What kind of hero/heroine are you writing about?

[Ivonia]

What kind of hero/heroine is your protagonist in your current WIP (and past WIP's if you've been published)? Why are you writing about it?

For one of my stories, I am attempting to create a character, who, for most intents and purposes, is a lot like Luke Skywalker (except that my character doesn't have any "nobility" or "special lineage" in him. He's just the one that's chosen, an average joe for all intents and purposes who is put in extraordinary circumstances and learns about many things, including about himself as he goes through it). I suppose this would be one of those "cookie cutter" heroes that goes around and does great things, and is a great warrior to boot (although this story is set in a sci-fi setting, there's heavy fantasy elements present, which will also play a big role later in the book).

Conversely, I'm currently writing a short story involving a young heroine, based on ideas I've been brewing in my head (that time riding on the bus to and fro school, as well as the long hours in between some classes really gives me time to think hehe). For all intents and purposes, she's really just an "average jane". She doesn't possess any particular special skills or powers (well, other than playing a flute-like instrument, which is also key in the story), but still manages to overcome obstacles. This story is currently an experiment, but if my classmates like it (they're not really big fantasy or sci-fi fans, but they did at least point out general problems I was having and was trying to overcome anyway, so it's not like their input wasn't useful at all. The second story I've written, which is basically the first hero I talked about, deals a lot more with his personal conflicts and his role in the big war, as opposed to my first story, which focused more on the combat aspects. I hope they like that story, since I've included some emotional conflict for him to deal with that I'm thinking about putting in my book, and want to see what others think about it).

The story itself is in a medieval fantasy setting (I've taken some classes on the middle ages, and man, it's nowhere near as fun to read about as in some books. I think I can see why they make a lot of stuff up lol), and has heavy fantasy elements in it (such as summoning/taming creatures and riding on gryphons and wyverns). There is a war, but in contrast to my first hero, all of those elements (such as the war itself) in this story are secondary to the girl and her love interest (but he will play a prominent role in all of this, as well as her). Although the war will try to break them apart, love will hold them together (man is that a cliche line or what hehe).

Anyway, that's some of the ideas I have for my characters right now. I'm interested to know what you all are writing about, or want to write about, and why. I suppose ultimately my stories would be geared more towards younger readers (I'm trying to include hidden morals and what not in them without "preaching" to them), because as a kid growing up, I was always fascinated by characters in stories and the kinds of events they go through and overcome, and sometimes I wished I could either be them, or be one of their friends (who hasn't as a kid hehe). I suppose I'm getting my chance to do that now, so hopefully it'll work out and be relatively well liked (and good luck for you all writing too!).

So, what kind of protagonist do you like to write about, or what kind would you want to write/read about?

[SeanDSchaffer]

The main protagonist in my current WIP is a guy who has been thrust into an authority position and struggles to maintain his own personality. At the same time, he has to maintain his control over the situation he's in.

I have a second protagonist in the same story, who is very young and has basically lost all chances of having a normal childhood. He has to learn how to become an adult at the tender ages of 7 through 8 years old, without becoming cold and calloused, or overwhelmed by the powers he possesses.


What do I like to read about? Just about any character that is an underdog in the story. I like reading about characters who, despite their manifold weaknesses and other flaws, are able in the end to make at least some progress toward the ultimate goal. In other words, I like reading about characters who seem to be hopeless, that take at least one 'step in the right direction' throughout the story they're a character in.

:idea:

[Slimjim]

The main character in the fantasy story I have just finished is a cross-dressing lesbian. She passes herself off as her uncle's squire. Meanwhile another character is looking for the daughter of a midwife to fulfil the prophesy about how the dragon that plagues the kingdom will be slain. Of course this second character concentrates her attention on a girl she believes fits the bill and ignores the squire, who also happens to be the daughter of a midwife.

[beezle]

My hero is a young temple novice who sneaks into the catacombs at night to steal pennies from the eyes and rings from the finger-bones of long dead monks. Do you think this hinders the process of making him a sympathetic character?

[DaveKuzminski]

Depends on his reasons for stealing. For greed, it's tougher to make him sympathetic, but just to survive does. If he's doing it to help others, that's also sympathetic. Otherwise, Robin Hood is just an outlaw along with a number of other hero thiefs.

[Diana Hignutt]

After spending almost ten years working on my trilogy involving Prince Tolian of Lorm, a noble warrior prince forced to become the earthly incarnation of the Moon Goddess, my new WIP involves everyday people. The hero is a youngish university Economics professor with a knack for the occult, and the heroine is a plucky insurance adjustor with bad timing.

[MadScientistMatt]

The only fiction WIP I've got going at the moment has a hero who starts the book on his first interplanetary space voyage as a navigator and electronics expert. He's college-educated, in his 20's, and kind of fits the cliche of The Inexperienced Kid who Has a Big Adventure. No special powers, definitely not some kind of Chosen One - he's just an ordinary guy who gets caught up in something definitely not ordinary.

[TMA-1]

My largest project is about a mission to Titan, to explore ET life. I'm not sure if any of the crew members will be lifted out as a main hero/heroine, but if so, it will likely be a young female astronomer. Of course, the billionaire adventurer who built the spaceship is important too...

[DaveKuzminski]

Of course, the billionaire adventurer who built the spaceship is important too...

Time to kick in the theme song. ;)

For a three-year tour, a three-year tour... If not for the courage of the young astronomer the spaceship would be lost. ;)

[JerseyGirl1962]

Dave, you're a real card. :)

Anyhoo...my current WIP is about a 20ish guy whose life (he wanted to be a reporter at a newspaper or TV station) hasn't turned out the way he thought it would be. Instead of accolades and working on "real" news stories, he's working on catching the latest story about the OD'd hooker or shot up gang member. He has a certain ability to know when people are headed his way, which is why he's good at coming up with the "good" sleaze story.

At least it pays the bills.

But then a woman runs into him (literally) and he smells a big story, read: money. He spends the rest of the time trying to decide whether to help the woman out of kindness and decency or just for the surety of the money and the accolades to follow.

I like to read about characters who have moral dilemmas and those who feel they've gotten the short end of the stick, but without too much whining. (I can't stand stories where the characters endlessly whine about everything.) I purposely made the main character in this WIP more sympathetic (I think) by having the woman who runs into him remind him of his sister (she's in detox).

~Nancy

[loquax]

My current WIP follows a teenage Londoner whose entire street is destroyed during the Blitz of WW2. His survival of this, and subsequent brushes with the fantastical, lead him to conclude that he is evil incarnate - with a curse of perfect luck. He longs to put an end to his solitude, but death had been denied him. So he sets about to find the worst possible evil in the hope of being among his own.

