Importance of a hero.

Livvie

When we write our heroes, do we make them the man we would like to marry, or the man we would like to be?

And what kind of flaws would you give him, as the perfect hero would be boring.

My hero is a Traveller, so does that make him interesting from the start, or is it a turn-off?

The Mad Hatter

Write someone who's interesting to write about. If you go about artificially creating flaws and characteristics, you wind up with a cardboard character.

I imagine if you just create ideals (the person you want to marry or the person you want to be), then you'll run out of characters very quickly.

A good exercise suggested by David Mitchell is to write a short autobiography for each of your main characters in your notebook or wherever you keep sketches.

Antilles

Livvie wrote: »

When we write our heroes, do we make them the man we would like to marry, or the man we would like to be?

Neither, we write them about the man we would like to read about.

Livvie

Antilles wrote: »

Neither, we write them about the man we would like to read about.

Great point.

MilanPan!c

My characters feel real to me, so I try to be real about how they respond to situations. I'm aware of controlling them, of course, but I could never write in the abstract like that, with everything about them plotted out and known to me. That's why I'm constantly surprised where my stories end up. In that sense my heros are unpredictable!

EileenG

I think you start out with a basic character, and as you write, he changes and develops. Just like real people. I have a hero I've been writing about for a while, but it bothered me I could never see his parents. It took me a long time to discover he had been born in a hippie commune and had lived there until his grandmother took him out and sent him to regular school and dental appointments and dancing class. I wish he'd told me earlier, I would have had fun with that.

pickarooney

I had one keep his heroin addiction and the murder of a student from me until the last chapter. He was a very likeable chap up to that point.

Livvie

Eileen and PickaRooney - it's wonderful when your hero surprises you. It almost enables you to be a reader as well as a writer.