction. As such, I am mindful that it is easier to make a story dramatic by making it tragic. Simply craft a character according to what is obviously sympathetic and then kill him or his dearest loved one.
I do better than what is easy.
My most dramatic work is the Sorcerer series of my White Empires universe. Its most endearing character is its villain, a genocidal war criminal. His specialty is mass-murdering children. He recruits his teenage daughter to assist him. The reader wants him to be defeated... yet is likely to weep when he is. His archenemy, the sympathetic mother of his daughter prevails, so the story is not a tragedy.
A story that makes you weep by its happy ending is greater than any tragedy. Unlike a sad ending, it inspires you. It gives you hope rather than makes you cynical.
I do write tragedies. It is not to easily evoke strong emotions. It is to convey something meaningful. The doom of the protagonist is spiritual before physical, thus justified.
We yearn for goodness in a world of evil. You are the evil... though you are not alone. Despite your desperate wickedness, you intuitively understand that there is no satisfaction without justice. There is only gratification at best... and you become numb and restless whether gratified or not.
Even fiction ultimately fails to satisfy unless justice prevails, for better or worse. A tragedy is ultimately pathetic even as make-believe unless its victim deserves his grim fate. The innocent victims must be avenged... or the story is lacking.
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