by Sacha Black
Flawed hero and the web of connectivity
I said earlier that you need to have your hero and villain on opposing sides of the theme, and you do. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the moral line dividing them is set in stone. Your hero doesn't need to be perfect from chapter one. Quite the opposite in fact. While your hero ends up on the right side of the line, usually, she starts on the wrong side. Or at least as a morally ‘lesser,' more flawed version of herself.
The reason your hero starts on the wrong side of the moral line is so she can go on the journey your story lays out. A story that will make her change sufficiently so she can defeat the villain. If she was perfect from the start, there would be no need for her to change and no need for her to go on this journey. In fact, there'd be no need for the story at all. But that would make readers around the world weep. So don’t do that.
Obstacles and the web of connectivity
If we overlay the web of connectivity onto The Hunger Games, then the obstacles Katniss faces and the subsequent moral actions/choices she makes should all be connected. Lucky for us, they are. It’s almost as if I picked it on purpose.
Katniss faces several theme/moral dilemmas throughout the story and they're always connected to the theme of sacrifice. Each time she faces one of these dilemmas, she has to make a choice: sacrifice herself or sacrifice another.
Inevitably, Katniss always chooses to sacrifice herself rather than another person. Her moral actions are always on the right side of the thematic line. And never more so than in the opening chapters where she sacrifices herself to prevent her little sister becoming a tribute.
Obstacles should test the hero on the theme. In the example of ‘sacrifice', the hero should be made to choose what to sacrifice over and over again. You can weave in the ‘anti-theme' by showing the reader how the villain takes the opposing moral action.
Examples of other sacrificial obstacles in The Hunger Games:
Facing the opportunity to kill the youngest tribute, Rue (who by rights should be trying to kill her), Katniss chooses to let Rue live. But by refusing to kill Rue, she puts herself at risks. Rue could easily attempt to kill her. But, like Katniss, Rue is on the right side of the moral line and doesn't try to hurt Katniss, giving them the opportunity to team up.
Peeta, her district friend, gets seriously injured. Katniss faces the question again — how much is she willing to sacrifice? As usual, she puts herself in danger to go and find the much-needed medicine for him.
Collins kills two birds with one stone by weaving the anti-theme in to an obstacle. President Snow uses previously killed and injured tributes and Frankensteins them, bringing them back to life and turning them into mutated wolves — in other words, creating an obstacle for Katniss to face and using them as sacrifices for a second time.
Hero change and the web of connectivity
The obstacles above test Katniss, make her grow and force her to choose what she's willing to sacrifice. The obstacles push her further than she's gone before. Each time she makes a choice, a piece of her changes. She becomes angrier, more determined, more resolute to take down President Snow's system. She doesn’t want anyone to have to make the sacrifices she's having to.
The battle and the web of connectivity
In The Hunger Games, the completion of Katniss's character arc, the final battle and the thematic answer are all rolled into the same scene. The final battle ends after she kills the penultimate tribute, leaving her and Peeta alive. They’re on the brink of winning the Hunger Games, but earlier in the story President Snow decided the growing love story between Katniss and Peeta was good for TV ratings. To encourage it, he announces that two tributes can live. But when Katniss and Peeta are the only tributes left, President Snow makes the final blow and changes the rules back: one of them has to die.
The thematic answer and the web of connectivity
Near the climax of your story, your hero should face a thematic decision. It's the big show-stopping will-she-won't-she moment.
Katniss faces the ultimate choice in the climax — if only one tribute can live, then she has to decide if she can sacrifice someone she loves (Peeta) to save herself, or will she choose to let him kill her instead?
This final hurdle prompts Katniss to have a thematic revelation. She’s been pushed the entire story to answer the thematic question over and over: How much is she willing to sacrifice for those she loves? She’s faced choice after choice and put herself in danger over and over again. It’s changed her. Made her smarter. She knows they will never beat the Hunger Games the way she wants to (with both her and Peeta surviving), and here is the answer to that thematic question…
Katniss decides the only way to win is to subvert the games entirely. Her answer is to make the ultimate sacrifice: their lives. If both the remaining tributes die, Snow won't have any winners.
The sacrificial suicide pact between her and Peeta ultimately saves them both. President Snow would rather two winners than none. The reason this is such a satisfying ending is because Collins wove a web connecting the sacrifice through every subplot, obstacle and choice, leading you to this satisfying conclusion.
Let’s put all this into practice with another example:
Planes - the Disney movie:
Disney movies are some of my favorite examples of story connectivity because they're designed for kiddies. It means the theme, moral action and character traits are usually distilled down to their simplest components, which makes them excellent as examples.
Here’s a plot summary of Planes:
Dusty is a small-town plane whose purpose is to dust the local farmer's crops. However, Dusty dreams of a bigger life as a racer. With help from an ex-fighter plane, Dusty qualifies for the biggest race in the world. The film then follows Dusty as he overcomes various obstacles to win the race.
