You Need To Be A Sadist

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of. - Kurt Vonnegut

You need to show, not tell. You need action. You need to be a sadist. It's the only way to write something compelling. One of the people who occasionally edits for me has a great admiration of Kurt Vonnegut, and the more I read of him myself, the more I see why. Be a sadist.