Destruction is a key element of good fiction, at least, in my opinion. I'm not talking about the catastrophic razing of cities. I'm not talking about the apocalypse. I'm talking about the destruction of your characters. If you want to write a good, soul-wrenching story...
Take a character with a very strong stance (A). Set him up against a character of the opposite stance (B). Start throwing all the horrible situations you can think of at A, but here's the catch. Each situation must be designed to make him reconsider his position. Bit by bit, twist and turn him until at some point in the story, he is the exact opposite of what he started as.
A good example of this is Star Wars. Anakin started out as a good Jedi with noble intentions, but by the end of the first three (yes, the first three. I'm an EU'er, and unrepentant of it, so if you have issues with George Lucas' tweaking of his story, go whine about it somewhere else), he had become a Lord of the Sith.
Another prime example is Season One of Supernatural--all the seasons are good, but this is the example that doesn't take multiple seasons to come to fruition. Yes, Eric Kripke apparently plans that far ahead. Point being, in Ep. 1, Sam says to Dean that what they're doing won't change anything because 'Mom's dead'. Dean slams him against the wall and tells him to never talk about her like that.
Cue the finale episode of Season One, where the exact opposite happens. Sam has become the obsessed Hunter, getting revenge on anything supernatural, and Dean is the one telling him to pull out of it because 'Mom's dead'. Guess who gets slammed against the wall this time?
The point is, take your character's ideals, their values, and destroy them. Or at least attempt to. Then maybe repair them if
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