Dusty’s web of connectivity
The theme of Planes in its simplest form is courage. But it’s more than that. One of the minor characters, Franz, conveys the theme in dialogue:
“…thanks from all of us that want to do more than what we were just built for.” Franz, Planes.
Conveying the theme in dialogue is a basic technique. It’s tantamount to punching the reader in the face with a theme glove. Pro tip: don't punch the reader in the face (it's terrible for sales… unless you're a plastic surgeon). Of course, there are always exceptions to theme in dialogue, children's stories being the most frequent users because it's an easy way to distill a theme into digestible components for younger minds to understand.
Dusty, the hero, wants to be more than he is (theme), which means the moral action he takes must lead him to become more than he is. But how does this link to his traits?
Dusty’s positive traits: courage and determination.
Dusty’s obstacles: fear of heights, too trusting, Ripslinger - a plane hell-bent on winning
The only way Dusty can win the race (and become a racer, which is more than he was built for) is to get over his biggest fear and fly higher than any of the other racers. His traits are perfectly set up to enable him to do that. He has the courage to overcome his fear, and when he repeatedly fails to fly high enough in practice races, his determination is what pushes him to keep going.
Ripslinger, the antagonist, refuses to change throughout the story and maintains the anti-theme. He believes you can only be what you were made for. Ripslinger embodies the theme by being inflexible, which means he’s also predictable. Dusty uses Ripslinger’s habitual race behavior to predict what he will do, resulting in Dusty being able to outmaneuver Ripslinger and win the race.
Dusty’s traits combined with the obstacles he faces set him up to test his courage and determination. In passing those obstacles, he proves that he’s worthy of being more than he was made for. He proves that you can be more than you’re made for if you just have the courage to try. And that, folks, is a web of connectivity.
STEP 2 - Web of Connectivity - Creating Heroes with Depth Summary<
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The hero of any story should be the embodiment and expression of your book’s theme, and the villain should be the ‘anti-theme.’
Pitting your hero and villain on either side of the moral and thematic line is what creates so much tension and conflict throughout the plot. But remember: your hero shouldn’t be on the right side of that line at the beginning of his journey.
The thematic question should drive the entire plot. It's the question that readers need to have answered, the question that makes them keep turning pages to find out the answer.
The obstacles your hero faces should give her tests based on the theme. The culmination of those tests changes your hero for the better, putting her on the right side of the moral line and giving her the ability to defeat the villain.
If in doubt, spider it out. Okay, that was poor. I apologize.
Questions to think about
Take the last book you read and try to map it onto the web of connectivity. Does it fit? Or are there gaps in the web?
If you haven’t already, take the theme from your WIP and create your thematic question.
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STEP 3 – Perfection Perfected
Remember that feeling I mentioned? The one you get at the end of a long book or series — the sensation that something's missing. A hole has formed inside you, and no matter what you do to try and fill it, there are no more words and no more episodes. A bookish era has ended, and until you find your next story addiction, life will never be the same.
Too dramatic?
Tough. It’s how I feel.
Countless times an author captures a part of me. I'll look up from the page and wonder why I'm not sat on a spaceship or taking my O.W.L.S in Hogwarts. For days and weeks after I finish the series, I'll long for just one more page, one more bit of those characters because the story was so real, so tangible that the characters felt like friends.
There are a plethora of things that create that effect, but your hero is wedged firmly in the driving seat. In fact, characterization as a whole is the holy grail for establishing the connection between protagonist and reader.
Literature as a reflection of ourselves
Characterization is vital because literature is a form of self-reflection. I mean that both literally and figuratively. It's no secret that books help us understand the world. Think of the stories passed down for generations: myths, legends, testaments and laws. Stories were told around campfires while families tore strips of spit-roasted meat off carcasses. Those stories were self-reflective in that they explained what our purpose was, how to live ‘best' and the dangers we needed to avoid. These days, our stories are more for leisure than law and protection. But that innate need for self-reflection is still inherent in how readers relate to stories.
Which is why the theme of your book is so vital. Think of theme as the primordial goo your story and your hero evolve from.
The hero as a reflection of us
Humans need to fit. We want to be liked and deemed ‘right’ by society. We fit by connecting with others. The hero needs to be relatable so we (readers) can conga across the bookish dance floor and connect with him. That connection is what makes us care enough about him to invest in his journey. We want the hero to succeed in the same way we want to succeed ourselves.
Subconsciously we process the book's theme and the hero’s moral actions and compare them to our own behaviors and actions. That's one of the reasons readers often have an ah-ha moment. When the hero has an emotional, philosophical or moral realization, the reader experiences it too. Why? Because your story is told through the hero, and the reader is connected to your hero. This is some serious Clark Kent shit, people. Whip off the reading glasses, give a little phonebook twirl, and your reader becomes your hero.
