Creating the Hero: BHS

Literary Disease Alert. BHS, or Boring Hero Syndrome, has struck again. Symptoms include: authors and readers who like side characters more then the protagonist, heroes that lack dimensionality or are underdeveloped stock characters and, in extreme cases, the author and readers may actively dislike the main hero. Fantasy novel heroes at high risk of infection. Treatment recommendation: unique personality injections. Blog readers, please – stay vigilant and protect your story.

In all seriousness, this is an easy one to fall into – very easy – especially if you are writing in a setting unfamiliar with the reader, being a world you made up or outside your native readership’s experience. In a fantastical or exotic setting a bland character functions in multiple ways. Mainly it allows the reader to experience the world afresh from the POV of the main character (partially why farm boys are classically famous heroes). By having an everyman character or using something like the farm boy stock character, it allows for a reasonable excuse to have other character explain the plot, setting and general rules to the reader – I mean main character. Second in a world surrounded by the strange the safe familiarity of the hero gives, in theory, the readers someone to connect to and imagine the world through. Lastly everyman main characters are more universally “relatable.” Unfortunately, relatable and everyman has just come to mean bland.

I get the appeal of the everyman. I really do. I get why authors use it. But here’s one thing to remember… no matter what type of character your protagonist is, some reader or other will not relate or like them. So you might as well have fun with your character. Write someone a little or a lot out there. Write a hothead, a dreamer, a stoic. The crazy gun welding ninja, the magic using chef, the violent princess. The main character doesn’t always have to be the straight man of the group. Have fun with your main character, you’ll be seeing a lot of them. And honestly if you don’t like them, don’t expected anyone else to either.

But say you want really want to write that everyman character. Unfortunately when people think of a relatable everyman heroic character, they think of the same stock character*. Heroic, noble, slightly awkward socially etc. So instead I would encourage you focus less on the everyman and more on the relatable. Lots of types of people are relatable. To see what I mean lets look at four main characters (that fit the classic hero) and examine how a relatable or straight man character can be many different things. But first a word of warning, everyman does not mean whatever the scene requires the character to be. That isn’t a character, that just a collection of railroad tracks. With that cleared up, let’s look at our heroes.

First let’s look at Harry from Harry Potter. He is decidedly much the straight man of his little party, and, in some ways, his character suffers for it. A significant number of people flat out dislike him as a character or are apathetic to him. This is partially because Harry is very much the classic hero character that can be boring to avid readers. He is noble, brave, hot headed at times, uncertain at times, that tends towards angst and has a huge hero complex. Others of this ilk include Rand Al’thor from the Wheel of Time or Richard from the Sword of Truth. Now this an opinion (I happen to like these characters) but this character rarely excites experienced readers, mostly because they know what he is going to do before he does it. **

Now lets look at three other characters. Two are Rick Riordan’s leads from the Percy Jackson Series. Percy is commonly sited as readers’ favorite character. Why? Because he manages to maintain those traits associated with a heroic protagonist, while gaining unique features. He is funny. He is more than just hot headed, he’s stubborn, rash and often thoughtless. He can be very unforgiving, but he is always openly kind and loyal to people. And he lacks the hero complex, always needing to go it alone. Jason, Riordan’s other hero, shows a different take. He is competent, tactical, cool headed and stoic. A nature leader that doesn’t shy away from his role. He also lacks the hero complex. Lastly there is Aang from The Last Airbender (TV show). He is a pacifist, a goofy ball, super opened, very friendly and actively tries to get out of his responsibilities.

Those last three characters are manage to be relatable even though they aren't the classic heroic character that everyone thinks is needed to write heroic fantasy. I mean, how about a farm boy that’s totally excited about getting to save the world – for once? Until someone actually dies, no one will think he’s insensitive if he thinks having this great adventure is total fun. Then you get to write the nice, juicy moment where he comes crashing back to reality.

Just be more creative, you’ll like writing your main character better that way.

*Note: The solution to avoiding BHS isn’t to make your character a super Mary Sue with mega awesome powers, but give them interesting personalities. Super awesome powers are a lot of fun, but make sure they develop naturally, out of hard work. Let it also be obvious from the beginning that the character has some abnormal abilities and there for any further development is expected and doesn’t read as Deus Ex Machina.

**Props to JK for one thing. Unlike lots of other fantasy novels, Harry doesn’t become a super mega awesome through the course of the story. He starts an everyman and stay that way.