Ice's writing tips

Making a Hero with flaws

Okay! So I finally have been able to find time to get on here for once. I am so sorry guys, I will try to update the other stories as much as I can but I do have a logical reason for my absence. I have been in intensive sessions with editors and traveling to writers conferences everywhere, pitching my fantasy story. I will try my best to not go dark again but I have a very important pitch session in may with an agent from Disney Hyperion so I am at the moment trying to plan and write a pitch that will hopefully get me sighed *Crosses fingers* BUT! I will continue this little tip book of mine and hopefully if you guys comment enough, I can get some more ideas to write tips about. Okay so here we go! :D

Oh my gosh, I've seen this too many times in writing, not that its a bad thing but...some people jsut don't do it correctly (i used to be one of these people and occasionally still am).

Lets show an example, you have your hero, your main person everyone is following, the person people are routing for to win. They show up at the villian's doorstep ready for a totaly smack down. You are ready, you have your tissuebox, your popcorn, you've locked yourself somewhere (for me the bathroom) because you have annoying family that will interupt you reading. The hero makes their move like this:

Sally walked into the room, taking deep breaths, clutching the knife in her hand, ready to get revenge for the person that took everything away. Carefully the thirteen year old walks up to the man, slowly, quietly. She takes the knife and attacks him from behind "this is all the pain you caused me!" she hisses. The man is overpowered by her strenght and dies at her hand.

The end

......................

....................

.........

just take a minuet

.......

to let that sink in

............

Okay class, what was wrong in that example? First of all, the villain was stupid, second, she's a thirteen year old little girl tackling down an adult man, killing him with in a few seconds of meeting. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I WANT TO PULL OUT MY HAIR WHEN I READ HEROS LIKE THIS! i mean come on guys, this is the season finale of your favorite show and it ends like-like this garbage! I mean, i wanted to gouge out my eye balls with a melon baller reading some of my older stuff.

Okay, (i realized i say okay a lot o.o) to continue, we writers tend to make our Heros power level to be 1000000000000000 and make them invinsible. Yes i know, i know, i'm being harsh but honestly, readers want something somewhat realistic. Even if your story is a fantasy or sci-fi, it still needs to have a realitic hero.

Now i know what your thinking 'but what if my character is like a god and has power level 1000000000?' well i'll explain.

i have immortal beings in my book but they ALWAYS have a weakness, ALWAYS! They may not be killed with water or a sword/gun shot wound but they have a weakness like family, or something like that.

FLAWS! FLAWS! FLAWS!!!!!!!!!

how more important can i make them. To characters, they are like Oxegyn, if they don't have it, they are lifeless. I mean, how many perfect people have you met in this world? Like seriously, Perfect! NO ONE IS! i mean litterally, no one is perfect, i will bring back that old hannah montana song 'nobody's perfect' and play in in your ears for decades to come!!!

I talk a lot about flaws and people sometimes don't realize how immportant they are. We have our flaws, our ticks, our things that bug us.

Back to the example, adding a flaw tones down the power level of 1000000000000 to maybe 100 or something. We don't want a totally wimpy hero (unless you are doing a story like diary of a wimpy kid), we want them to be strong and give us hope but also make us want to slap them because of some of the idiotic things they do.

Another thing that i see all too well, we writers like to hurt everyone but our main hero. Sure, sidekick Robert gets his head almost severed off and Julie has missing fingers but Sally has a paper cut on her itty bitty finger, awe, poor sally -___-'

We want them to get hurt too but keep it realistic, we of course don't want to just attack the main character in a battle scene (Unless your evil like me and possibly kill them off) but we want them to get hurt too.

So to sum it up, don't make them power level 100000000, make them have flaws, make them get hurt sometimes and NOBODY'S PERFECT!

Anyway, this chapter is more towards the action/Fantasy/sci-fi/adventure type of story. For like normal average/below average characters in stories like diary of a wimpy kid, just study random kids at school and use them as characters (thats what i do...sorry Nathan!)

Anyway, remeber to comment your opinion down below, click that star up at the top and leave any suggestions for more tips and as always, I apologize for grammar mistakes (as usual).

~Ice