10 Steps To Hero

by Sacha Black

  Example: Indiana Jones, from the movie Raiders of The Lost Ark. When Indiana was thirteen, he fell into a crate of snakes while trying to evade Fedora – someone he’d stolen from. It was from that moment that he developed a fear. This scar is relevant multiple times throughout the films. Like many heroes' scars, it becomes something of a story function and plot point. It’s a repeating face-the-snakes-test motif. Indiana has to pass the snake test to prove he's ready to move on to the next part of the story, never more so than the finale of Raiders of The Lost Ark.

  Know the motive the scar creates

  The decisions your character makes in your story will have roots in the scars of their past. Life is about cause and effect, and these scars create the cause and the decisions your hero makes in your story are the effect. There are other types of scars. Not just fear related ones, but more fundamental scars that can create a hero’s motive. In the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Aragorn’s ancestor failed to destroy the ring, leaving a permanent sense of failure and inadequacy in his mindset. This drives him to follow and protect Frodo to ensure the ring gets destroyed once and for all.

  Traits are one thing, but soul scars are the inner core of understanding the ‘why’ behind your hero's motives. If you want to create consistent and believable reactions, that's how you do it. You give your reader the ‘why'. No one just flips their lids and goes on a killing spree; there's a long history building up to that horrible moment.

  The difference between a hero and a villain

  Okay, there are obviously several differences, but one of the key ones is how they react to their soul scar. I’m a huge believer that there are only two things we can control in life: our thoughts and our actions. Heroes and villains can be twins or siblings, have the same soul scar, and yet react to it in different ways.

  Example: Dexter Morgan and his biological brother Brian Moser from the TV series Dexter, based on the books by Jeff Lindsay, have the same soul scar. As children, they were trapped in a storage container for days after witnessing their mother’s brutal murder. They were surrounded by blood and her body parts, which ultimately led them both to become psychopaths and murderers.

  But there's a difference between them. Dexter is adopted, and his new father, a long-term cop, helps him to control his murderous urges by creating a moral code for him to follow. Dexter, having been brought up in a loving environment, chooses to follow the moral code his father gives him and only murders other criminals the Miami police force has been unable to convict.

  His brother, however, is a sadistic killer who slices and dices anyone he fancies. Now you might deem Dexter to be as bad as his brother; they are both killers, after all. While I'm not justifying Dexter's actions, he only kills escaped criminals and won’t touch women and children. He, at least, has a sense of moral justice and right and wrong. They both have the same scar, and yet one of them retains a set of values and the other doesn’t. Although experiences and soul scars shape a person, it’s how a person reacts to them that define who they are and what they become.

  Everything in life comes down to choice. We choose how we react to situations, we choose whether to procrastinate or pick up the proverbial pen. We can opt to accept our fate, or we can stand and fight back. It’s these choices that lead one brother to heroism and the other into villainy. Your hero's reactions to his soul scar experiences define him. What separates a villain from a hero are the decisions and choices he makes.

  Nobody ever said being ‘good’ and ‘moral’ was easy. Heroes have to work hard for their glistening halos. And we all know that hard work is painful and usually involves a lot of self-sacrifices. Being good is hard. And that’s why villains tend to opt for the easy road and heroes the righteous one.

  STEP 3 - Perfection Perfected Summary

  Characterization is the most influential factor in creating a deep connection between the protagonist and the reader.

  Characterization is important because literature is a form of self-reflection.

  Humans need to fit. We fit by connecting with others. The hero needs to be relatable so readers connect to him.

  Flaws create credibility and more importantly, believability.

  We want our heroes to be perfect, but to be perfect they must be flawed. And there’s a reason why heroes shouldn’t be perfect. Perfection is hard to relate to.

  For a writer, there is only one genuinely universal language: emotion.

  A heuristic is a psychological rule our brains create to make judgments on the things we encounter.

  Your hero needs to reflect humanity, which means they can't be perfect. She must have a mix of positive and negative traits. When choosing traits, try to choose ones that can evoke conflicting emotions.

  We want our heroes to be perfect, but to be perfect they must be flawed.

  The lie is your hero's darkness. Her realization pushes her into the light. Remember, whatever lies you create should be connected to your theme.

  Lies create conflict. Your story needs conflict.

  Your protagonist should lie to herself. It's key to the success of her character arc. At the start of your novel, she needs to believe a lie so profoundly that it keeps her in the dark about her true ability or power. It's only through the realization that she fulfils her character arc and defeats the villain.

  Introduce the lie as early in your story as you can and have your hero realize the lie during your final plot point. It should be the last piece of the character arc puzzle she needs to defeat the villain.

  One type of lie that serves as a useful tool for a) deepening your character and b) enriching the character arc is the lie your hero believes about herself.

  It's not bravery that's emotive; it's how much the hero is willing to give up that evokes the most significant emotions in readers.

