As cruel as this sounds, catastrophic mistakes (the kind often written about) rarely resolve themselves quickly, so as important as it is for your character to be challenged by conflict, and to fail, it is equally important for them to wallow in their negative circumstances for a bit. This will make their rebirth all the more gratifying when they decide to get back up on their feet, while offering some realism to their story.
Example:
The Beatings of Betrayal
My trembling hand rattled the handle as I closed my door behind me. What started as a swift shock settled with sweating palms, which turned to a growing heaviness in my gut. My heart strove to break out of my chest, and I didn’t blame it; I wanted to escape too.
I stared deeply at the clock as the only solid thing among the shadows that swirled around the room, creating a thick mass of dark that swallowed the floor, my bed, the walls, the windows. The pulse of the ticking clock grew louder and louder as it fought the vicious creatures, until it too disappeared. The ticking, however, persisted in a deafening scream that pierced my ears.
Silence.
My room was still pretty dark when I awoke, but this time Adriana was sitting in the adjacent armchair.
"W-what happened?"
She stood over me, and I knew by the look in her eye that she knew I was going to be a lot of work. "Well you got into a huge fight where Summer stole the map, and you ended up with a concussion, and fractured knuckles. You took quite a beating."
"Tell me about it," I muttered, cringing at the sight of Summer's face that had plagued my mind.
"You got a headache?"
Now that she mentioned it, my head began to throb, and throb, and throb, pulsing like it had a heartbeat of its own. "Yeah."
"I'll go get you some meds. Stay here."
I tried to roll my eyes, but even that hurt.
Adriana and I didn’t exchange too many words when she came back, she just gave me a pill promised she wouldn’t let anyone in to see me until we had a better sense of what the search would look like going forward without the map.
My head eventually got better with each passing day, and my hand got itchy in its cast but other than that I was recovering pretty smoothly. I really did miss the light, and reading, but Dee always kept me in the loop. She told me that Mark constantly asked how I was doing, and that he’d often stand near my room on breaks like he was either on guard or looking to find his way in. She threatened to whack him over the head with a broom if he tried making contact with me. One day he’d managed to slip a note under the door saying he hoped I got well soon, which I had to hide because I knew Dee was as good at giving concussions as she was at treating them. I didn't deserve his kindness anyway.
When the next week rolled around my concussion symptoms had almost fully subsided, leaving plenty of room for guilt. just never imagined that Summer would turn on me like that; she always told me about how we ere basically the same person, how we'd end up finding Dorin's Gold as a team, but that was all a lie. A trick. And I fell for it like an idiot. How could I let that happen?
Adriana tried her best to keep me occupied through conversation but I couldn’t even keep that up on a normal day, let alone after being stabbed in the back by my best friend. Then she started bringing me different foods, which didn’t help either because I struggled to find the appetite to eat any of it. I forced it down just because I knew it would put her mind at ease.
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