This week, Senior Editor Jamie West, gave some wonderful insight into creating characters. Today, I want to take that a step further. I\u2019m focusing on the hero, but the concept applies to heroines as well.
I see a great number of manuscripts where the author wants her hero to be highly flawed at the beginning of the story, and redeemed by the end (Whether he\u2019s Christian all the way through the story or becomes a Christian partway through). Nothing wrong with that. It\u2019s basically every Christian\u2019s faith journey. But, oftentimes, in an author\u2019s zeal to flaw a hero, she makes him un-heroic in the process. Heroes cannot be un-heroic; it’s an oxymoron of gargantuan proportions.
The key is to make our hero flawed without having him make any un-heroic decisions. Let\u2019s take a look at some examples of how to tweak a plot or character action so that we convey the flawed nature without putting the reader off our hero.
Here\u2019s a common tale as a setting: The hero is a ruthless business man\u2014a real estate developer, let\u2019s say. He\u2019s notorious for buying up old apartment buildings, putting the tenants out on the street, and then building high-rise office complexes that have made him a millionaire. He has no regard for the human person and looks only at the business side of every deal. We want him to meet the heroine, learn the error of his ways, find Christ, and to live happily-ever-after. He\u2019s not a Christian at the opening of our tale, so it doesn\u2019t really matter what he does because, he\u2019s not bound by Christian morality…
Wrong! It does matter. Let\u2019s see why.
We open our story (a story I will preface with the disclaimer that it\u2019s a first-draft, off-the-top-of-my-head example and should not be taken as an example of a saleable piece of fiction \ud83d\ude42 \u2026We open our story with the hero on the telephone telling his foreman to arrange for the eviction of a little old lady who lives on a pension, along with a single mother who has two small children and who works two jobs just to pay the rent-controlled rent each month, and an ex-con who we find out was wrongly-convicted and is just trying to put the pieces of his life back together. Joe Hero is ruthless. He\u2019s mean. He\u2019s screaming over the phone as the heroine stands at the threshold to his office waiting for him to sign some important documents that she\u2019s couriered over for her employer. .. —————————- Jane froze in the doorway. She\u2019d heard of Joe Hero\u2019s reputation\u2014he didn\u2019t care one whit about anything unless it came printed in green and featured a dead president\u2019s picture. She hadn\u2019t wanted to believe the rumours she\u2019d heard. She\u2019d had a crush on him ever since she\u2019d seen his expose in Cityscape Magazine two years ago, and she didn\u2019t want to believe anyone so beautiful on the outside could be so hideous on the inside. But as she listened to him on the phone, she had to believe.
\u201cI don\u2019t care about anyone\u2019s sob story,\u201d Joe Hero said into the phone. \u201cThey\u2019ve all had two weeks to find somewhere else to live. Send the sheriff, if you have to.\u201d He glanced up at her and rolled his eyes. \u201cI don\u2019t care how old she is. I don\u2019t care if she has to live in the carpet bag with ‘everything she owns.’ Get her out of there. As for the other woman, if she can\u2019t afford to keep her kids, maybe she shouldn\u2019t have had them in the first place. Give her the number to that adoption agency on High Street.\u201d He slammed down the receiver and waved her in.
Reluctantly, she approached the desk and handed him the papers.
He shook his head as he signed them. \u201cI don\u2019t understand people today. It\u2019s not my fault these people can\u2019t hold down a decent job or have such lousy credit they can\u2019t let an apartment. Everyone expects a hand-out.\u201d
\u201cMaybe they can\u2019t help it,\u201d she offered, unsure why she\u2019d even spoken.
\u201cSure they can\u2019t. I\u2019ve worked my entire life for what I have. If others would do the same, they\u2019d \u2018have\u2019 also.\u201d He smiled. \u201cGuess they know who\u2019s boss now, huh?\u201d\u2026
She stood there stunned, unable to reply. How could she? She was devastated. How could he? He actually liked kicking people when they were down. The rumours were true\u2026 —————————- So, what we have here is a flawed hero. He\u2019s going to learn the error of his ways–at least that’s the author’s plan, But, we\u2019ve just seen him evict some people without any regard\u2014and, he enjoyed it. Readers are not going to want this man to be the hero. It doesn\u2019t matter if he\u2019s redeemed by the end of the book. Most readers won\u2019t get that far because after an opening like this, they are rooting against him. It doesn’t matter what he does. In the reader’s mind, he’s a villain, not a hero.
