"We tune in to watch people be punished, and we enjoy seeing characters pushed to their absolute limits and beyond. We seem to like our main characters frustrated, beaten down, devastated, and humiliated, and yet passionately almost insanely driven to try to reach their goals." - The Idea by Eric Bork
This works because struggle is proof of stakes. Watching someone glide toward success tells us the goal never mattered much; watching them get flattened and still crawl forward tells us it matters enormously, and that conviction is contagious. We stop judging the character and start rooting, because their persistence becomes a stand-in for our own hopes.
Say your hero is trying to save a family bakery. Don't just have the bank say no. Have them humiliated in front of former customers, have their own recipe fail publicly, and have them keep baking anyway, that night, flour on their face, refusing to quit.
The caution: suffering needs purpose and rhythm. Nonstop punishment without small wins or breathing room stops feeling meaningful and starts feeling like cruelty, and audiences disengage from pain that never pays off.
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