Heroes Insider Weekly

Hawkeye's Psychotic Tips for Psycho Writing

How to be a Psychopathic Writer:

Part 1: Remove The Secret Weapon

         G’day guys. Matt Stuart aka Hawkeye checking in here with my short but very bitter sweet article for the magazine this week.

         Now if you’ve come here you want to find out how to torture your characters, I assume? In how many different ways you can make them squirm and beg at the mercy of their captors? Then you’ll have to wait until next week.

         Nah, I’m just joking with you all. I’m here to deliver to you tricks and tools of the trade that will hopefully soon one day make me a household name uttered in the same sentences with GRRM or J.K Rowling.  Each week shall be different and hopefully more knowledgeable than the last. I might do something nice and short or something really long and meaningful. Either way, it is now it is my turn to ask you a question.

         What makes a hero? What qualities? Is it his skill? Nope. How about how strong the lad is? Again wrong. What about good looks? That always helps right? God you people are hopeless. What’s the real thing that makes the hero survive.

         Did any of you think about luck?

         That’s right, pure simple, dumb everyday luck and chance. Take it away and sooner or later your hero will surely be dead. I kid you not, look at all of the lucky escapes people have had over the years thanks to someone but themselves. I’m pretty sure about every series has had at least one.

         Let’s have a look at a couple of quick examples.  How many companions have saved people? Sandor Clegane at the Red Wedding saving Arya Stark is just one that springs to mind. Had it not been by chance that he found her she could have died then and there. Another example would be when Jesse thought Walt in Breaking Bad had poisoned the kid and went to kill him. Walt sure was lucky he could talk his way out of that one, manipulating Jesse to redirect his focus to their real enemy.

         There are a lot of things that come into factor with luck. Remove it, and suddenly your character can be in a world full of shit. So many things can go wrong unless they get lucky. Luck plays a huge factor in any story and without it your characters are all doomed!

         Now what I believe and what most people probably don’t is the fact that killing a character, especially a main one when their luck has run out can send the story boosting to new heights. However there always needs to be a valid reason, as to why you have killed a character. Never forget that.

         We shall go into killing characters next week and why you should. Hopefully I’ll be more prepared next week, but I like keeping things short and simple making the audience think about it themselves. Purely because I’m evil, mwahaha.

         Until next time people! I shall have something prepared wonderfully for you including a snippet from the Last Braves where I put into use the killing of a main character.

          If you would like to read more by @MattStuart he has two fantasy novels, Hunters, book 1 of the Toldar Trilogy and Braves and a saucy romance Liquid Fire.