The Hero

I chose Theatre as a Major in college because of several reasons; I liked acting, I was interested in directing and I absolutely loved writing. Ever since I was six, I remember drawing about 30 faces on the back of a manila folder and naming each character. I even had stories behind each one. For some reason, I loved giving my characters problems one on top of the other. Actually, all my characters had were problems. There really was no story, just a character with situations that seemed too intense to be true. Eighteen years later, my Play Structure and Analysis teacher asked the class this question, "What is a protagonist?". It was a fresh semester in the first day of school and no one answered. The teacher looked at the list of students enrolled and called on my classmate. "What is a Protagonist?" He asked again with a smile. My classmate answered the first thing that came to her mind, "The Main Character?"

I learned a lot from my 5 years in college. One was to never answer "a person, place or thing" to the question "What is a noun?" and the other was what I said earlier. They answer wasn't wrong, it was just not enough to say "the main character".But props to my classmate for taking the hit for all of us because I'm pretty sure because we were nervous and unsure at the time, all we could really come up with was "the main character".

What is a main character or protagonist anyway? Let's jump into Christopher Vogler's world and call this main character or protagonist the 'Hero'.


What is a Hero and How Can I Identify One?
(All Quoted phrases are from Christopher Vogler's book, A Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers)

•  "One who learns and grows the most in the story"
• Give your hero obstacles and goals to achieve. By doing this, your hero will gain wisdom and understanding.
• "The most active person in the script" 
• Don't make the tragic flaw of making your hero passive or even absent at times that he/she should be the most active. 
• "His will and desire is what drives most stories forward"
• "In control of his own fate"
• "Should perform the decisive action of the story"
• "Takes the most risk or responsibility"
• "Sacrifices"
• "Willingness to give up something of value, perhaps even her own life on behalf of an ideal or a group"
• Has the most to lose and the highest stakes
• Carries the super objective.
• Present in the climax
• If this character is taken out, the story will stop.

How to Create a Realistic Hero:

• Add character flaw.
• No human is flawless. A flawless character is not realistic. Plus, giving your hero a character flaw not only makes him more interesting, it also gives your character room to grow and establish a 'character arc'.
• Add Universal and Unique characteristics
• Add a universal quality to your hero
• A quality that everyone can relate to: 
• love, anger, lust, despair
• Add a unique characteristic 
• A characteristic that clearly makes your hero different from other people
• forgetful, unique imperfections, vices, weird hobbies, etc. 
• Add some conflict (man vs. man) fear of growing up, fear of getting rejected, traumatized, etc. 
•  Apply the 10 bulleted list above to your hero

This list is not complete. Follow me and watch out for future blogs about the Hero and Archetypes. 

Scroll down to the store to see more information on The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler

Source:
Vogler, Christopher, A Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Michael Wiese Productions 2007.