  Creating a soul scar is one thing, but then you have to use it. There’s no point putting a mark in your hero’s history unless it’s going to be relevant to the story.

  Although experiences and soul scars shape a person, it’s how a person reacts to them that define who they are and what they become.

  Everything comes down to choice. Your hero’s reactions to their soul scar experiences define him. What separates a villain from a hero are the decisions and choices he makes.

  Questions to think about

  How can you reflect the theme in your hero’s traits?

  What is your hero’s soul scar?

  5

  STEP 4 – The Function of Archetypes

  We’re all on a journey with our writing, me included. When I came to write this chapter, I naively thought it would be one of the easier sections to write. I’d examine famous books and classic films and pull a cluster of the most-used hero archetypes, their function, their pitfalls, etc. as examples. I should have known it was never going to be that easy.

  The hero archetype doesn’t exist

  Put your eyebrow back down. I see you all skeptical and disbelieving over that subtitle. But the thing is I don’t believe there are hero archetypes. Not in the way there are villainous ones. Evil archetypes are ten a penny: dark lords, femme fatales, psychotic serial killers. They slip off the tongue as easy as wine slips down the throat on a Friday night.

  But hero archetypes… they’re much, much harder to name. Sure, you could tout the maverick cop in a crime series, but wait… that’s a trope, not an archetype. Or the chosen one in a fantasy novel. Again — that, baby, is a trope. Are you stuttering yet? Yeah. That’s about where I was at this point too. Stuck. I felt like a drunk person staring out a rain-slicked window on Halloween. I knew the monster was on the other side; I just couldn’t tell if it was Bigfoot or Michael Myers.

  So I did what I always do when I get stuck: I started thinking about the purpose of this book, the message I want to leave everyone with — the web of connectivity. That’s when I realized I wasn’t looking at the hero archetype correctly. Think of them as an illusion. It’s not that archetypes don’t exist; they do,
but not in the way I used to think.

  So what is an archetype?

  Archetypes are masks worn by characters to serve a particular function at a particular time to move the plot forward.

  Notice how I didn’t say ‘worn by the hero’. That’s because an archetype is a plot device, a function of fiction. It is not a character embodied in a particular role for all time, defined by their ability to only be that one archetype. Think of it as character cosplay for story pace. If you forced a character to act as a mentor to the hero for the entire plot and only that, you’re squeezing your character into such a tiny box you flatten them, literally and figuratively. One of the goals of a wordsmith is to create three-dimensional, rounded characters. That means pouring complexity into a character’s design. Forcing your hero or another character to serve one purpose only is simplistic at best and, at worst, traitorous to your novel’s potential.

  Archetypes as story functions

  Here’s the thing: archetypes do exist, and I will talk about them in a moment, but I want to change the way we’re referring to them first.

  What archetypes aren’t is a type of character. By that I mean I won’t be referring to the ‘lover’ as an archetype, because it’s not. It’s a type of character, sure, and even a trope in romance and YA books. But ‘lover’ doesn’t have a function in your story’s structure. I’ve said repeatedly that in your book everything should be a reflection of everything else. The hero is the embodiment of the theme, and your characters are variations of the moral dilemma buried inside the theme. It all gets down and dirty dancing together in a vat of plot juice. Archetypes are no different.

  I need you to solemnly swear that from this day forth you’ll view archetypes for what they are: a function of the story rather than a hero or character persona. They’re a function and not a cardboard cutout character that stays the same for your entire plot. Characters are transient. Sometimes your mentor will also be your motivator or your ally.

  Before you charge in, dishing out allies and mentors like candy at Christmas, ask yourself what function you need the character and archetype to serve. We might be parents, but we can still play friend to our children or sometimes serve as mentor and coach rather than always being a dictatorial parent. What do your hero and your story need? Is it time he faced an obstacle? Or perhaps discovered new information? Or maybe someone needs to betray him. Let the story dictate which functional mask your characters should wear at a given time. We all wear different hats in life, and your characters can too.

  You might wonder why, if there’s no such thing as a hero archetype and this chapter is all about archetypes, I’m still including it. Your hero needs archetypal functions in your story to progress the plot. While I’m sure someone can reel off a list of a dozen books (like I Am Legend or the movie Castaway) that only have one or two characters, it’s rare, especially in mainstream fiction. Mostly, you’ll make your life hard if the hero doesn’t have other characters to interact with. They provide the parts of the hero that are underdeveloped at the start of the book. Your hero needs the functional archetypes to help him along your story’s journey. He might even embody some of those functions himself.

  Story as a person

  I want you to start thinking of story as a whole — a real person, if you like. Your hero is the embodiment of your story.

  At the start of your plot, your story is a sprawling infant in the blurry dark. Through the plot, your story grows, swelling from events and the characters that populate it and even the obstacles trying to prevent it from reaching old age. As your story reaches maturity, it brings all the subplots of its life together, embodying its life lesson and passing that knowledge to the chosen hero who, in turn, helps him defeat the villain of his story. And so the story passes into old age and the resolution (ending) of its life.

