Are awesome protagonists harder to write?

My favorite protagonists to imagine are without doubt those who inspire awe in one way or the other. They may be butt-kicking, very intelligent, selflessly heroic, physically gorgeous, or some combination of these. However, as much as I gravitate towards these characters, I find them challenging to write because you have to balance their awesome qualities with flaws without making them too unlikeable. On the other hand, I don't find wimpy or otherwise humble characters very inspiring or likeable.

Any tips on how to write an awe-inspiring but balanced protagonist?

Anything awesome is harder to write.

But we've had a billion + 1 topics on avoiding Sue-dom, and I've found it's not so much about adding arbitrary flaws - "make Alice dumber, have Bob be a selfish Jerkass," what have you - as not going over the top with their good qualities.

There's nothing wrong with attractive characters, but I don't see why they have to be The Beautiful People unless there's some plot-relevant reason, e.g.: They become a Memetic Sex God in your world, or the admiration/envy people have for them helps drive the story.

Ass-kicking is all well and good, but you have to admit it's unrealistic to make the hero Billy Badass the One-Man Army and everyone he fights Made of Plasticine.

Same thing with "selflessly heroic." You can't have your characters jumping out of a plane to save an orphan Once an Episode. Scale it back some, and maybe even acknowledge that sometimes, people will still die despite their best efforts.

edited 15th Aug '12 3:49:38 PM by Wheezy

In general, it's rarely a good idea to try and make your audience feel a specific way about your characters beyond just "they're interesting".

Well, not exactly, or else Black-and-White Morality wouldn't be the trope most fiction - and by extension, most good fiction - is based on.

I don't use it often myself, but there's nothing inherently wrong with having some characters the audience is supposed to like, and some they aren't.

Yeah, I realized that was an overly broad statement shortly after I wrote it. It's more accurate to say that it's rarely a good idea to try too hard to get your audience to feel a certain way about your characters, and that some perceptions are easier to create than others. My point here is that "awesome" isn't one of those, so generally rather then trying to write "awesome" protagonists, I just write protagonists doing things and let the readers decide how cool it is.

Really, it's just a more meta form of Show, Don't Tell.

edited 15th Aug '12 3:27:58 PM by nrjxll

Well, the current plot bunny I'm working with has a husband/wife team as the protagonists, and they obviously have to find each other physically attractive.

You raise an interesting point about tacking on arbitrary flaws to characters to avoid Sue-dom being a bad idea. I myself believe that what's really important is whether characters can experience challenges in one way or another. Characters could be generally good people who aspire to do the right thing as much as possible, but they should experience some kind of difficulty even if it isn't a moral one.

I think that from my perspective one primary difference between "awesome" and "Sue" is in the character being fallible (exceptions notwithstanding - I can imagine an infallible character, especially if kept at least partially off-screen). For example, if the character is an incredible combatant, I would expect them to nevertheless make at least some mistakes. Indeed, perhaps their impressive quality is how they handle those mistakes, rather than in never making them. It also helps, I think, if there are characters than can better them in at least some aspects.

As to your described case, having characters that see each other as very attractive, what comes to mind for me is this: if your perspective allows, perhaps show them from the perspectives of others to portray their mutual attractiveness as at least partially subjective: to each other they are perfectly beautiful, while others see them as less, even if still attractive. On the other hand, you might portray them instead as seeing each other as more beautiful than any other despite acknowledging each others' imperfections: while to another those might mar their looks, to them such things are negligible.

Well, I tend to think all of my characters are awesome in one way or another. But I don't consciously try to write them that way, not really anyways. I don't think, "Hmm, what awesome thing can I make Alex do in this episode?" (Shameless Self Promotion Here) Instead, I think, "Okay, how would Alex react to this situation?" And then if it turns out he does something "awesome", that's great. But I don't think writing a character just so she or he can do awesome stuff is a very effective method.

So if you think your protagonists are awesome, that's great. That's awesome. But it's not like "awesome" can be quantified since it's mostly subjective. So from that perspective, an "awesome" character shouldn't be any harder or easier to write, since the author really should just write the character and let the audience decide if she or he is awesome. At the same time, though, there's nothing wrong with making your character a person you think is awesome in one way or another.

edited 15th Aug '12 5:57:59 PM by resetlocksley

I don't try to write characters that are awesome, so I can't judge. My experience is that the more nuanced a character, the harder they are to write (but also the more rewarding).

However, I think a statement like "you have to balance out their awesome qualities with flaws" misunderstands what fiction is about. All characters with any significant amount of pagetime will have both flaws and strengths.

"Are good things harder to write?"