Nazi Germany awaits him with open arms.

The sympathy is there, as he is being affected by powers beyond his control. However, the belief in himself being evil allows him to dip deeper into the darker realms of heroism. I suppose he's an anti-hero in that respect.

[narselon]

In my current story the main character roles are split between two people.

The protagonist is a stock broker in his mid thirties, trying to recover after a divorce. He is simply living life just to die, while refusing help from his friends and the gods as well. He, like others, fits the bill as an everyman living a normal life.All that changes when he attempts to fix his life and finds himself kidnapped and convicted for a murder he knows nothing about. With little other choice he is forced into an alliance with a psychopath who treats him like a human shield.

I focus on him being a normal guy who supposedly is the descendent of a legendary warrior who many would consider in modern days as evil. He doesn't really have any special abilities, bravery, or courage. The only reason he cooperates is to save his own life, but later on he questions if he is doing the right thing when he discovers the truth about his ancestry.

The driving force of the story is a self-proclaimed prophet who inexplicably despises the gods and wishes to restore the world to the way it was. He starts the story by killing a clergyman in order to get some special armor made so he could defy the gods on the holiest day of the year. Somehow he survives the wrath of the gods and kidnaps the protagonist later on. You later find out that he claims heritage from a secret underground society, but was raised above ground before his parents were killed. Placing the blame on the gods he desires nothing but revenge, knowing full well that it would be suicide.

I designed this character as similar to Han Solo, except this guy is a complete *******. He doesn't care about honor as he constantly refers to stacking the decks whenever possible so his life is rarely in any danger. Death means nothing to him, caring only about himself while ignoring the consequences. Although you get to sympathize with him, you understand that he's just not a good person. He's probably more 'evil' than any of the antagonists.

I try to create characters that don't fit the hero/villain mold. The protagonist is a coward while the antagonists are not working for any destructive end. One of my favorite characters started as a devil type character but ends up being one of the nicest guys around once he discovers the big secret.

[Sage]

My non-NaNo WIP has two protagonists. They are identical boy/girl twins (yes, there is a reason this is possible for them, fantastical though it is), & have psychic powers. The girl is completely unreadable by psychics unless she is in direct mental communication with her brother. The boy compensates for this by having very loud psychic "vibrations" (the joke is that he stole hers when they split into two people). Because of this, & his connection to her & their mom AND because he is shy, he almost never speaks. He is very smart & has a photographic memory, & plays piano expertly (he wants to be a composer when he grows up), but he makes up for these traits by basically being a wuss. The sister is an excellent singer & not quite as smart as her brother (it's hard to tell, though, since she always knows what he knows), but she has a quick temper that she has to work very hard to keep a lid on. Their parents rule the colonized planet they live on & the sister eagerly awaits the day they will get to prove that they are worthy of ruling a planet too. Their story starts in a more sci-fi world w/ elements of fantasy (well, mostly just magic), but takes a definite fantasy turn when they meet a person from a parallel (sp?) world that exists on top of theirs (not an alternate universe, just a universe that exists on a different plane occupying the same space). The girl from this world wants to take the brother there because he is basically "the chosen one" due to his psychic condition.

That story came about 'cuz their parents are reincarnations of RPG characters that I loved & wrote stories for my friends. In considering what their children would be like, I came up w/ the twins.

My NaNo project came straight out of that story because a minor character wanted time in the spotlight. She a two century old child. She looks about eight, acts about twelve, & is very resolved against ever growing up (she could do so if she chose to). The children of her race are very well protected by magic, but due to the events of the other story, the spell has been weakened. Somebody starts draining the life force of the children. She refuses to just wait to die, so she goes out to find out what's causing it & stop it. She's generally very cheerful & playful, but she gets scared easily. She's pretty trusting of people, but she makes the judgement quickly so it's harder to gain back her trust if you lost it. Oh, and she's (tragically) in love w/ the brother from the other story, which is too bad because I'm not breaking up him & his girlfriend.

Now I have to go back to writing it.

[beezle]

Not so fantastical. My younger brother and sister are twins. On learning this, some people occasionally ask if they are identical. They have also been asked if they share the same birthday, and even if they share the same father.

[fedorable1]

My current WIP features a heroine that was raised in almost complete isolation from humanity. She is a member of an engineered race of humans that were banned and virtually exterminated over fifty years prior. When the banished race - known as Exiles - returns, they attempt to recruit her and others in a campaign to overthrow the world's government. In the course of the war both her foster parents - true humans - are killed, leaving her alone and completely lost.

Even though the heroine was designed to be a soldier, her upbringing has made her extremely timid and skittish around people. She is illiterate and uneducated, and so she is as far from normal society as one can get. Throughout the course of the story, however, she is forced to take part in the war she cannot avoid.

In time she comes to realize that the bad guys may not be who she thought. Her confusion and helplessness slowly starts to turn into determination and sympathy for the same human race that wanted her dead. She is no Amazon, no fierce warrior or tough meta-babe with an oversized gun. She is just a 19-year-old girl who has no clue what is going on or what she is supposed to do. She's the only one who can find the strength she needs to carry on. No one is left to give it to her.

[Sage]

Not so fantastical. My younger brother and sister are twins. On learning this, some people occasionally ask if they are identical. They have also been asked if they share the same birthday, and even if they share the same father.

But they're not genetically identical, are they? 'Cuz as far as I know from my research, that's impossible (assuming your sister is healthy). But, yes, there are lots of fraternal twins, even boy/girl pairs, who look identical. My twins are genetically identical, save for the one chromosome. Thus the fantastical part :)

[beezle]

Oh no, they're not actually identical at all. They don't even look very much alike.

[Minister]

Hmmm... Looks like a definite tendency toward younger protagonists -- I only see one or two people writing about people older than their twenties. In my short story writing, I deliberately write a variety of characters -- I do a lot of flash challenge writing, and use it as a chance to exercise my writing muscles with unfamiliar techniques, unusual characters and settings, etc. In my NaNo novel (which, I should mention, is neither up to date nor good in much of any way), my main characters are all in their thirties, with the exception of the son of the two current protagonists (I think that he may become the protagonist in a hypothetical part 2). My main protag is in his upper thirties, retired from a secret society that protects a dangerous secret. At the start of the story, he is teaching in college. But he is called back to duty when his old partner goes bad. He has to deal with being fifteen years older than the other crack troops that he is partnered with. I guess I'm trying to straddle a couple of cliches rather than falling completely into one of them.

