Write Your Hero: How to Create Fan-Favorite Protagonists, from Heroines to Anti-Heroes and More: The Writer's Craft Series

By Lewis Jorstad

Your Hero is the Soul of Your Novel.

Whether they're a young and bright-eyed visionary or a disillusioned outsider, your novel's protagonist is the central pillar around which every part of your story is built. From your plot to your cast, theme, and even your reader's experience, this character will form your novel's foundation.

Because of this, crafting a well-written hero is a critical step for writing a novel, as well as a challenging one. Your protagonist will need a backstory, identity, and character arc, alongside meaningful goals, desires, and conflicts to face. All of these elements and more will combine to form your hero's unique journey—meaning you'll need to understand all of them to truly bring your protagonist to life.

Luckily, that's where Write Your Hero can help!

• Learn the five key traits of every successful protagonist,
• Master the dual journeys that will define your hero's story,
• Craft compelling challenges and inner conflicts for your protagonist to face,
• Build a vibrant world around your new hero,
• And bring it all together in a final profile of your protagonist.

By the time we're done, you'll have everything you need to write a fan-favorite hero of your own!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lewis Jorstad
• Release date: Dec 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781955157049

Book preview

I

The Heart of Your Story

The test of any good fiction is that you should care for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail.

Mark Twain, American author and humorist

1

What Makes a Hero?

When most of us think about our favorite stories, the first thing we remember are their heroes. From Thor to Katniss, Zélie to Sherlock, Rapunzel to Ashitaka, these central characters are what give life to their respective adventures.

The question is, who are these heroes really? What role do they play in their stories?

Believe it or not, choosing your novel’s central character won’t always be as straightforward as it might seem. Sherlock Holmes didn’t spring into Sir Conan Doyle’s mind fully formed, and Tomi Adeyemi likely went through multiple drafts before Zélie became the character she is today. Instead, these authors had to choose their novel’s heroes with care, long before they could dig into the finer details of those heroes’ unique journeys.

This is why, to write a fan-favorite hero of your own, you first need to understand what you’re dealing with. So, while we’ll dig into things like identity, inner conflict, and backstory as this book unfolds, let’s begin by unpacking exactly who your novel’s hero will be!

What I Mean By Hero

As you might already know, your hero will be one of—if not the—most important characters in your novel. Because of their role as your story’s central character, they’ll act as the driving force of your plot, the star of your cast, and in many ways the backbone of your novel itself.

Still, not every central character fits the mold of a typical hero. Often, the word hero brings to mind golden-haired boys slaying dragons and saving princesses, but plenty of stories follow central characters who are anything but. They might be morally grey, quiet and subdued, uncertain of their destiny, or even downright misguided. After all, Charles Foster Kane is just as much a central character as someone like Cinderella, Bilbo Baggins, or Daenerys Targaryen.

Instead, these characters are what are called protagonists.

You may be familiar with this term already, but if not, a story’s protagonist is simply its central character. This protagonist acts as their story’s focal point, as well as the primary catalyst of change throughout their plot, making them by far the most important character in their novel.

Because of this, when most writers describe their novel’s hero, what they actually mean is their protagonist. Fortunately, no matter what term you use, the end result is the same. What really sets this central character apart isn’t necessarily who they are, but how they affect the rest of your story—specifically your plot, pacing, theme, and cast.

* * *

Your Plot:

Because of your protagonist’s central role, their actions and choices will be key to shaping the events of your plot. They’ll be the character who resolves your novel’s core conflict, and thus determines the final outcome of your story.

Your Pacing:

Your protagonist will also shape your novel’s pacing. As your story unfolds, you’ll have both moments of action and quiet reflection, combining to create a steady ebb and flow of tension within your plot. Your hero will be especially important in those more reflective scenes, not only giving readers a window into their mindset, but also a chance to process the events of your novel for themselves.

Your Theme:

Next, your protagonist’s journey will play a big role in revealing the message or point of your novel. This is because the challenges they face and the lessons they learn are one of the main ways you’ll communicate your story’s theme to readers.

