Comments on: Writing Excuses 4.2: Heroism

By: Blógünder Schlock » Blog Archive » The Warded Man – Best Convention Swag Ever

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:43:23 +0000

[...] for you without my help. I’m going to tell you that this book delivers the goods described in this episode of Writing Excuses: It makes me stand up and [...]

By: Clémentine

Clémentine — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:05:06 +0000

Thank you, Howard.

And I agree with the idea that every type of character can have his own heroism part, no matter if he has just a little role in the story.

By: Howard Tayler

Howard Tayler — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:30:28 +0000

Yes, Clémentine, anyone can leave a comment! Yours got stuck in the spam-trap for a bit, but it’s free now.

I was contemplating “everyone has his part of heroism” yesterday as I watched the 2008 Doctor Who Christmas Special “The Next Doctor.” I think the writers screwed it up. The Doctor defeats the Cybermen, yes, and he has help, yes. But there was a particular moment of triumph in which The Next Doctor realized his son was about to die on a scaffolding.

The Doctor jumped in and saved the boy heroically, but this would have been ever so much better if The Next Doctor had done the deed. Let The Doctor get credit for the big wins (the Cybermen, the Daleks, etc) but let the little guy have the little wins — especially if they’re that personal, and that intensely important.

By: Clémentine

Clémentine — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:41:05 +0000

Oh great ! Is anyone can leave a comment ? Really ?
I am just discovering this website (thanks to Brandon) and I think that it is so great because helpfull for writers… Something like this doesn’t exist in France (yes, I have to tell : I’m french and I assume) ! However, and pardon my awfull english if you can, I’m very intersting on “what is heroism” definition. All opinion that I heard and read are pleasants because some are very differents of my idea and others are totally like mine. In fact, I adore the idea of sacrifice, the heroism perfection to me is this absolute necessity of the main character’s lost. By lost I mean many things like life, love, family, friendships, but it have to be significant for help the readers identify themselves to characters and be concerned by their fate.
I perfectly understand when John Brown says that all character type’s heroism is expressed in the audible Podcast because in a story, if the heroism is only for the main character it is boring, no ?
I am working on a fantasy story with many characters and I want that everyone has his part of heroism…

By: CM

CM — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:44:34 +0000

I read some fiction like that, There were three books. One for this girl, her friend, then her brother. But The girl’s brother gets kidnapped in the first one, he’s almost not at all in the second, then his story is in the third. This made the second one really hard for me to read. I wanted to find out what happened to him, not this girl I hardly knew and only saw occasionally in the first book.

By: Kaa

Kaa — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:59:08 +0000

Piers Anthony does something similar to what @Lisa was talking about. His Xanth “trilogy” (currently numbering somewhere in the 30s) has main characters that step up, have their book (or two or sometimes three), and then (for the MOST part) fade into the background of future books. They come up, are mentioned, still feature into the landscape of Xanth, but they’ve had their figurative fifteen minutes.

Also, addressing the exact thought @Lisa had: After the first time an author did that to me (killed off the main character), I would then expect it, and it would become either a reason NOT to continue reading his works (“Why bother? He’s just going to kill off the character I like.”) or it would become its own gimmick.

As I recall, Terry Pratchett does the same thing in his Discworld books. The characters sometimes appear as “background” characters in books where the main character is someone else. (I’ve only read about six of the books, so my sample size is small.)

By: Blógünder Schlock » Blog Archive » We Are Not Legion, Actually

Blógünder Schlock » Blog Archive » We Are Not Legion, Actually — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:14:05 +0000

[...] Bettany), and we’ve got the good-hearted, faithful slackwit Jeep (played by Lucas Black), but the Hero should be making us stand up and cheer at some point, maybe by overcoming impossible odds or personal weakness. Michael doesn’t fit [...]

By: CM

CM — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:00:04 +0000

I know this is pretty late, but we were talking about Hero’s who don’t get rewarded and I found a really good example, so I will post it here just because.

I recently watched Batman Forever. Near the middle of the movie Twoface sets a bomb in the circus tent and demands the identity of Batman or everyone gets blown up. Well, Bruce starts fighting these bad guys off, but doesn’t have his batman gadgets to stop the bomb. So, because the superhero is busy right now, Robin’s family tries to stop evil themselves. Robin eventually makes it, stops the bomb and saves the day, then looks back to find that his entire family had been killed in the process of saving complete strangers.

By: Derby

Derby — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:34:07 +0000

@Lisa. The short story (actually stories) I have been working on have a main character ‘disappear’ at the end of a story and another character which was in the story becomes the MC in the next story. In the final story, the original MC will return.

By: NickH

NickH — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:40:50 +0000

I’m the kind of sad guy who watches “How we made this” bits on DVD’s of shows I like.
I was checking out the Lost season 1 features, and apparantly the producers toyed with the idea of all through the pilot focusing on Jack and then killing him at the end of that episode. So you got really invested in this guy who appeared to be the main hero and then -WHAM- the Island just kills him.
Of course they chose not to do that, but it would have been an excellent way to give a big up-front sense of just how dangerous the environment is on that island – rather than offing an almost-dead-anyhow pilot.