[Renatus]

My current WIP has a number of viewpoint characters - two men in their early twenties who work at a cafe (one's a decent sort, the other is a snotty twit who still doesn't deserve to have the things that happen to him happen), a cop in his mid thirties who is a part of a 'special' part of the police force, bartender in his late forties who has seen a lot in his life, and a girl of indeterminate age who doesn't last long - but the main character is a woman who is somewhere in her twenties, has lived on the streets literally all her life, and is one of the few rune mages in the city who isn't a derelict living under a bridge who's gone completely insane. She stumbles across evidence that ghouls are rising in force throughout the city and, what's worse, organizing - and at first she's the only person willing to approach the problem. She's foul-mouthed and doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut, but she's also straightforward, tough, and surprisingly kind - and by surprising I mean that she often surprises me by the things I end up writing her doing. The other characters are just as important though, and she wouldn't be able to get through the story alive without them.

I like to write all sorts of protagonists - shy, awkward, tough, loudmouthed - but their uniting feature is that they all have backbones, whether their determination is sly or quiet. I like writing secondary characters of all sorts just as much, however. There are some I absolutely hate as people but love, love, LOVE to write.

[DamaNegra]

The protagonists of my WIP are a pair of orphan teenage twins who have had a haunting, tragic past and will live more tragic, haunting things. But there is also a protagonist, who is about 40 years old, and he's a very interesting character because (as any normal person) he represents both sides of the coin, he can have his really good things as well as his really bad things. What I'm trying to do is brew up characters that are fantastic in a way, but so real that, like normal people, you just love them and hate them.

[AceTachyon]

My heroines are a pair of mercenaries trying to eke out a living who have the uncanny knack of biting off more than they can chew.

Not that it stops them...

[Ardellis]

My WIP's main characters are a not-quite-law-abiding , hedonistic merchant in his early forties and the emotionally insulated captain of his guard, who isn't entirely human, so while she's actually 87 she's at a biologically similar stage of life to a human of 35 or so. The strongest secondary characters are her retired business partner, who's in his fifties, and a couple of younger men in their twenties. The villain of the piece is in his late thirties. So the age range is fairly broad.

[spacejock2]

Everyone knows someone like Hal Spacejock - he's the guy who plugs a 12-volt lantern into a mains socket and burns his house down. He's the guy who does his own plumbing and floods the neighbour's house. He's the guy who visits three stores to save a few bucks on a hammer, then blows a hundred and twenty on a laser-guided tape measure with built-in bottle opener.

In my novels, Hal Spacejock is a freighter pilot trying to make a living hauling cargo all over the galaxy. His ship, the Black Gull, is a high-maintenance old wreck controlled by a confident, unflappable computer called the Navcom.

Unfortunately, Hal can only afford to land on backwater planets, where the only cargo jobs on offer are the kind which will land him on a prison planet for life.

I deliberately set out to make Hal as different from Han Solo as possible, although it's years since I last watched SW and I've never read the books. In the end that worked quite well, because it gave me some interesting character traits. For example, Hal refuses to take on anything illegal in case his ship is confiscated - smuggling for example. There are no hairy co-pilots, dustbin-shaped robots, no rebel alliance and no death stars either.

[Adam_Atlantian]

I have two heros and one heroine in my trilogy of Atlantis. They are all reincarnated forms of three Ancients that saved the world at the beginning of time. now they have returned to stop the bad once and for all. If any one wants to read it let me know:)

[azbikergirl]

My hero is an ordinary guy, flawed like the rest of us, having to deal with being thrust into a position of authority he does not want. I wanted to make him seem outwardly like the last person one would expect in that position, but give him the inner qualities that make him ideally suited.

[Nateskate]

The primary protagonist is a fifteen year old boy, who winds up in an enchanted forest.

I didn't begin this as a YA fantasy, but I think it has enough elements to be one. At fifteen, living in the forest with his widowed-mother, he had to be self-reliant, yet, he was unjaded and full of life, the kind of kid foolhardy enough and curious enough to get in way over his head.

He disobey's his mother's warning, and decides to go on adventure that turns quickly into a nightmare. He witnesses the brutal murder of a family, and is forced to go into hiding, and eventually is propelled into an enchanted forest, by unseen creatures trying to kill him.

But these unseen creatures can't see him either (complex) and are forced to use the animals of the woods to hunt him down, which of course drives him deeper into the forest and further from home. (Starting to sound like a query!) LOL.

Oh, and it just gets better and more complex. Obviously, the fate of the world winds up on his shoulders, and he is forced to either face down his fears, or let the world.... Ah, I could go on, but then I'm over answering.

[fallenangelwriter]

My current WIP has two protagonists, a brotehr and sister.


David is an ordinary guy with extraordinary abilities. or maybe he's an extraordnary guy; i don't know. He wants nothing more than a "normal" life as the village's hedge-priest, but it turns out he's been chosen to retrieve a long-lost book of magic and cleanse the wounded lands. he's frodo-like: openly mek, but he never breaks under the strain and, in a pinch, he's surprisingly resourceful. still, although he's very good at magic, he fears the power it gives him and doesn't want the fate of the continent on his head.

Sara ran away from home to join the Order. now a wizard, she goes by the name raven to distance herself from her past. a bitter person consumed with the quest for ever-greater power, she leaps at the chance to be sent on the quest for the lost books. bu when she finds out her job is as a bodyguard to her brother, her resentment and jealousy sprial out of control.

[CasualObserver]

Oddly, my main protagonist doesn't show up until the end of the first book. The first is along the lines of a mystery which my secondary characters solve, the main protagonist being the answer to the mystery. My villain doesn't put in a personal appearance until book two either, for that matter. I have yet to decide if this was a good idea.

Anyhow. Emma is a shallow, materialistic little yuppie who is destined to save the word - right after her minions convince her of 1) her appropriateness for the job and 2) the earth-shattering importance of something besides breaking a nail. Her cohorts are:

Cameron - The world's worst teacher and a bigot, tasked with turning a motley bunch into a crack team.
David - A whiny, self-centered actor who gets to live every red-blooded American male's dream of stealing cars and making things go boom.
Jack - Simultaneously the common sense and the brawn of the group. He father-figures everyone into behaving with some semblence of competence.
Jeremy - The cheerleader who lights a fire under everyone's butt when they'd rather give it all up as a bad job and go have a beer. Overdeveloped sense of justice and passion, but not a bad fellow for all that.
Derek - The sensible idea man, when he isn't being a total drama queen and annoying Cameron with his very presence.
Billy - A comic little fellow possessing the rare ability to tell both Cameron and Jack to shut the hell up. Author's favorite, evinced by him getting the coolest weapon.