Your Cast:

Finally, your protagonist will leave a major impact on the lives of your cast. Not only will their actions physically affect those around them, but their relationships with other characters will also help those characters grow and evolve throughout your story.

* * *

Basically, your protagonist is the linchpin of your novel, acting as a central pillar around which you'll build every part of your novel. Whether they follow the classic hero stereotype or not, this central character will be a critical component of your story!

Likewise, your hero will also influence your readers.

Well-written novels have the power to transport us to other worlds, allowing us to live lives far different from our own and experience events we would never otherwise see. This is only possible because we have an avatar within the story in the form of its protagonist. This protagonist is who we experience the novel through, giving us someone to cheer for and creating an emotional connection that keeps us coming back for more.

It’s this emotional connection that is particularly important when writing your protagonist. When you read a novel, your brain reacts as if you were actually living in that story. This is why your heart rate jumps during tense moments, why you cry when your favorite hero is hurt, and why you grin when everything turns out okay in the end. You aren’t just rooting for that protagonist—you’re living through their story alongside them.

This is the real power of your hero. Not only will they shape your story itself, but they’ll also allow your readers to witness the events of your novel as if they were happening to them. There’s simply no better way to elicit genuine emotion in your audience than to provide them with a compelling protagonist to experience your story through!

Going Beyond Personality

With that said, understanding your protagonist’s role in your story is all well and good—but actually fulfilling that role is where things get tricky.

When creating their heroes, most writers start with personality. They might describe their protagonist as confident or shy, meek or rambunctious, comedic or serious. From there, they’ll often consider things like their likes and dislikes, their hopes and fears, and perhaps a bit of their backstory too. However, this is usually the extent of things. With these surface-level traits in hand, many writers dive straight into their first draft, only to realize just how little they actually know about their protagonist a few scenes in.

Now, I don’t mean to sound disparaging here! Personality and preferences are a natural starting point for developing your hero, because all of these traits are easy to visualize. In fact, you probably already have a decent idea of your protagonist’s personality, even if you’re still in the early stages of creating them!

Instead, the problem is that personality alone isn’t enough—at least for your hero.

A single word like trusting or naïve can tell you a lot about your characters, and for the bulk of your cast, this will be all you need. Your protagonist, though, is a different case. Because of their central role in your story, you’ll need a deeper understanding of both who they are as a person, as well as their place in your novel.

This is the real challenge of writing a hero, as well as the primary challenge we’ll be tackling throughout this book. When writing your protagonist, your goal is to create the sensation of a living, breathing person through shorthand. You and your readers both know your hero isn’t actually real. They’re a character you’ve created, yet the best heroes still feel real despite this. This is thanks to an arsenal of clever tricks that authors use to give their central characters depth, without spending decades uncovering every detail of their protagonist’s life.

You’ll need to master quite a few of these writing techniques to successfully write your own hero—but, I don’t want that to discourage you! Throughout this book, we’ll be exploring a wide variety of writing tools that should help you along, from character arcs to structure and story goals. As intimidating as these might sound on the surface, in the end, they’ll all combine to create two simple things:

A compelling inner life, where your protagonist experiences internal struggles, obstacles, and questions that leave them meaningfully different by the end of your novel,

And an engaging outer conflict, where your hero fights against external challenges in pursuit of some larger goal.

By mastering these two sides of your protagonist’s story, you’ll be well on your way to writing a hero your readers will want to remember!

Lessons from Chapter One

We have a long way to go before this book is finished. As straightforward as your novel’s hero may seem now, there are a lot of pieces that need to come together to ultimately form their journey, as well as connect them to the world around them.

Fortunately, you aren’t on your own here!

I’ll be here to guide you every step of the way, from the basics of your hero’s inner life, to the more complex matter of weaving your plot and protagonist together. For now, the most important thing is simply understanding who your hero is in the context of your story—that way you can ensure your efforts are going to the right place.

