{"id":380,"date":"2013-06-11T20:45:35","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T03:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/?p=380"},"modified":"2013-06-11T20:45:35","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T03:45:35","slug":"hero-is-a-four-letter-word-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/hero-is-a-four-letter-word-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hero” is a Four-Letter Word (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpted from “Hero” is a Four-Letter Word<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Hero Breaks Down!<\/b><\/p>\n

Groucho Marx once said, \u201cYou\u2019re headed for a nervous breakdown. Why don\u2019t you pull yourself to pieces?\u201d That, in fact, is what we\u2019re going to do to our hero.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Now many writers focus on a hero and a villain as the primary characters in their stories. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. But as we are about to discover, there are so many more options for creative character construction.<\/p>\n

Take the average hero. What qualities might we expect to find in the fellow? In fact, there are four principal attributes.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the traditional hero is always the Protagonist. By that we mean he or she is the Prime Mover in the effort to achieve the story goal. This doesn\u2019t presuppose the hero is a willing leader of that effort. For all we know he might accept that charge kicking and screaming. Nonetheless, once stuck in the situation, the hero provides the push to achieve the goal.<\/p>\n

Another quality of a stereotypical hero is that he is also the Main Character. By this we mean that the hero is constructed so that the audience stands in his shoes, or at least right behind his shoulder. In other words, the audience identifies with the hero and sees the story as centering around him.<\/p>\n

The third quality of the most usual hero configuration is being a \u201cGood Guy.\u201d Simply, he intends to do the right thing. Of course, he might be misguided or inept, but he wants to do good, and he does try.<\/p>\n

And finally, let us note that heroes are usually the Central Character, meaning that they get more \u201cmedia real estate\u201d (pages, screen time, lines of dialog) than any other character.<\/p>\n

Listing these four qualities we get:<\/p>\n

1. Protagonist.<\/p>\n

2. Main Character.<\/p>\n

3. Good Guy.<\/p>\n

4. Central Character<\/p>\n

Getting right to the point, the first two items in the list are structural in nature, while the last two are storytelling. Protagonist describes the character\u2019s function from the Objective View described earlier. Main Character positions the audience in that particular character\u2019s spot through the Main Character View. In contrast, being a Good Guy is a matter of personality, and Central Character is determined by the attention given to that character by the author\u2019s storytelling.<\/p>\n

You are probably familiar with the terms Protagonist, Main Character, and Central Character.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve probably also noticed that I\u2019ve used them here in very specific ways. In actual practice, most authors bandy these terms about more or less interchangeably. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that, but for structural purposes it\u2019s not very precise. That\u2019s why you\u2019ll see me being something of a stickler in its use of terms and their definitions: it\u2019s the only way to be clear.<\/p>\n

In fact, it is not really important which words you use to describe the four attributes of the hero.\u00a0 What is<\/i> important is to recognize each of these qualities and to understand what they are.<\/p>\n

“Hero” is available for Kindle<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Hero\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpted from “Hero” is a Four-Letter Word The Hero Breaks Down! Groucho Marx once said, \u201cYou\u2019re headed for a nervous breakdown. Why don\u2019t you pull yourself to pieces?\u201d That, in fact, is what we\u2019re going to do to our hero.\u00a0 Now many writers focus on a hero and a villain as the primary characters in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-characters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p36xpN-68","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}