HELP!!! - Struggling with a character

To save or help a loved one? First thing that sprang into my head.

Sidekick has received news/letter/message from the living/dead/spirits to see Hero before killing him?

I'm assuming that when you say the sidekick is "stronger" than the MC, you mean he (or she) is somehow "tougher" than the MC, and not "stronger" to the plot itself.

Yeah, as "stuckup" suggested, to help a friend, or a family emergency. There's also: To attend a funeral, to collect an inheritance, to accept some kind of wonderful job offer, to respond to some sort of cryptic message, to accept an award, because he's been driven out from his exile location due to political unrest or some other reason, because he's committed a crime in his exile location and has to flee, because he's just a "wanderer" who can't stay anywhere for too long . . .

Sidekick

What about having the sidekick return because she has given up the idea of revenge and deicded to let go of the past. And then she finds herself drawn back into the fight.

In that case my first thought is to go back to something you mentioned in your original post: ". . . the problem with this is that the character would then have killed the antagonist before the protagonist even got a chance to meet him . . . " I would think about perhaps changing the plot slightly so that this exile character indeed tried to kill the antagonist, but failed (the antagonist is too strong, too clever, too lucky, too protected, etc). That makes the antagonist that much of a greater threat to both the MC and the sidekick.

Also, you don't have to have one single reason for the exile to return; it could be a combination of things. Perhaps, there's a family/personal reason for wanting to return, and that also get her thinking about returning to seek revenge. Perhaps the antagonist is the cause of hurting someone the exile cares about. Not she's got a doubt motive for returning; her own revenge, and to avenge someone she loved.

Aha. I have the same issue myself with my big WIP and yeah, I think it can work if done well.

I think if you have multiple protagonists, they can't all be after the same thing and they can't all live happily ever after. There has to be play-off and compromise between them.

In my story, the heroine's fight is for survival. The hero falls in love with her but denies his feelings because they threaten his own goals, however he eventually sacrifices his personal goals to save her. He is thoroughly changed, and she achieves her goal, whereas in a single-protagonist story, one character does both.

But then I could be wrong

Jon-Luke said:

Help!

I'm in the development stages for one of the scripts I'm working on. The one character, who starts as the Lead Character's Love interest but then becomes the Lead's sidekick is supposed to have "Come Back" from exile. The original idea was that this character has come back for revenge, but the problem with this is that the character would then have killed the antagonist before the protagonist even got a chance to meet him.

On some levels I need the Side Kick to be stronger than the Lead (Hero) because the Hero is more of an "Everyman".

Can anyone put out some ideas on why a character may return from exile for reasons other than revenge that may be useful to me?

I'm keeping the information kind-of-vague on purpose... I don't want responses to be critical of the primary script idea and I need to focus on this characterization to move forward.

Please post your ideas no holds barred - Some may be totally off the mark but some may come from left of field and really nail the problem.

Thanks in advance!

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What you're creeping on is a classic relationship. Your sidekick character, in fact -- is Obi Wan Kenobi.

He is a "mentor" character. And the solution to your problem is that he doesn't "return" from exile. Rather, your hero (since your hero is the active party) should seek him out to get his help to defeat the Antagonist.

The Mentor and The Antagonist have tangled in the past, but the outcome of that battle was uncertain. Neither was defeated and, basically, they parted, each going their separate ways. Had the battle gone to its ultimate end, maybe both would have been destroyed.

At any rate, the Mentor didn't fight to the end. Why? Because, even though he has much to teach the Hero, he lacks something critical element of character that the hero possesses (What -- you tell me, you're writing the story), which is what the hero must use to win. In the end the hero must surpass the Mentor (this is why you pretty much always have that moment when the Mentor advises the hero and the hero disobeys and goes off and does his own thing). The Hero must complete the task that the Mentor left uncompleted by defeating the Protagonist.

NMS

Jon-Luke said:

Interesting proposition here NMS, you have made me sit down and really look at how I would define my characters which has been a valuable exercise (I thought I knew them well already). Your Joseph Campbell / George Lucas idea is interesting but I would say that my characters and their relationship is different...

The HERO is an Everyman who starts the story as a Hero on a Quest, but then once he finds out what he has really gotten himself into becomes an Unwitting hero - I'm hoping that this will be the strongest way to draw the audience into a world which needs to appear totally real but is in fact totally fictional.

The SIDEKICK is a Shape Shifter and a Trickster who falls in love with the Hero. This act of falling in love changes her character and she then needs to choose life over death, love over hate (and this brings me to the revenge issue, she would have to choose forgiveness over revenge and then the story wouldn't work because she would have no reason to be the Hero's Side Kick).

Hope this clears things up a bit, and thanks NMS you bring up some very important points that I hadn't thought through properly yet.

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I'm a bit unclear as to what you mean when you say that your Protagonist starts off as a Hero on a Quest and then ends up as an Unwitting Hero.

Doesn't that sort of suggest that he starts off as "witting" hero -- an intentional one, and then somehow shifts into being an unintentional hero -- which is my understanding of what an "unwitting hero" is -- someone who stumbles into the job without intending to?

It probably makes sense as you're doing it, but it isn't clear to me as you're describing it.

Again, the revenge issue, are related to the sidekick, isn't clear as you're describing it. Revenge against whom? Forgiveness toward whom? The protagonist? The Antagonist?

There are certainly models for powerful supernatural "sidekicks" -- I guess the one that immediately comes to mind is Legend -- where you have that Tom Cruise character as the lead -- and he's sort of an "everyman" -- at any rate, he doesn't have any special powers, and that odd, creepy little "fairy" thing that's in love with him and that follows him around, usually as a tiny bright light, but every so often manifesting as, well an odd creepy little winged fairy thing.

The question is -- why does your Shape Shifter *initially* help your hero. Does she (is it a she?) fall in love with him from the start, and is that what motivates her to help him?

Is this a mutual love, or an unrequited love -- if unrequited, is there some reason for that (other than the obvious one that they're not of the same species?)

A possibility (and again, not knowing very much of your story, I simply toss this out as something to get your thinking) -- this shapeshifter is the equivalent of a kind of "wild child" -- someone who is unacquainted with conventional human emotions or moral restrictions -- but with great powers.

Perhaps the way in which they hook up is that your "everyman" somehow saves her life early on -- and it's the first act of kindness that she's ever known -- and she falls in love with him. But when this creature falls in love with you, she doesn't do it by halves -- and having something like this shapeshifter in love with you, it's a distinctly mixed blessing -- because she loves the way a wolf loves you. She wants all of his attention -- and if anybody bothers him -- she'll kill him.

So part of what happens is that, potentially, she ends of feeling betrayed by him -- feeling that her love isn't returned -- there's a break between them. He's on his own.

But in the end, she has to find a more human kind of love -- that is, she has to be able to forgive him -- and she does and comes back and saves him in some Han Solo "enabling" sort of way.

Understand, of course -- not knowing how your story lays out, I have no idea if any of this is in any way workable. It's just to sort of get you thinking about possibilities.

NMS

How about this: Sidekick was forced away in order to save someone from assassination by antagonist (say her mother, sister, child, or lover) and now the person she left to protect has died (maybe just an accident, maybe the antag going back on his word and ordering the hit), freeing her to come back and kick some ass.