Universal truths are one of my favorite parts of a novel; they are the thing I'm often left thinking about long after I finish a book, and I know I'm not alone in that. Realizations leave a mark; they jangle a person's brain cells into new alignments. I guess you could liken it to your reader's personal character arc.
In summary, what the reader needs to see in the hero is a reflection of themselves. But that doesn't need to be a positive reflection. The most clickbaity attention-grabbing headlines are negative ones. Good relatable, bad relatable, it doesn't matter. Find something the audience connects with and capitalize on it.
Heroes need to reflect humanity, and humanity is imperfect
Okay, we’ve established the need for your audience to relate to your hero and that self-reflection is key. But how do we create that with our heroes?
Before you panic, this isn’t dress-up day at school. You don’t need your reader and your hero to look like twins in fluffy onesies. And no one’s asking you to find the one characteristic that links the entire of humanity. I’ve done that for you.
I've heard people argue that math is the universal language. I've heard others say that music or play are the only global languages. But I disagree with all of them. For a writer, there is only one genuinely universal language: emotion.
Heroes need to expose our darkest fears, our worst traits and the messy sludge of shit we're terrified of. The easiest way to get your audience to relate to your hero (unless you're a psychopath)1 is through emotion. Feelings are the most universal thing in the human race. And if you’re about to email me to point out some obscure half-human half-gorilla tribal race from a remote part of the Bering Strait who don’t have emotions, control yourself pen monkey. I’m speaking for the majority of the population. In other words, your hero needs to be a realistic representation of a human. And the point I’m really getting at is that humans are far from perfect.
We love and hate and rage, so your hero must too.
Peter Perfect’s a prick
Perfection is annoying - cheese grater to the face annoying. Remember the class geek who constantly had their hand up and NEVER got a question wrong? Who, no matter what you did, would beat you by a point, or clip you to the finish line or get an A+ when you only got an A. It’s irritating and rage-inducing and, instead of endearing you to their genius, makes you want to fork their eye out over the school desk.
Heroes shouldn’t be perfect because it’s tiresome and, frankly, it’s clichéd. The exception to that are children’s books and films, but I’ll explain the psychology of that in a moment. More than either of those reasons, though, a hero shouldn’t be perfect because perfection is hard to relate to.
Which is why, no matter how much we might hate the idea of creating imperfect heroes, we have to suck it up and rip off the halo. If we’re not making tiny mistakes daily, like tripping over words in speech, or the juicy secret we promised not to spill, then what about the catastrophic errors that lead to war? And so, herein lies the paradox for a writer. We want our heroes to be perfect but, to be perfect, they must be flawed. Flaws create credibility and, more importantly, believability.
Psychology of Imperfection
The reason children’s characters are often ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ is because children are building up their heuristics and understanding of how life works.
A heuristic is a psychological rule our brains create. As we roll through daily life, we use the heuristic rules to make judgments on the things we encounter. Having black and white characters for younger children helps them to build basic heuristic rules for right and wrong. It's only as we grow older and have the mental capacity for shades of color that we build our own unique heuristics and develop the understanding for shades of gray (and no, I do not mean the kinky shades. Dirty rotter).
One of my favorite quotes of all time summarizes what I’m trying to say:
“I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.” Yohji Yamamoto.
What this means is that your protagonist must have a mix of positive and negative traits. No matter how much it pains you to make your shiny girl arrogant or manipulative or stubborn, you have to whip out the
negativity bat and beat those shades of gray into your hero.
Choosing Traits
There's no right or wrong when choosing traits. There is an infinite number of combinations you could use, so I'm not going to waste your time telling you the qualities a hero should or shouldn't have. Instead, let's look at the things you should consider when choosing traits.
I’d highly recommend two books by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi: The Positive and Negative Trait Thesauri. They have listings of traits, how those traits impact a character’s behavior and ways to show the reader those traits without telling.
Traits around the theme
The most crucial factor in choosing traits is to keep your theme in mind. Your protagonist's traits should be connected to the theme and moral action you need her to take.
One of the best examples of a character's traits aligned with the book's theme is Hercule Poirot. As with most detective novels, one of the overriding theme in the series is justice. As the protagonist and leading detective, Poirot embodies that trait/value by serving justice throughout his cases and delivering criminals to the legal system by solving mysteries. However, spoiler alert, in the final book in the series, Curtain by Agatha Christie, Poirot faces a moral choice that flips his trait into a negative. He discovers that the character Norton, while not committing murders himself, has learned the art of applying psychological pressure to influence others. So much so, he can influence someone to commit murder. Poirot knows that Norton will never stop, and so he murders him, thereby flipping the theme of justice on its head.