So who is destined to be the center of your plot? Let’s roll up our sleeves and find out!
Regardless of whether you’ve already thought up your big story idea, or you’re still working on that part, I urge you to put everything else aside for now and just focus on the hero of your story. In this section we’re going to talk about how to make your hero story-worthy.
How do you create a hero who is interesting, memorable, and relatable, a hero whom readers want to read about? A hero worthy of an entire novel written about them?
Easy!
You simply give them:
A problem (or flaw that needs fixing)
A want (or goal that the hero is pursuing)
A need (or life lesson to be learned)
If you think about these three things up front, your hero will automatically start to take shape before your very eyes. And they’ll be much easier to insert into your plot later on.
So let’s take a look at each of these three things in more detail.
Here’s a little secret. Readers don’t like reading about perfect heroes who have all their sh*t together. Perfect heroes without any flaws or problems whatsoever are bo-o-oring. Not to mention, completely unrealistic. (I, for one, have yet to meet a human being whose life is entirely flawless.) So if you want to create a hero for your novel who is believable, relatable, and interesting, they can’t be perfect. They must have at least one major problem—or better yet, lots of them!
You’ll find a flawed hero—a hero with problems—in every great novel ever told.
Take Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, for example. She’s not exactly living in the lap of luxury out in District 12, is she? She’s poor, she’s hungry, she’s fatherless, her mother has completely checked out. And then, boom! Her little sister gets chosen for the reaping. Katniss’s circumstances on the outside have also made her hardened, distrustful, and cynical on the inside. This girl’s got problems to spare.
Or what about Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck? He’s just gotten out of jail (for killing a man!), and he comes home to find his entire family has up and left because of no money, no work, and no food. He’s definitely not winning “Farmer of the Year” anytime soon.
And let’s not forget about Becky Bloomwood, in Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella, who, as the title implies, cannot stop shopping. Which is why she’s crippled by secret credit card debt that’s starting to wreak havoc on her entire life.
And that brings us to a great tip for writing flawed heroes: Don’t let the problem stay contained to just one area of your hero’s life. Let the problem(s) manifest and spread and infect! Your hero’s problem(s) should be affecting their entire world: their work, their home life, and their relationships.
When someone starts reading your novel, they should be thinking something along the lines of, Whoa, what a mess this person’s life is!
That’s how you know you’ve done your job.
I realize this seems like a horrible thing to do to your hero—riddle their life with all sorts of difficulties right from the get-go—but it’s also an essential thing to do to your hero. Because if your hero’s life isn’t flawed, what’s the point of the novel? Why do we care? We turn to story to watch characters fix their problems, better their lives, improve upon their flaws. Great novels take deeply imperfect characters and make them a little less imperfect.
So what kind of problem(s) is your character facing? That’s the first question you must answer as you begin to create your story-worthy hero.
But it’s not enough for your hero just to have flaws; your hero also has to want something (badly) and be proactively trying to get it. Your hero knows they’ve got problems. (Or maybe they don’t know, and that’s one of their problems!) Now, the question is: what does your hero think will fix those problems, or what does your hero think will better their life? (Take note of the emphasis on the word “think”—we’ll be coming back to that later.)
Whatever the answer is—a better job, more money, to be more popular in school, gain their father’s approval, solve a big murder case, and so on—that is your hero’s goal. This is what they will be actively striving to achieve throughout the novel (or at least in the beginning).
Giving your hero a goal and having them proactively pursue that goal is the fastest way to get your reader to root for your hero and latch onto your story. Ooh, this guy wants to find an Easter egg hidden inside a massive online simulation game? (Ready Player One by Ernest Cline). Let’s stick around and see if he can do it! Or Ooh, this gal wants to find a suitable husband for her new best friend? (Emma by Jane Austen). I wonder if she’ll succeed! Readers keep reading because they want to know if your hero is going to get what they want.
So ask yourself, What does my character want in life?
And I’m sorry to say, My hero wants to be happy is not a good enough answer. I hear this answer a lot in my workshops, and it’s just not specific enough. The most effective character goals or wants are concrete and tangible. The reader should be able to know if and when your hero gets what they want. How can we really know when your hero has achieved this elusive goal of happiness? We can’t. That is, unless you give us a concrete thing that the hero thinks will make them happy. Like a new house, a new car, a million followers on Twitter, the national championship trophy, passage to a new country, magical powers, to escape from prison. Something tangible that the reader can keep track of and root for.
And speaking of your hero getting what they want: Why haven’t they?
Why doesn’t Wade from Ready Player One just wake up one day and effortlessly collect all three keys to the Easter egg hidden in the Oasis? Why doesn’t Emma successfully set up Harriet with Mr. Elton in Emma? Because if they did, there would be no story. It would be too easy. There would be nothing left for the reader to root for. That’s why it shouldn’t be easy for your hero to get what they want. It should be hard. They should have to work for it.