  I like this analogy because it’s synonymous with the human experience. Readers seek out familiarity in story. The aspects of story that appeal to them (other than the dying need to have the question in the hook answered) are the parts that reflect themselves. The bits of character that make us think, or give us epiphanies because we see a part of ourselves in their actions, or perhaps we don’t see ourselves, and that revelation is either reassuring or horrifying in itself.

  Story is human because it endures the same path we do. It is born in the hook of chapter one. It grows and develops through the plot until it reaches the climax and, ultimately, its death in the completion of the story.

  In The Writer’s Journey Mythic Structure for Writers, Christopher Vogler goes one step further using the hero in the analogy:

  “A hero sometimes proceeds through the story gathering and incorporating the energy and traits of the other characters. She learns from the other characters, fusing them into a complete human being who has picked up something from everyone she has met along the way.” Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey Mythic Structure for Writers, P.25.

  Vogler’s explanation is oriented to the hero becoming the full person and the characters and obstacles in the plot help to form the complete hero. While I like that analogy, I prefer to think of the story becoming whole because the hero is the embodiment of the story and not the other way around.

  The Classic Archetypal Functions

  The friend function

  It’s time to whip out the memory jar and dish out the BFF (best friend forever) love. Picturing your oldest bud? The one who held your hair while you ugly vomited in your local nightclub toilets? Good.

  Purpose of the function

  We humans are sociable creatures. We seek out and crave the comfort of others. While there are a million analogies about islands and lone wolves, everyone knows that wolves live in packs and islands are formed in clusters.

  Every hero needs his friends and allies. Just like our flesh and blood friends wear dozens of hats, from forcing our reluctant asses to put pen to paper (motivation), to stopping us from making a mistake (conscience), to being the shoulder to cry on when we’ve been dumped (companionship), the fictional friend has multiple functions too.

  Why it’s needed

  Friend functions include: motivation, problem solving, companionship, information bringer and (the most important of all) conscience. Quite the overachievers, aren’t they? It’s this overachieving status that makes the friend/ally one of the most frequently used devices in a story. If the ally had a recliner in their back pocket, they could double as your hero’s counsellor. Their purpose is to help the hero reach the completion of his character arc by talking through his feelings, challenging him when needed and accompanying him on the journey.

  As angel-on-the-shoulder conscience, the friend function will ensure the hero remembers his moral purpose by posing challenges when he slips down the slope of doubt or rejects the call to action. When this happens, the friend should force the hero into action, or into behaving more heroically either by challenging the hero or expressing the moral behavior the hero can’t because he hasn’t completed his character arc.

  Friends are like rodents. They’re everywhere. But, to use some well-known examples, Samwise is Frodo’s loyal journey companion in Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Harry Potter has lots of friends: Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Dumbledore (although he also serves the guide/mentor function predominantly), Hagrid and, although serving the sly fox as his primary function, Severus Snape is an ally at times too. Friends don’t need to be human. in Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, Jon Snow has a wolf called Ghost who often fights by his side and protects him.

  One of my favorite representations of this function is the unlikely friend. Why? Because there’s nothing I like more than not being able to predict a story. And the most interesting characters are the unexpected ones. An ally doesn’t have to start as an ally. Sometimes they start as a villain or antagonist before gaining the hero's trust and respect. The Evil Queen, aka Regina in the hit TV show Once Upon a Time is an example of a villain turned friend. Regina’s character arc is an
inverse of the typical villain: it’s a redemption arc away from her villainous ways. She gains the trust of Snow White and the Savior and, eventually, becomes a hero.

  The guide function

  Typically, when someone mentions ‘mentor’ in conjunction with fiction, we picture a wizened old geezer with a wispy beard and a port belly. Think Dumbledore. But let’s try to move away from that overused visual, shall we?

  Purpose of the function

  The guide function serves as a representation of the caring, nurturing and teaching relationship between a parent and a child. Most of us are lucky enough to have multiple guides throughout our lives, whether it be your favorite teacher, the boss in your first job that saw a spark in you or perhaps the successful author friend who took the time out of his busy schedule to help you develop. The guide is an easily recognizable function because it’s so relatable to real life.

  The primary purpose of the guide in a story is threefold:

  Teach the hero, whether that’s new skills, new knowledge or otherwise

  Protect the hero from the villain’s devilish party tricks

  Bestow gifts on the hero, from magical death-wielding weapons to the anecdote that helps the hero have an epiphany.

  Why it’s needed

  Well, for obvious reasons: to stop the hero from doing stupid shit. No, really. It is. In the TV series Gotham, young Bruce Wayne’s guide is his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred guides him in a multitude of ways from preventing him from selling his family company Wayne Enterprises, to giving him advice on girls and even training him physically for the combat he will face when he becomes Batman.