There’s More To A Hero Than A Shiny Sword
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“Did somebody say ‘hero’?”
“Who are you?”
“I happen to be … a Hero!”
So claimed Hercules in the Disney animated film, but there is far more to being a hero than good looks, a nice sword and the strength of gods. In any work of fiction, a successfully portrayed heroic character has the reader rooting for the character’s success from the first chapter to the last page. Developing that situation isn’t so easy, though.
Just What Is A Hero?
Let’s define what a hero is. A hero is someone with noble qualities, such as bravery or courage, who uses those values in a mission that saves someone else from hardship. The cliché of an illustrious warrior who overcomes the evil overlord fits the requirements of hero nicely, but so does the lowly peasant boy with no magical abilities and nothing but a table knife to free the trapped princess.
All this means is that to create a hero in a fantasy novel, you need only have a character who faces a challenge they must overcome for the good of another. Are a difficult task and a victory enough to stir a reader into cheering for the main figure? Not at all. To have the reader truly root for the character’s attempts at success, the character must stir a very important emotion and connection with the reader from the beginning using one vital emotion: empathy.
Making A Reader Care
Empathy means that the reader can feel for the character and the things the hero or heroine lives through. Building a sense of empathy for characters involves introducing situations a reader can relate to personally, such as trials and tribulations they may well have faced themselves. Unrequited love, a difficult upbringing and overbearing power from an authority – these are all situations that most individuals have experienced and often want to see resolved, through accomplishment or justice.
Those, dear author, are things to twist into your novel right from the start so that readers feel something for the hero. Readers relate to the hardships the character faces, simplistic as those may be, and start to want something good to happen to turn the poor character’s life around. Readers will cheer on the dirty scullery boy who trips a grouchy cook with a heavy hand and they’ll root for the young man struck by love at first sight of an unattainable princess.
Pretty People
Of course, human nature being what it is, something appealing about the character encourages our good favor. We all like pretty things or handsome people. We’ll be more attracted to impish wit and charming devils over bullies and bitter characters. We like our heroes and heroines to look good, because after all, we want to fall in love with those characters ourselves. It may not be very politically correct to admit, but humans are shallow.
Before you endow your young woman who sneaks away from a restricted life of riches at the castle with fiery red, knee-length hair and piercing green eyes, and before you describe your brilliant prince as being unbeatable at swords and having muscles pumped to steroid proportions, do think twice. Pretty as we like characters to be, any good fiction character should be believable and realistic enough to have the potential of being the boy or girl next door. After all, if we’re going to pine over heroes and heroines in fantasy novels, we’d like to entertain the dream that one day we may be the one sighing over someone similar.
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