Almost every want or goal has an equal and opposite force holding the hero back from achieving it. This force is often presented as a “conflict” or “nemesis.” What is standing in the hero’s way? Why can’t Tom Joad and his family find work in California in The Grapes of Wrath? Well, because, the landowners lied about how much work there was, so they could attract more workers and drive down labor prices, and now there’s a huge surplus of hungry, angry migrant workers. And why can’t Jean Valjean in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo just start over and live his life in peace like he wants? Because his nemesis, Inspector Javert, won’t let him.
Now, it’s important to note two things about wants (or goals).
First, they can change as the novel goes on. And they often do. Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley goes from wanting to create life to wanting to destroy the very life he created. Alice in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll goes from wanting to find the White Rabbit to just wanting to go home. Louisa in Me Before You by Jojo Moyes goes from just wanting a job to help provide for her family to wanting to save Will’s life. The wants, regardless of whether they change or stay the same, are what drive the story forward. They’re what keep the plot moving. Otherwise, you’ve got a hero who’s just putzing around, waiting for something to happen. (Very boring plot.) When a hero wants something, it sets them in motion. It gets them off their butt and into the action, which is exactly where we want them to be!
And the second important thing to note is that not all characters actually get what they want. Some do. Like Pi Patel in Life of Pi by Yann Martel. He does eventually achieve his goal of getting off the lifeboat. But others, like Opal in the children’s book Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, do not get what they want by the end of the story. When the novel begins, Opal just wants to know more about her mother—and maybe even meet her one day. This doesn’t end up happening for her. But you kn
ow what? That’s okay. As we read this novel, we realize that Opal’s goal of getting to know her mother is not the true point of the story. It’s not where Opal’s real journey is heading. Because in the end, the want is only half the story. Heroes aren’t complete until they also have a need.
Heroes are often wrong about what will inevitably lead to their own happiness. Because typically happiness or a better life goes a lot deeper than just a new house, a new car, popularity, or whatever else you’ve dreamed up for your hero to want.
But it’s easier to yearn for a quick fix than to actually do the real life-changing, soul-searching work. C’mon; who among us hasn’t thought, for even a moment, that our lives would drastically improve if we only had more money, nicer things, more success at work, the ability to read minds, a date to the dance? When really these wants are just Band-Aids covering a deeper problem. Something that probably relates back to those pesky little flaws and problems we talked about earlier.
True to life, quick fixes in fiction never last long. In the end, your hero must eventually do some hard, soul-searching work. Now I realize I’m coming dangerously close to sounding like a self-help book here, but the truth is, plotting a compelling and engaging novel and crafting a story-worthy hero is a lot like playing psychologist. It’s your job to not only diagnose the real problem in your hero’s life, but cure it as well.
We call that real problem the shard of glass. It’s a psychological wound that has been festering beneath the surface of your hero for a long time. The skin has grown over it, leaving behind an unsightly scar that causes your hero to act the way they act and make the mistakes that they do (flaws!). You, as the author and creator of this world, have to decide how that shard of glass got there. Why is your hero so flawed? What happened to them to make them the way they are?
And most important, what will really fix your hero’s life? What does your hero actually need? This is the third and biggest question you’ll have to ask yourself as you start to develop your novel. This is the crux of your story. This is the real “stuff” that great stories are made of. And this is what readers are really looking for when they pick up a book. Sure, they want action, they want mystery, they want body counts, they want kissing (and sometimes more than kissing), but in the end, readers want a novel that’s about something.
What do I mean by that?
I mean, What’s the point of the story? What does the hero really get out of it? Why this hero for this story?
Your hero’s want or goal is an integral part of what’s called the A Story. The A Story is the external story. It’s the stuff that happens on the surface. Car chases; wars; fights in the school hallway; new jobs; casting magic spells; taking on an evil, dystopian government; poisoning the king. Essentially, it’s the exciting stuff. The “cool” stuff. Or what’s also referred to as the premise.
On the other hand, the B Story is the internal story. It’s the story that’s intricately linked to what your hero needs to learn in order to change their life, complete their transformation, and enter the hall of fame of story-worthiness.
The B Story/internal story/need is what your novel is really about.
For example, Ready Player One isn’t about a worldwide Easter egg hunt through a massive online simulation game. That’s just the external story (A Story). Underneath, behind the scenes, the internal story (B Story)—the heart of the novel—is about a shy, insecure boy who hides inside a video game and finally has to learn how to make real-life connections.
Misery by Stephen King isn’t about a guy stuck in a crazy lady’s cabin in the mountains. That’s just a really creepy premise. It’s the A Story. The book is about a writer who discovers how to write the best novel of his career and how that novel (and writing in general) can save a life (B Story).
