Boring Invincible Heroes and Heroines

I watch a lot of TV. Mostly because I like having the background noise while I'm working, but occasionally I will pull my attention away from whatever I'm doing and watch whatever's on. My weakness tends to be the procedural-type shows, because I'm a sucker for a good mystery.

There's one thing I've noticed, though. The writers really, really don't like it when their characters lose. Their typical protagonist will casually go about their business with gaping bullet wounds and broken bones. They're abrasive, but their boss doesn't care, because they gets RESULTS, dammit. They easily outsmart the murderers and their convoluted plans - and if this is an amateur sleuth or a brilliant consultant, the actual police will just look on with their mouths agape. And if it seems like the antagonist HAS gotten one over on our hero, it will secretly be part of the master plan, and it will be revealed in the last ten minutes that the hero was only pretending to be vexed.

This is your garden variety Boring Invincible Hero - and while the example above is from your typical TV procedural, you'll find iterations in every genre. These characters can be fun to watch sometimes, but I can't think of the last time I ever really related to one of them. I think it's definitely possible to write a larger than life hero who the audience can get invested in, and there are great examples out there (my overpowering love for Sherlock Holmes is well-documented), but that aspect alone isn't what makes a character appealing.

I always joke that I can't fully fall in love with a character until they fail at life a little, but there's a lot of truth to that. If there's one thing that the Boring Invincible Hero illustrates, it's how important it is for the audience to see a protagonist really struggle, both physically and emotionally. Without that struggle, the character just sort of glides through the conflict without truly becoming a part of it. If we can't get into their heads and see how terrified or furious or insecure they are, there's no real weight to their victory.

So no matter how much you love your protagonist, don't let them become a Boring Invincible Hero. Let their flaws get them into trouble, and don't let them get out of it easily. Let their relationships be brutally difficult once in a while. If you give them an injury, let it weigh them down. And show us what they care about the hard way. To paraphrase Donald Maass a bit, think of the experience you want to avoid putting your character through. What would happen if you put them through it?

That's all from me today. Happy writing, everyone!

Revisions. Revisions forever.

It is a very good thing that I had a relaxing holiday weekend, because I have gone right back to my 'office by day, revisions by night' schedule of unholy doom. And as if to prove a point, in the middle of writing that sentence I was dragged off to negotiate with florists. (Oh, day job. You give me such interesting life skills.)

I'm working very late tomorrow night, so I want to make sure to get lots done tonight. I've got four chapters left to mark up and make notes on, and my outlines and lists of new/extended scenes grow longer every day. Right now I am mainly focusing on the gaps where I can weave in the new material, and the areas that can be rewritten to strengthen voice. Making the exposition and worldbuilding richer is going to be tons of fun, but the real work will be giving this manuscript a beating heart.

And that all hinges on my protagonist, Kalinda. Oh, Kalinda. I know she's not the cold fish everyone thinks she is, and I know she wants to look that way because she thinks people will take her more seriously. I know how desperately she wants to be the hero, the knight in shining armor, and I know how deeply rooted her fears, doubts, and insecurities are. I know that she has a crush she emphatically does not want to have, and I know that she keeps her mouth shut because when she doesn't, all the awkwardness just pours right out.

But Kalinda? Just because you're reserved doesn't mean you can hold all these things back from me.

The challenge here is going to be to really break that character open and let the readers see her as she is, not how she wants to appear. That's the main focus of my reread right now. And I think that if I nail that in the rewrites, my MS is going to be so, so much better.

So, y'know. No pressure or anything.

On an unrelated note, I'm loving all the writing excerpts around here lately! I'd love to join in the fun, but I don't know what I'd post. Do y'all have any suggestions/things you're curious to see?

Getting started

Good morning! I feel like there needs to be a manual on managing a writer-blog. Tonight I need to find myself a suitable profile picture, and I think a little customization wouldn't go amiss, either. My tech-savviness does not extend to HTML, sadly, so we'll see what happens with that.

There are plenty of beginnings to go around lately. Yesterday I got some significant work done on a new story - I want to say it's my new big project, but I'm still leaving things open. It's been harder than usual to decide this time around. The querying process is filled with so much uncertainty (and so many mood-swings) that it can be hard to make myself commit to something. It was easier last time, when there was one story idea that was so much more developed than the others. This time, I had several ideas competing with each other. Sometimes I wanted to write them all, and sometimes I was sure that none of them were good enough.

But the thing about getting started is that my brain doesn't really start firing until I get going on something. Once I start writing, things start clicking into place faster than I can keep track. And I hit a point yesterday where everything was suddenly so much easier, all because I started to write a scene involving the core group.

I've been told that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they choose, so I guess it makes sense that my characters only start making sense when I delve into their relationships. On my last project, I actually took a trio of supporting characters and turned them into the protagonists just because I loved their group dynamic so much. The same goes for most of my other projects, really: the story only took off when I realized who was important to the protagonist and why. It gives me so much to work with in terms of the characters' personalities and interactions, which fills in so many blanks for me.

What about you guys? Is there an element that's important for you to understand before you really dive in?