[IggytheDestroyer]

I have two main characters. They are exact opposites of each other in their situations. One has everything and loses it all and the other has nothing and gains more than he ever thought possible. One is raised up and the other falls into darkness but they both run the risk of becoming as bad as the evil against which they fight.

[silentpoet]

WIP 1 has a main character who is an assassin. At least to start. It is about the change he undergoes. At the end he is maimed(losing a hand at a pivotal point) and has an entirely new line of work. I am only about 150 or 200 words into the actual writing.

WIP 2 is about a great hero who at the beginning of the story has fallen into drunkeness because of a lost love. He slew a demi-god at one point.

[CaitlinK18]

Mine is a female homicide detective who also happens to be a werewolf. Her acute senses help her solve cases. The whole "turning into a big honking wolf and trying to eat people" once a month makes her rather isolated.

In my WIP wolves are very pack-oriented and stick together, usually outside the law. My heroine was never inducted into a pack, knows practically nothing about this condition afflicting her and works decidedly for the Good Guys. She's totally alone except for her only cousin and her lieutenant, the only people she shares her secret with.

Needless to say, she's a bit conflicted when the story opens.

[CaitlinK18]

He slew a demi-god at one point.

Incidentially, that is a great sentence.

[silentpoet]

Thanks, it ties in with why he is a drunk. Though I am still working out the exact link. So far he has walked out of the bar to the room where he is staying and meets an old "friend." Though at this point I doubt he would use that word to describe him.

I have two or three other WIP. I am flipping back and forth. I seem to write better that way, when I hit a wall I just jump over to the other story. This way I can more easily meet my word goals and keep the quality(relative term) up. 2 or 3 of the stories I am working on can tie in together. The assassin from the first piece fills a much different role in another story, though in that one he has not stepped on the page yet.

[glutton]

Rose, the heroine of my main series is a caring mother (starting in the second book) of two who is also a massive brute and the greatest warrior in her world. She is covered in scars, tormented by guilt after killing many thousands and failing to save quite a few people she cared about, and conflicted about the return of magic to her world even though she is one of the three people who found the key to bringing back spellcasting. Much of the time, she is forced to be away from home by her adventures, and feels that she is a terrible mother. Her husband, the second best warrior in their kingdom, feels threatened by her prowess and is tormented by his many failures to protect her from harm, and they have had many fights one of which led to her having an affair. She also has a constitution that makes Rasputin look frail in comparison and needs no plot devices to take down ancient archmages, demon lords, evil gods, dragon kings, and super golems.

Mildred (Mildy to her friends), the heroine of my other WIP, is a female version of Modred from Arthurian legend, who tries to be a knight in spite of society's disapproval alongside her Greek squire Ares. She is rather shell-shocked when she finds out that she is a child of incest, and grows to doubt the compatibility of being a warrior and a woman when she is rejected by Galahad, who she is smitten with at their first meeting. Her mother Morgan wants her to avenge her upon King Arthur, but she does not want to. But eventually, she will be forced to fight a tragic battle against her father just as Modred in the normal tale does. Incidently, she is also extremely durable. Just a thing I have about indestructible female warriors...

[Simon Woodhouse]

My first novel is being published later this year. The protagonist is a recently retired, middle-aged widow. Though her profession was medicine, she really wanted to pursue a career in archaeology. The story begins with her struggling to come to terms with her husband's death. In order to help herself get over his passing, she embarks on an archaeological field trip to a remote planet, where she plans to search for an ancient relic that's fascinated her since her late teens. The book's called Seat Of The Fifth God.

[JPSpideyCJ]

My hero's name is George, a Human Peasant who garrisons for the king of his kingdom. Little does he know, the Wizards are puzzled, he chooses to live on a farm, rather than become a true hero, and why is he chosen by the Cantar, ancient spirits, to dwell for awakening the evil snaggle-toothed Dwarves?

He is basically a ferocious farmer who is pretty weak, though able, at first, but a Wizard trains him. Eventually, he returns to his farm village in the sequel, and discovers his enemies, the Uloogians, are promoting evil and attempt to overthrow them. He abandones them, but later feels guilty.

[beezle]

My current protagonist is for a YA fantasy. He's a Don Quixote-ish mouse who passes himself off as a cat-slayer, in a kingdom that just happens to have its very own cat problem.

[MattW]

Alfred is a peasant farmer who is cursed - cursed to be the only boy in town with no hidden skill at wizardy, or heir to someplace or another, or weilder of magical trinket XYZ.

[Tallymark]

For some reason, I like to make my heroes slightly insane. This is mostly because I commit unspeakable horrors against them before the opening of the book. XD (and, this being fantasy, I can come up with all kinds of atrocities that aren't within the normal realm of possibility!). My heroines tend to be normal young women thrown into extraordinary situations who're forced to cope, through their own ingenuity. There's usually something in their past that's holding them back in their regular lives, and overcoming the events of the novel will help them get past this.

The 'average person thrown into extraordinary situation' thing is something I'm trying to break myself of though--I'm coming to realize that it can make for flat, reaction-based characters, who go through the novel wide-eyed and stunned. This is especially true in my animal fantasy stories--which, unfortunately, are often the ones where it ends up being a requirement of the plot. >_<

Oh, and in the animal fantasy stories, I love making a carnivore and a prey species work together in the face of greater evil. Lovely conflict.

The story that's most prominent for me right now is actually not a novel, but a graphic novel (in the outlining and design sketches stage. though, if the outline for this bloody thing gets any longer, I may have to make it a novel, or spend the next ten years drawing it!). The main character is an asian elephant living in Africa (there is a reason for this). She possesses the ability to speak to the ghosts of any animal (all elephants can communicate with elephant ghosts). This is not an uncommon ability, most other elephants just exercise the good sense not to use it.

She lacks the good sense not to use it. :D

[Zoombie]

I've made up so many characters they're all starting to run together into one big old splotchy mess...

Hmmm....well the short story I'm planning to send off to a magazine for publication, Number 13 (there's a link in my signature) has one MC that I've kicked around for about 3 years now. Eve has become more and less mean and exploited/nice and with split personalities over the years, and now has settled on the deep end of mean and exploited.