To that end, you’re well on your way. As we wrap up this first chapter, you should have a clear idea of who your protagonist will be, even if the details of their adventure are still fuzzy. Of course, there is one issue that could throw a wrench in this, and that’s the difference between your protagonist and main character—but, that’s something we’ll tackle in the next chapter.

* * *

In the meantime, here are a few questions to help you apply what you’ve learned to your hero:

What is the basic premise of your story?

How would you describe your novel’s plot in two or three paragraphs?

How will your protagonist fit into that plot?

What do you already know about your hero, and what do you still need to figure out?

Why is your protagonist’s story worth telling?

Once you’ve answered these questions, I’ll see you in Chapter Two!

2

Protagonists vs. Main Characters

For just a moment, I want you to imagine something: What if I told you that Scout isn’t the protagonist of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird? Or that Ishmael isn’t the protagonist of Moby Dick?

Would you believe me?

To be honest, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, at least not at first. We’re so used to thinking of our protagonists as the characters whose perspective our stories are told from, yet the reality is a lot more complex. Yes, your protagonist could absolutely be both the catalyst of your story and your reader’s avatar—however, they don’t have to be.

Scout isn’t the protagonist of her story; it’s her father, Atticus Finch. Ishmael isn’t the protagonist of Moby Dick; that title belongs to Captain Ahab. So, who are these characters? What role do they play in their stories?

Fortunately, the answer is simple. They’re not protagonists, but main characters.

Two Types of Central Character

One of the trickiest things to deal with when teaching the writing craft is just how inconsistent many terms are.

For example, what’s the difference between episodic fiction and serialized fiction? What about scenes and settings? The answer isn’t always clear, because many writers use these terms interchangeably—and that’s especially true when talking about your protagonist.

Believe it or not, there actually is a difference between your protagonist and your main character. Your protagonist is the primary catalyst of your story, while your main character is simply the window through which readers experience your novel. While most stories combine these two roles, not all do, and that makes this distinction important to understand. Yet, many writers don’t realize this, simply because the words protagonist and main character occupy the same space in their minds.

So, to clear things up, let me explain the difference between these two terms.

* * *

Protagonist:

Your protagonist is the focal point of your story. They’ll drive your plot forward, resolve the core conflict of your novel, and ultimately experience some kind of growth or transformation along the way. This is the character most people think of when they imagine a hero.

With that said, your protagonist will usually be the same as your main character. Most protagonists, from Walter Caldwell to Alina Starkov, are both the catalyst of their respective plots and the character readers experience their stories through—though, this isn’t the case for all protagonists.

Main Character:

Next, the main character is typically an optional character in most stories.

If one is present, this character becomes your reader’s surrogate. Readers experience the story through your main character, even though that character isn’t the primary force driving your plot. Instead, they provide a unique perspective, allowing your audience to see things your protagonist might not be privy to.

While most stories combine their protagonists and main characters, there are perfectly valid reasons to separate the two; we’ll discuss those in just a moment.

* * *

Alongside these two types of central characters, there’s actually another character type you’ll want to consider—and that is the point of view character.

This character, also referred to as your perspective character, is the character whose viewpoint your story is told from. If you're writing your novel in first-person point of view, this will be your narrator, while in third-person they’ll be the character the bulk of your story focuses on.

Fortunately, this third character type is rarely an issue, because again—these three characters will almost always be one and the same. Luke Skywalker is both the protagonist, main character, and point of view character for Star Wars: A New Hope, just like Paul is for Dune, and Dorothy is for The Wizard of Oz. Still, some stories do choose to separate these. For instance, John Watson is the main character and point of view character for most of Sir Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, while Sherlock himself is the protagonist. Meanwhile, Mattie Ross is the main and point of view character for True Grit, while Rooster Cogburn fulfills the role of protagonist.

