What kind of hero/heroine are you writing about?

Ivonia · Nov 9, 2005

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 · Nov 9, 2005

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 · Nov 9, 2005

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.

Vincent · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

TMA-1 said:
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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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.

Vincent · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

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 · Nov 10, 2005

beezle said:
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

Vincent · Nov 10, 2005

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

Minister · Nov 15, 2005

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 · Nov 15, 2005

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 · Nov 20, 2005

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 · Nov 23, 2005

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 · Nov 24, 2005

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 · Nov 24, 2005

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 · Nov 24, 2005

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 · Nov 27, 2005

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.

What kind of hero/heroine are you writing about?

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