Eve, a alien/human hybrid, cloned from a sample of alien tissue found in the asteroid belt, is a super top secret weapon being held in a military base in northern Illinois, outside the ruins of Chicago. Trained in every form of combat known to man, drilled on military tactics and military history, Eve is a superb warrior, strong, fast, and equipped with a deadly telekinetic abilities, and would have been an amazing asset to the NAU in their increasingly deadly war with the Chi-can.

Right up until she escapes.

What happens next...well...you're just going to have to find out. Eve's a really cool character to me, which is probably why I've been writing about her for 3 years.

[JBI]

I wouldn't call my protagonist a "hero". He is selfish, greedy, lazy, rude, but somehow possesses a quality that one can relate to, and one can sympathize with. Sort of like a Dostoevsky 'Hero' by not really.

[alaskamatt17]

In The Blight my main character is the daughter of the first man to die of an undientifiable disease that strikes a small Alaskan town. She's the first person in her family to go to college, and she struggles a lot balancing her roots as a small-town girl with her new identity as an educated woman. When she hears of her father's death, she returns home, only to find herself in the midst of the worst viral outbreak in North America since European colonization.

The main character in Orion's Key is more archetypal: his family--and everybody he knew--were slaughtered when he was a child, and he has grown up in the jungle devoting his every thought to his plans for vengeance. He mellows out a bit when he meets Sarah, a smart, pretty girl from a more civilized world. That doesn't stop him from setting out on a grand adventure when he discovers that his blood contains traces of an ancient genetic code that may unlock a powerful weapon for fighting back against his family's murderers.

[Evaine]

My heroine, Arian, is a Harper's apprentice, aged 15 (fairly standard medieval fantasy world), who ends up doing something heroic rather to her surprise, and because she has an essential piece of knowledge that comes from her love of books. I deliberately made all magic users allergic to iron, so they can't use edged weapons, but Arian can throw the odd lightening bolt about if she wants to.

[ChaosTitan]

The heroine of my WIP is the now-powerless daughter of two deceased superheroes, trying to scrape by a meager existence. No one knows why all heroes and villians suddenly lost their powers fifteen years ago, or why, in the middle of the night, everyone gets them back. Only my heroine, Trance, gets back the wrong powers.

So here's a young woman barely able to control her life, suddenly blessed (or cursed) with great powers that allow her seize back that control. If she can figure out how to use them properly, how to control her monster-sized attraction to a fellow powered-up hero, and stop the psycho-kinetic villian who's trying to kill them all.

She's eager to prove that she's the same caliber of hero her parents were, and she's sarcastic to boot. What's not to love?

[Anonymisty]

My protag is a female pirate who has magical ability. She's being hunted by an elite order of wizards who want to study her, and by a group of religious fanatics who want to breed her to create wizards that can overthrow the first set. And all she really wants to do is sail her ship, plunder a bit and enjoy a mug of rum at the end of the day.

[Dancre]

My YA has a nerdy heroine, Imogene Katherine Beasley, who is transported to another world. There she is imprisoned with the hero, Prince Conell De Caprise, who no longer cares for his people and wants to leave them in the hands of an evil witch.

[Shadow_Ferret]

My urban fantasy hero is me. Well, except he has magical powers and I don't and he has a daughter and is a widower and I have two sons and... nevermind.

But he is me. Its almost autobiographical. He has all my flaws, foibles, fears, hangups, and quirky sense of humor.

Except he somehow wins in the end whereas I don't. Ever. Win.

[zornhau]

Sir Ranulph Dacre: "Death does not merely follow in his wake, he attends closely taking notes." Unfortunately, he's not so good at the nuance stuff, and couldn't talk his way out of a WI meeting.

[Mr. Funktastic]

My two main characters are life-long best friends who have lived in a society that has been removed from the rest of the world for five hundred years. They're the first to discover that the magical barrier that has kept their culture separated is collapsing, and that it will kill them all when it does so. This leads them to find a way to go out into the outside world and search for a solution.

Like a lot of people's characters, mine are both younger and pretty average. They're very much opposites. One is incredibly arrogant and quick to make a decision--he doesn't often evaluate the situation because he thinks that his intuition is naturally correct. He's also very light-hearted, which leads him to simplify the importance of their quest. The other is very timid and cowardly. He tries to convince his friend to slow down, but because of his nature, he inevitably follows. To a degree, they're based on my younger brother and me.

[Lady Esther]

In my current WIP...

Judith, 17(?) is thrown into a foreign empire where she becomes the princess. She tries to be a respected person by saving a eunuch, marrying a stranger, and trying to set free the nation that her husband enslaved, but she doesn't realize that she's doing these things for selfish reasons. Everything she does is to better her life, not theirs.

She's kind of an anti-hero.

In my second WIP, which I haven't written yet, my antagonist is a main character.

My antagonist, Malkaira (Judith's mother), is a princess--soon to be queen--who refuses to live "like a woman should" according to her pre-historic nation. She does what she wants and sleeps with whoever she wants (even her half-sister's husband).

But a prophetess told Malkaira's mother that Malkaira's sister, Valda, would be a better queen, the queen the nation needs, etc, etc. So Malkaira's mother doesn't want Malkaira to be queen. She show favoritism towards Valda, which makes Malkaira jealous. Out of rage, Malkaira kills her mother, so she can become queen. (Malkaira also kills Valda's husband because she's jealous of their marriage.)

She's a lot of fun to write about. I love her character. She's so deliciously evil.

[Imelda]

My two protags are my favourite of the characters I've invented so far.

[Seki]

Hm. My characters sound and dull and uninteresting compared to everyone else! Ah, but I love 'em.

An innocent soul is brought forth, to serve Grandmother, wise and esteemed leader of Estaana. It, or rather, he, is placed within a stone body (Golem). He has trouble expressing himself because of inability to form proper sentences, clumsiness with his new body, lack of proper etiquette, but he has one thing going for him. Total loyalty and the ability to follow instructions right down to the letter! Some awkward moments. Hehe.

A young man is preparing for a wedding, one that has been pre-arranged, but luckily, he likes the girl! He works as a scribe in a library, is very active with the community and is all-in-all, well liked.

Eldest Daughter, chosen one of Grandmother, so that her child may inherit leadership (If it's a girl. If it's a boy, aww. Well, bad luck. Heh.) of Estaana. Takes after Grandmother, but still has traces of immaturity. Plucky, downright feisty but composed and mature when the occasion calls for it. She's very witty and sharp-tongued!

A mystic shaman from far-away arrives in Estaana. He is driven by his desire to kill and cause misery and be ye olde badass! Secretly (In that he won't admit it to anyone, or himself, even!) is looking for redemption. And what a redemption he finds...