Now, let\u2019s take the same premise\u2014same scene, even\u2014and change it a little. —————————- \u201cTell them they have until the end of the week, but that\u2019s all I can do.\u201d Joe Hero sighed and thought about the million-dollar deal that meant his company wouldn\u2019t have to claim bankruptcy. JH Construction might have been the commercial builder of the year fourteen years running, but the economy had hit them hard. He had to get that building down and the new complex up. It wasn\u2019t his fault the tenants hadn\u2019t been able to find new homes. Surely Henry knew that. \u201cNo,\u201d he told his foreman again. \u201cThis week. We have to break ground next week or it\u2019s going to cost us a hundred K a day.\u201d
He looked up to see a woman standing in the doorway to his office. He shot her an apologetic smile and rolled his eyes, pointing to the phone. She gave him a tentative smile back.
\u201cKids or no, Henry, they have to go.\u201d He sighed again. He hated being the bad guy, but someone had to make the tough decisions, and since he had the reputation for being ruthless, the bad guy was usually him.
With no more protests coming from his foreman, Joe hung up the phone and waved in the petite brunette who still adorned his threshold. He didn\u2019t think his doorway had ever looked so good.
She walked to the desk and handed him an envelope from Peter Jacobs & Sons. The papers he\u2019d been waiting for. He smiled at her and motioned to the phone with a tilt of his head. \u201cSorry about that. I wouldn\u2019t have been off sooner, but some people won\u2019t take no for an answer.\u201d
\u201cTrouble, huh?\u201d she mumbled as if she wasn\u2019t sure she should speak.
He got that a lot. Most people were afraid of him. It irritated him a little, but he supposed he could understand it. There had been a time when he was so ruthless he would have put his own mother out on the street if it meant a lucrative build. But then Carla had happened, and he’d learned a few lessons about ruthlessness that had opened his eyes.
“Just some tenants who can\u2019t find a new place and want me to postpone knocking down a building. Can\u2019t bow to every request, though, or projects would never get finished.\u201d He sounded so cold, but he wasn\u2019t about to go into detail about why his timeline was so critical\u2014with anyone, let alone a letter courier he\u2019d never met, even if she did have the most compelling eyes he\u2019d ever seen. Something about her actually made him want to tell her things she had no business knowing\u2026. —————————- Now, we have ruthless Joe Hero. He\u2019s still evicting those people, and from the limited info he\u2019s told Jane Heroine, she can go away thinking he\u2019s ruthless (thus keeping part of our conflict intact). But, we have a sympathetic hero. He\u2019s misunderstood. Oh, he was actually ruthless in the past, and that \u201chabit\u201d is sure to pull him back at times throughout the story\u2014that\u2019s how we\u2019ll show his redemption process. He\u2019ll get angry or frustrated and say something he doesn\u2019t really mean, but because the reader is already rooting for him to succeed\u2014because he hasn\u2019t actually done anything, or told someone else to do something, wrong (acted un-heroically), and because he’s misunderstood\u2014the reader will forgive him and he\u2019ll still be hero material.
The key to creating a hero who is flawed but remains heroic is to make his un-heroic acts either backstory to where when the story opens, he\u2019s already on the path to redemption; \u201cforce\u201d his hand by some believable conflict he can\u2019t get out of, but make him immediately remorseful and on the path to trying to reverse the effects of his ill decision; or to make his un-heroism something that is completely misunderstood by the other characters in the story, and well-known to the reader to be a misunderstanding. If the reader thinks for one minute that Joe Hero is actually un-heroic, then he can\u2019t be the hero. Period.
So, keep your hero\u2019s mind out of the gutter, his heart on unselfish acts, and his actions towards the heroine always gentlemanly. Any un-heroism has to be \u201coff-camera\u201d so that all we see of Joe Hero on the page is an actual hero\u2014albeit a \u201chero in progress.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week, Senior Editor Jamie West, gave some wonderful insight into creating characters. Today, I want to take that a step further. I\u2019m focusing on the hero, but the concept applies to heroines as well.I see a great number of manuscripts where the author wants her hero to be highly flawed at the beginning of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[152,195,8],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-heroes","tag-white-rose-publishing","tag-writing-how-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}