Hopefully you’re beginning to notice a trend here. When separated, the main character is almost always the point of view character, as they’re the one watching the story unfold around the protagonist. The only exception to this is if your story features multiple point of view characters, either in the form of multiple protagonists or multiple main characters. For now, this isn’t something you should worry about, but it is worth keeping in the back of your mind. We’ll be revisiting the idea of multiple heroes later on in Part Six.

Case Study: The Great Gatsby (1925)

While knowing these three definitions is great, talking about these types of characters in the abstract can still be rather confusing. Luckily, seeing them at work in a real novel is an easy way to clear things up—which is where the first case study of this book comes into play!

If you’re an American like I am, you’ve probably read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, at least once in your life thanks to your high school literature classes. Still, if you haven’t, the premise is fairly simple. The Great Gatsby follows Nick Carraway as he moves to the New York village of West Egg. Nick is an easy-going man, and his laid-back attitude earns him the friendship of his wealthy neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is well known for his extravagant parties and eccentric behavior, and Nick soon learns why—Gatsby is in love with one of Nick’s distant relatives, Daisy Buchanan, who lives across the bay in East Egg. However, Daisy is married to Tom, and so Gatsby is left to throw his parties and stare longingly toward her house in the hope she might leave Tom for him.

Unfortunately, things don’t turn out quite as he plans…

While Daisy does have an affair with him, Tom eventually finds out and retaliates. He reveals that Gatsby made his money through illegal bootlegging, and so Daisy stays with Tom for the sake of propriety—despite knowing that Tom is having an affair of his own. Where things really unravel is when Daisy is driving Gatsby home. On the way, she ends up hitting and killing Tom’s mistress by accident. Gatsby takes the blame to protect her, and a few days later, the woman’s husband kills Gatsby before committing suicide.

At Gatsby’s funeral, Tom admits to Nick that he revealed Gatsby’s identity to the killer on purpose, and Nick is left pondering the sad state of this world. In Nick’s eyes, the decadence and selfishness of these people was their downfall, and he soon leaves New York for good.

Now, at first glance, you might think Nick doesn’t play much of a role here—he simply watches the events unfold around him, rarely taking action and instead preferring to observe.

The truth, though, is that Nick is why this story works.

Gatsby’s actions drive the plot, create most of the novel’s conflict, and eventually end with his downfall, making him this story’s protagonist. Meanwhile, Nick provides an important viewpoint for us as readers, because he is this story’s main and point of view character. He’s uniquely able to communicate the themes of decadence and decay that are so central to this story, because his position as an outside observer highlights the tragedy unfolding around him. If we saw this story through Gatsby’s eyes, it simply wouldn’t carry the same impact.

Reasons to Separate the Two

This all raises an important question—should your protagonist and main character be the same?

In most instances, I would say yes. While plenty of stories do separate their protagonist from their main character, it isn’t the norm for a reason. Typically, your story will be served just fine by a single central character, and you’ll be creating a lot less work for yourself in the process. Still, there are a few situations where separating these two makes sense.

* * *

A Unique Perspective:

As you hopefully saw with The Great Gatsby, sometimes a story is best told through the eyes of an outside observer. While your protagonist will be fully involved with the events of your novel, your main character doesn’t have to be, allowing them to provide an alternate (and valuable) perspective for your readers.

The best way to think about this is in terms of a magic trick. If your story was told from the perspective of the magician, it would be hard to keep the trick a secret from your readers. However, if the story was told by a member of the audience, you would be able to maintain that mystery for much longer. Even if your protagonist was still the magician, your main character could keep the magic of the trick alive, while offering a unique perspective to your readers.

Someone to Relate to:

Another situation where separating your protagonist and your main character makes sense is when your protagonist is unlikable.

Your readers need to identify with your novel’s main character, whether that character is your protagonist or not. This means that, if your protagonist has a particularly frustrating personality, it’s possible

Reviews for Write Your Hero

[AnIncrediblyGinormousBookaholic · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

He tells you how to construct a good hero, which really isn't anything you haven't heard before or can't find somewhere else. It's all classic literary stuff. I was interested when I saw that he included Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think I'll come and refer to this book again.