Blah. That's basically it. The golem's view is told in first-person. The others are in third-person.

Aw, I’m starting to feel sad for them. I don't want to write the book, haha (I kid, I kid.)

[Akuma]

My Protag is a spineless wimp.

Yeah, he's a nice guy but when it comes to conflict and action, he tends to shy away.

He grew up a bit spoiled, so it's probably to be expected he doesn't handle real-life situations in a great fashion.

For one, he's stuck in an anarchy society, thus forcing him to survive--he often chooses cowardice.
For two, his friend, whom he's basically worshiped his entire life, turns out to be a sociopath and a murderer. He doesn't handle this well--denies it for a long time, in fact.

But in the end he'll find his spine and be able to stand up for when it counts.

[Troo]

Good grief. What do I have on the go at the moment?

1: A group of teenage protagonists. One is a rugby playing social ninja, one has precognitive visions and is a manipulative little git, one's a wannabe police officer who enjoys free-running in her spare time, and one's a changeling who doesn't know he's a changeling.

2: A trio of protagonists. One's an ex-army sergeant who's lost friends in war, and has complete control over animals within his line of sight. One's a technician who's not at all used to field work, and can manipulate electrical fields and technology. The third is a teenager who can't put a finger on why he changed his mind about going to university, and is a skilled shapeshifter. All three work for the SIS now.

3: A pair of protagonists. One is a street magician / mentalist, the other is a vampire. Vampires everywhere these days. Thankfully the story isn't about being a vampire: Kind of like Tanya Huff's Henry Fitzroy books, a vampire is just one small part of who this guy is.

I think that's enough for now. I have another on the go, but it's for a mag that only accepts anonymous submissions, so talking about him / her / it / them would risk the anonymity of my submission. I'll reveal more when I get rejected ;)

[Sage]

Wow, this thread is old.

For my current WIP & the last one, my protag is an Angel of Death. She's the daughter of the Angel who runs things, & has to deal with pressure from him (& everyone else) expecting her to be the best at her job, which she clearly isn't. She deals with this by emotionally distancing herself from most of her coworkers. The only exception is her younger brother (200 years old, but a teen in appearance & mentality), whom she adores & spends the novel trying to protect.

[fallenangelwriter]

I alternate between two stories, both starring idealistic young men.

One has power thrust upon him, and reacts to evil with retreat and withdrawal; the other seeks power, and reacts to evil with rage and violence.

Neither will get very far if he can't overcome his instincts.

[Qelenhn]

Well, my human protagonists come from a small noble household with very little power or money whose fortunes have fallen so far the king has almost forgotten they existed. The lord and lady are the primary characters, but the lord's brother and one of the servants are also POV characters. The lord is bitter, snotty and horribly insecure, the lady is a racist, snobby little witch, the brother left home to avoid responsibility and only came back for a funeral, and the servant is the best of the bunch, but has a misplaced set of loyalties.

To their north, a group of powerful creatures who are only sometimes in humanoid form have been defeated by an army that has already conquered a healthy chunk of the globe. A group of these creatures set out for the protagonists' isolated continent, led by a charismatic leader who was sure he could stage the resistance there that would defeat this army once and for all. Unfortunately, they were attacked at sea, the leader was killed, and the survivors scattered. The primary non-POV character is the librarian who was with this group. He decides he must find human heroes to help him, and ends up with this group because, well, they're the ones he met first. As randomly as they were selected, they do seem to manage to unite the continent against the invaders, and become decent human beings in the process.

Edited to include that they're all over 30, since someone remarked on age earlier. It's never to late to become a decent human being, or to save the world.

[C.bronco]

My MC is the gullible, unsuspecting, young me. He works because he doesn't expect people to be stupid and facetious, ad he's got and undeveloped temper which comes into place when it ought to.

[ClaudiaGray]

My MC is Bianca, a 16-year-old girl who has led a very sheltered life. She's extremely bright, and with people she knows, she is talkative and funny - but strangers and new places overwhelm her, which is a problem as she's just enrolled at the exclusive, tradition-bound boarding school where her parents have taken teaching jobs. Given that this is also a book about vampires, I think you can surmise that other problems lie ahead.

[Zoombie]

I just thought up a new protag.

Dr. Ian Jules: A brilliant pioneer of Artificial Personalities (think AI's, but more human), Ian is chosen by the Human Resettlement Project as one of the 200 or so humans who are completely indispensable to the human race. Because the human race is in jeopardy, as not one but two asteroids are on a collision course for Earth and the nuclear weapon that tried to divert their courses failed miserably, turning them into a much deadlier cloud of high speed rocks. So they've decided to resettle two hundred of the most brilliant, healthy, and generally awesome humans to resettle on a different planet. And Ian is on the list. His wife, and his child are...not.

And, unfortunately for Ian, joining the Human Resettlement Program is mandatory, and he's whisked against his will to outer space. His only 'friend' on the ship is the experimental personality on the colonists computer, LIZZI. And she's...interesting, to say the least, thanks to a mistake made by the technicians who installed her. So Ian's job is to analyze her personality and decide whether or not she is a threat to the HRP. If she is, she gets deleted and a more boring, less useful AI will be installed in her place.

[travelgal]

One of my betas said my MC’s a mix of schemer, dreamer and passive slave. Which pretty much sums him up. He has low self esteem, but masks it well, he hates killing but death follows him everywhere, he`s smooth but can`t stay out of trouble, he loves a woman but love is forbidden to his people.

[kct webber]

In my current WIP:

I have about 10 POV characters and 3 MCs.

Takktin (Human Male) is a horrible street person with no manners and he smells bad. He is consumed by hate for enemies who rule his world. He is rash, impulsive and has no concept of responsiblity or consequences. His is an A**H***. And his mother--who is quite clearly insane--nags at him constantly. Even though she's been dead for years.

Haliena (Human Female) is an innocent who is tossed into a life running from slavery. She's uptight, bitchy, picky, and scared to death. She has... abilities, but she doesn't know it. And she definitely wouldn't want them if she did.

Cha'rah (PnKali, a non-human species, Female) is a student. She's a sarcastic practical-joker who cares nothing for actually learning anything. She would rather put rats in her teachers' desks. And there's that pesky thing about having the ability to see the Pathways. It usually drives people mad. In any case, it, indirectly, forces her from her home. And those people that Takktin hates so much... They kill PnKali on sight. There's that too. Now she has to catch up on all those things that she didn't bother to learn. And quick.