Well, yeah. Obviously.

Also, even worse, one person's awesome is another person's insufferable.

Lots of people LOVE Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark. Think he is the most hilarious most hot most amazing character in the Avengers movie verse at the moment.

Lots of other people want to smack him and think he's an absolutely horrible character, due to the very same quips that cause people to like him.

So yeah...it's hard, and will be very dividing.

I think this is the same confusion as often arises when talking about "strong characters". An awesomely written character can be a pathetic douchebag, while an admirable character can be a one-dimensional cardboard cutout.

Do you mean awesome as in 'inspires awe in the reader', or as in 'way cool'?

There's generally some overlap between the two meanings.

It's not hard to write a "cool" protagonist.

It's hard to write one that isn't burned at the stake for being a Mary Sue

I would say that it would be hard to write an awesome character without making them seem Sueish. Maybe it would be easier to write a character that grows into their awesomeness.

The OP makes clear that they mean a "way cool" protagonist, not "awesomely written".

Making an awesomely written protagonist is of course always extremely difficult.

A character who inspires awe is one who accomplishes the job that their creator intended. They are therefore a well-written character - particularly since awe is a very strong emotion, and thus hard to inspire.

So yes. Well-written characters are harder to write. That should be pretty obvious.

I would also like to add that in that sense, an awesome character need not be "awesome."

I would suggest that whilst there's an element of challenge to both, it's harder to inspire strong positive emotions than negative ones.

It's easier to make a reader hate your character than love them, since the former involves an element of deliberately getting things 'wrong'.

adding my 200 won:

Be aware that YMMV: Tony Stark of the Iron Man films and Batman a la Chris Nolan. Love it or hate it applies here.

I likes Iron Man 1 & 2, Batman Begins was average for me. The Dark Knight and the Dark Knight rises: awesome!

Both Robert Downy Jr's Tony Stark and Christian Bale's Batman have quirks and foibles that make the movies fun. The villains are fleshed out. Venko and Bane are on par with Darth Vader.

Captain America, Thor and The Avengers bored me to tears.

I've seen every SFX of people tossing tanks and planes around. I agree with Red Letter Media (who wants a pizza roll, send me a message on this webzone...), SFX gets in the way of a good story. Even if the special effects are words.

In the awesome book "Listen Up You Primitive Screw heads", Mike Pondsmith of R. Talsoran games (he was the head writer of Cyberpunk 2020) spotlighted players (and player characters) he didn't like. The ones that made him get all Killer Gamemaster. There were the scrub, the Godmodder and the Stop Having Fun guys. But the one that fits here is the G. I. Dunnomaker (aka the Schwarzenegger ).

The G.I. Dunnomaker sounds awesome (combat stats through the roof) but is utterly useless outside of combat. A flat character when there's no shooting. Pondsmith mentions killing one character like this by having a doc slip a bomb in his cyber implants. How? The player was so focused on getting more cyber gizmos that he never stopped to think that he was vulnerable.

A character who can toss main battle tanks around, can buy fortune 500 companies with their pocket change and date supermodels is what most people think of when you say "awesome character". I say it's when it's plot with a thin character draped over it.

The movie Thor: a bunch of "fish out of water", brought down to normal cliches that have been done better in other movies. About as much fun as watching paint dry. Captain America, the actors phoned it in, you could have put Thor in there and the movie and it wouldn't change. It was as if the writers said to themselves "Be sure that one is wearing a bowler hat or the fanboys will kill us!" The Avengers was more of the same, if you've seen the trailers you've seen the film. Loki, the Red Skull, flat and boring.

The worst offender is Sucker Punch. It's a bad comic that thinks it's a film.

Remember the w's: who, what, when, where and why

• Who: can the reader/viewer describe your character without saying what they look like?

• Why: can they describe what your character is doing without mentioning the plot trinket?

(I call the first two the Plinkett Test)

• What: Are they motivations clear or is it a Kudzu Plot?

• Where and When: locations and timelines are important but don't let them overshadow the characters. If the characters are punching zombie ninjas in Paris there better be a good reason plot wise, or you could just set the scene in Cleveland.

edited 2nd Sep '12 5:31:48 AM by TairaMai

Am I going against the prevailing opinion by thinking that an average, realistic character is much harder to write than one whose every action and characteristic is crudely geared towards making the reader go OMG SO COOL, and also much more worth it?

Depends. Do you mean harder to write in general, or harder to write successfully?

Awe is quite a tough emotion to inspire, given how easy it is to come across as trying too hard.

edited 2nd Sep '12 12:18:30 PM by Iaculus

I fully agree with this.

I don't think there's much of a difference.