Some of you may remember Edgar from the 1997 Blockbuster “Men in Black”. He’s here to help me talk about a mistake a lot of amateur authors make when writing their protagonist. I say amateur authors because writers who do this rarely get paid for it. When the character says the words you put in his mouth and performs the actions you lay out for him it can be easy to see him as a sort of avatar. He becomes a second skin that you put on to interact with the universe of the story. The hero becomes your Edgar Suit. You’ll see this happen in a lot of stories that are characterized as “Mary Sue” or Mary Stu’s”. When the story stops being about the journey your hero takes and becomes about wish fulfillment for you, then you’ve lost the ability to make the reader truly care.
An actor can wear a characters skin and inhabit the story without ruining it. Even an actor who is also the director as Mel Gibson was in Braveheart can keep the character real. But in the Universe of the story, the writer is God. What happens then, when the character is really the writer? The character is also God, and there can be no real drama. This is something I may circle back to in the future, because it’s that critical. One of the most important jobs you have as a writer is to convince the reader that the hero can lose. A hero’s worth is determined by the difficulty of the challenges he faces, but when you feel like the hero is representing you, you have a conflict of interest. Can you convincingly batter the hero down? Humiliate him? Have him rejected by the love interest in favor of his hated rival when you’re doing it to yourself? The better story would have you bring the hero low so that it’s that much more inspiring when he digs down deep, summons up all his courage and finds a way, even though he’s just hopelessly outgunned, outnumbered and outclassed.
I believe it’s best for a writer to find a balanced perspective to tell the story from. You need to be close enough to know what happens, and to care about it enough to convey the proper emotions to the reader, but far enough to keep your ego out of the equation. That way when the girl next door goes to the prom with the quarterback stud instead of the hero, it’s not you standing in the rain in your powder blue rental tux with the soggy bouquet of flowers. The epic opening monologue from the movie Conan the Barbarian is a perfect example of good narrative distance.
Between the time when the Oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryus
There was an age undreamed of. And onto this, Conan
Destined to bear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow.
It is I his chronicler alone who can tell Thee of his saga.
Let me tell you of the days of High Adventure!
In other words, I saw this. It was awesome. Let me tell you about it. Be Watson to your heroes Holmes. Keep your distance so you can keep your objectivity, and don’t steal your hero’s glory fixing his fights so you can feel like a winner. It will make you a better writer.
In conclusion; Edgar suits, good for Intergalactic Cockroach Bounty Hunters bad for writers.
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