I like heroes who are anti-heroes, really. I love mean, insane, protagonists. I love dark protagonists who are willing to do what is needed, even if it takes a bit of coaxing in the beginning. I like protagonists who have to do bad, even terrible, things--but with good reasons.

I don't like the guy that 'does the right thing' no matter the consequences. In real life, in horrible situations, those people simply die doing the right thing. I like the 'ends justify the means' sort--they'll do it, even if they don't like it.

Granted, that's not for all stories. But it works for me.

[Kentuk]

I'm currently developing Captain Olea, the Qaemul cavalry captain that won the heart and favor of the kingdom's gynoid. He is quite a soldier, proves himself repeatedly. I just did a side story with him where he organizes an entirely native force and uses it to defeat a very modern very well equipped Colonial Security Regiment. Olea is a hard character to make real because he is long on character and apparently short on personality. He seemed part of the crowd when there wasn't fighting but absolutely shone when independent action was called for.

"Olea’s face lit into a smile when he saw Zeta. She really was his favorite person. He pulled off his helmet and sat on the carpet but facing away until Zeta produced fabric to protect the carpet from his boots. Steppe features seemed to become more pronounced in men as they aged. He had a big nose that might have been from Merte, pronounced cheekbones, a pronounced brow ridge and high forehead. His eyes had deep squint lines. Some warriors inked the pattern to make it more pronounced. Olea’s skin was very light under his hyding[like underwear] but his people darkened under the sun."

[elvenharlot]

While there are three primary characters in my novel, first and foremost is Juniel, an apathetic and rebellious (but nonetheless good-hearted) elven princess. Chafing under the restraints of courtly life and mistrustful of the human warlord who has coerced her father into giving him Juniel's hand in marriage, Juniel uses ancient and forbidden magick to hop dimensions on the night before her impending marriage and finds herself in post-apocalyptic Ireland.

Juniel is no faerie princess. She's a fierce, quick-witted woman whose weapon of choice is a battle axe. While she was raised to be a queen and observe courtly manners, she seldom does so. Her only real disadvantage lies in the fact that she has led such a sheltered life in the royal court, and she often walks into danger without realizing it.

And of course there's my all-time favourite character, Vanesha, a dark elven lord (before the dark elven empire fell anyway) who is out for blood. Having lost his family and their wealth at the hands of men, the only thing that drives him is hate and vengeance. Until, of course, circumstances force him to accompany the elven High Lord on an interdimensional search for the missing elven princess Juniel.

While he has plans for revenge and finds some profitable work as an assassin (aided by two .50 Desert Eagles that he stole after murdering the two men who killed his family), Vanesha works primarily as a sort of exotic dancer in the dark elven equivalent of Moulin Rouge...a nightclub that "caters to the many pleasures of the flesh". He is a transvestite who favors corsets and stilletto heels. To cover a severe disfiguration on the left side of his face, he wears a silver half-mask. But this doesn't set his career as a dancer back any - his nightly show is named "The Masquerade".

He is also deeply religious in his own way, his family once being fervent followers of a dark elven goddess whose worship entailed gruesome rites of sacrifice and some highly questionable magick. (My dark elves are a weird bunch.)

Vanesha is also feeding a desperate drug addiction. The purpose of his drugs (the elven equivalent of opium) is mainly to shut out traumatic memories of the past and to keep him from realizing just how miserable his current situation is. But by the time this first novel ends, he will be changed forever.

Then there is my Irish Catholic priest, Father Liam. He's an eccentric but kind-hearted man with a penchant for quoting Shakespeare and a love of opera and beer.

By the end of the story I have to turn a priest into a murderer, a naive renegade princess into a noble queen, and a wrathful drag queen junkie into a powerful leader. But I'm getting there :tongue

[Ye Olde Scribe]

In this series (first volume published 1989) two boys are the semi-fictional characters that take part in juvenile adventure stories based on my own experiences, Vol1. The Mysterious Disk;Vol2, Fly into Danger; Vol. 3 Sunken treasure. I have 6 more volumes in progress but if I don't soon find a publisher or an agent I am going to scrap the whole project. I have been battling for 33 years, and despite translations, freelancing, photography and hundreds of articles, I can't really say it has been better than a "real" job, except I have been in print and on a number of mastheads. Whoopeee. Now I find I am a near victim of "Sherry the Sheriff". At age 65 I really don't need this.

[JohnDavidPaxton]

Typical fish-out-of-water who is being used for purposes and intent beyond his ken and assisting all those he opposes without knowing it.

He's also snarky and gets beat up a lot before he dies.

[Danger Jane]

My protag is a Harpy who estranges herself from her Harpy sisters and falls in love with a sculptor.

She is confused and contemplative.

[Zoombie]

My Hero is a kind of oddly laid back teenager who gets sucked into a zany adventure by a mistake and becomes, dare we say, an actual hero.

My Heroine is a bit more proactive...but realizes that she doesn't actually like being a hero and decides to just fall madly in love with the Hero. Who, actually, dosn't really like being a hero. They're just teenagers, after all...being a hero is hard compared to laying around, staring deeply into each other's eyes, kissing, cuddling, more kissing and generally being lazy in-love type people.

[farfromfearless]

My protagonist is simply a girl trying to find her equilibrium amidst the demands of responsability to her people, while learning to come to terms with a gift she does not want or understand.

[Chasing the Horizon]

I think the MCs for my series may have been an unconscious statement against the 'ordinary person ends up in extraordinary situation' protags. One thing none of them are or ever have been is 'ordinary'.

Jack is one of the most successful and infamous pirate/treasure hunters of his generation. Probably the only thing he's better at finding than treasure is trouble, though. He's also just a very nice guy who does everything he can to keep innocent people from getting hurt by his stealing and treasure hunting. He's very far from a 'typical' fantasy hero in almost every respect. He would much rather talk than fight and is sensitive and caring towards his lover and friends. He is successful because of a mixture of excellent intuition, intelligence, and persistence (he basically won't accept not succeeding, and firmly believes there's always another way). He's so sweet and funny even I sometimes forget just how tough he can be when the stakes are high enough.

Arkadia is Jack's wife/lover (they get together and married in the first book). She's young and had been mistreated for her entire life until she met Jack. She falls in love with him almost instantly, and is by his side virtually constantly for the rest of the entire series. She is emotionally fragile with deep psychological scars from the years of abuse she suffered (and no, falling in love doesn't zap her with a magical 'happy' ray). She's very emotional and little crazy, but devoted to Jack in the extreme. Many of my other characters say she's weak, but don't underestimate just how hard she can fight with the proper motivation.