And Frankenstein isn’t about a scientist who creates a monster (A Story). It’s about a man who has to repent for his sins against the natural world (B Story).
What plays out on the surface—what the hero wants—is only half the story. The true soul of a novel lies in the hero’s need, which can also be called the internal goal, the life lesson, or the spiritual lesson. And by “spiritual,” I’m not necessarily talking about religion. Although your spiritual lesson certainly can relate to religion (as evidenced in countless popular novels like The Shack by William P. Young or The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini), it certainly doesn’t have to.
The life lesson is the inner journey that your hero didn’t even know they were on, that will eventually lead them to the answer they never expected.
This life lesson should be something universal. Something inherently human. You should be able to walk up to any Joe Schmoe or Jane Schmane on the street, tell them what your hero needs to learn, and they would instantly get it. Or better yet, relate to it.
And here’s the good news. There are not that many options to choose from. I’ve found that almost every novel throughout time has an internal goal or need that is in some way a derivative of one of the following ten universal lessons:
Forgiveness: of self or of others
Love: includes self-love, family love, romantic love
Acceptance: of self, of circumstances, of reality
Faith: in oneself, in others, in the world, in God
Fear: overcoming it, conquering it, finding courage
Trust: in oneself, in others, in the unknown
Survival: including the will to live
Selflessness: including sacrifice, altruism, heroism, and overcoming greed
Responsibility: including duty, standing up for a cause, accepting one’s destiny
Redemption: including atonement, accepting blame, remorse, and salvation
Now, I know right now some of you might be thinking, I don’t want to write a “lesson” book or I don’t want my novel to have a deep universal message. I just want to write an action story, or a suspense thriller or a romance novel.
But here’s a tip for you: even the best action stories, thrillers, and romance novels have a spiritual lesson hidden somewhere within. They all feature a hero who learns something and changes in some way. Don’t believe me? Check out the beat sheet for Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (horror/action) on this page of this book, or the beat sheet for The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (suspense thriller) on this page, or the beat sheet for Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon (romance) on this page.
The spiritual lesson or need is what your reader will grab onto. It’s what makes your reader feel like they’ve been somewhere, done something, experienced something—and that their investment in the pages of your novel was worth their time.
Writing about a hero who transforms—who comes out of the story a different person than who they started as—is the secret sauce of best-selling novels. Novels that people talk about. Novels that hit the best-seller list and stay there. Novels that get turned into movies. Novels that resonate with readers. And when you can resonate with a reader, that’s when you become a true storyteller.
Who Is Your Hero? (The Answer May Not Be as Simple as You Think)
Call me an old romantic, but I believe that every hero has one true plot that is meant only for them. And I also believe that every plot has their one true hero. Your job is to play matchmaker and figure out which hero goes with which plot.
Imagine if Harry Potter had started out a confident, powerful wizard. Imagine if the Dursleys had been nice adoptive parents who took Harry under their wing and nourished his magical soul. What a dull first book that would have been! Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling works because Harry does not start out confident and powerful. He doesn’t have cool, supportive guardians who help him find his way in the wizarding world. He starts out timid, isolated, unaware of his true potential. He is the perfect hero for that plot because he has so far to go. He is the char
acter who will get the most out of this particular story line.
Or imagine if Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen had not been so quick to judge others. Imagine if she were more like her sister Jane. Patient, gentle, always giving people the benefit of the doubt. Well, honestly, there’d be no novel. It’s Elizabeth’s prejudice—her titular flaw—that marries her so well to Austen’s masterpiece. Because it’s essentially what keeps her and Mr. Darcy apart for three-hundred-plus pages.
A few years back, I was teaching one of my intensive Save the Cat! for novelists workshops, and a talented writer named Susan walked into my class with her plot and hero all figured out.* Or so she thought. She pitched the class a story about a young woman whose husband was mistakenly killed by a hit man hired to assassinate someone who looked eerily like the young woman’s husband. When I asked her who the hero of the story was, she confidently replied, “The young woman. She’s the one who has to learn to forgive.” I pressed her a little. “Are you sure?” Yes, she was sure. So we moved on. But about halfway through the day, Susan had an epiphany and suddenly shouted, “Wait! The hero isn’t the young woman who lost her husband. It’s the hit man!” I got chills. Because she was right. The hit man was the more interesting choice. He had the more interesting journey. Could she have crafted a compelling novel centered around the young woman who had unjustly lost her husband? Sure. But the novel outline she left the class with was ten times more compelling because the hero she chose was better suited for the story. He was more worthy of an entire plot because he had more changing to do.
Now that you know what makes a hero story-worthy and what ingredients we use to build all great heroes, are you starting to get an idea of who the hero of your novel is? If the answer is no, don’t worry; you still have plenty of time to keep thinking. If the answer is yes, then I’m going to ask you the same thing I asked Susan.
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel Page 2