If anyone in the books could be called a true 'hero' (well, heroine), it would be Rose. She's the greatest warrior of her times, with an ego to match her reputation (which is very well deserved). She's very tough with a strong sense of honor, but also extremely jaded and a cold-blooded killer. Basically, everything about her is contradictory at first glance. She's also very sarcastic and funny (in a dark and dry sort of way). In the opposite of Jack and Arkadia, don't underestimate Rose's ability to think when fighting isn't a viable solution.

[TheKnightWhoSaidNi]

Angelo is your reluctant hero archetype only with the twist being that he came from our world, is still a teenager and is thus prone to a few outbursts (especially upon first arriving in Medea). Also, he was a delinquint in the making before the mysterious man interfered, sending him to Medea, so he had less control over his emotions than many of us would. He develops into an admirable swordsman, falls in love, makes friends, and is generally forced to grow up and do what is required of him as he is placed through a living hell. Yet he surprised me by having a rather angsty outburst midway through the third book as his destiny is revealed to him once more. The scene struck me as being unlikely at first, but then I realized that in his highly stressful and epic position, he was bound to have another breakdown sooner or later. It probably should've happened sooner. Really, what would you do if you were faced with defeating something so much more powerful than you? It's an old question, an old story, but I think I make it resonate through the character.

[davids]

Protag-Female Starship commander with upside down tits who is waging war against right sided over titted leviathon hookers from the planets Gross Bussendorf and Klein Bussendorf-they are Fascist prostitutes who have banned together after eons of mutual hatred to play a deadly game of chess with a universe populated by creatures that are never a breast of any situation whether large or small-The Gorms versus the Bussendorfers-Intergalactic War of the Worlds

[Danger Jane]

my other protag is going to have to turn into a bitch but right now she's just a thoughtful, vain girl. I guess kind of cunning but that won't really come till later.

[Haphazard]

Umm, let's see.

My main character (who has yet to be named) is a goon that works for the government killing pirates and reclaiming their vessels for the interplanetary government. He's rather terse, and is worried about a character named 4urora that assists him on most of the missions. He's easily satisfied by some of the simpler things in life, and is very thorough in everything he does.

The character that I've done the most development on so far is 4urora (pronounced Aurora). She's known as a 'staple,' a type of artificial being (organic, replaceable parts) of which there are very few of. She's fourth generation, and because the tech still isn't advanced enough, she's got quite a few psychological and mental flaws. She can't express emotion very well (especially humor), among other judgement issues, but luckily she's able to learn. She has an ongoing rivalry with Hen3ry (the last of the 3rd generation of artificials). The 3rd generation was altogether considered to be faulty and mostly psychotic, which led to the creation of the 4th generation to be more sedate in mannerisms. Most of the 3rd were put out of commission (put to sleep, most likely), except for this last Hen3ry, which seems to be outpreforming any of the 4uroras.

The last character is a pirate, and is the last surviving member of his crew because the main character killed them all. He's being held prisoner, not dead only by 4urora's intervention. Not sure about a lot of his personality, but he's eventually going to fall in love with the main character.

So, there's pirates, and ninjas, boys love between them, in space. Lovely.

[Mjollnir13]

Still feeling out my main character but, so far in the 1st chapter, my main character has had pee thrown on them and eaten a raw rabbit!

[Atlantis]

My main character is a shy, slightly geekish seventeen year old boy, who is the long lost son of a greek god, but is unaware of it. He thinks he's just a regular kid, even though his emotions trigger thunderstorms when he's mad and he can do everything from teleport to shoot lightning from his fingers. He's unaware of his sex appeal to girls (being a god he can attract them like flies) and hates it when the girls at his school follow him around, hoping to ask him out, because he is secretly waiting for his soul mate, just like all the other gods in the world must do, but like his lineage he is also unaware of this fact. When he begins to suspect that he might not be human after he gets hit by a truck and walks away, his world begins to spin out of control. He has quite a few temper tantrums throughout the book and a few teary moments as well which is understandable considering all I put him through. He finds out that he was born three thousand years ago (who wouldn't be screwed up after finding that out?) that his birth mother was murdered by his uncle, is confronted by Zeus at his highschool surrounded by hundreds of students, is forced to witness his best friend be killed by Zeus, and is then tricked into thinking that his adoptive mother has had her throat slashed. I had a lot of fun tormenting this character. He starts off as a frightened, nervous teenage boy, quick to tears because he cannot cope with the fact he is related to the Greek Gods and that Zeus is after him, to a steel-eyed powerful God at the end of the book full of confidence and belief in his powers who bravely takes on Zeus wielding his very own trident just like his dad Poseidon.

[misswriter]

Mine is just a normal teenage girl who is suddenly thrust into a magical world. She's rather frightened by it all and wishes she could go the way of her mother and ignore it sometimes. She spends the first sixteen years of her life unaware that there even IS a magical world, until her ex-boyfriend tells her exactly why her grandmother was killed. It makes more sense when I write it I guess.

[Sassee]

Kate is just coming out of an abusive relationship. She gets completely smashed at her friend's house, has someone drive her home, and ends up sleeping with him. The problem? He's a werewolf. Things start getting interesting when she realizes she's turning into one, and she starts getting much more attention than she really wants from all of the alphas and her ex. Everyone wants her to pick a mate. All she wants to do is finish college in one piece. As she tries to deal with her ex, her classes, the wolves, and her jumbled emotions, she starts to grow a backbone and takes charge of the situation.

It's not finished yet, but by the end she'll be one confident little bitch (pun fully intended), and she may or may not have a seriously hawt wolf at her side. Haven't quite decided on the mate thing. She's got a lot of ripped abs and alpha-male testosterone surrounding her.

[DragonHeart]

Sara is a mid20s mercenary with a hatred for authority. She's not out to save anyone, she just wants to make enough money to get by. When her latest job goes bad she ends up making a deal with a very unlikely ally, which may lead her to the toughest battle of her life; a fight to save a god. She doesn't actually care if he lives, as long as she gets paid.

Alexander is the god in question, one of the celestial dragons who keeps the planet in balance. Unfortunately, he was tricked by the current emperor and a powerful spell separated his soul from his body, trapping him in the Stone. He's the youngest of these dragon gods and naive. He's also very angry. His intention is to regain his dragon form and cast judgment on the empire by burning it to the ground. He makes a deal with Sara when her original employer is killed, after she tried to sell the Stone (and Alexander). Obviously he's not pleased about that, so their partnership is extremely strained, mainly due to his explosive temper.

~DragonHeart~