When writing, the portrayal of various characters can be a challenge. Whether they are villainous or heroic, you want them to be three dimensional. Even the best plot in the world can fall flat if the characters are insipid and two-dimensional. Heroes and villains must have believable motivations and personalities which clearly distinguish them from each other. I have found the hero or heroes of the stories to be the most problematic.
Superheroes are popular these days. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, the Avengers, Ant-Man, et al populate the movie screens these days and before that comic books. The appeal of these characters is not hard to understand. They’re easy to write, for one thing. Armed with either super powers or fantastic inventions, they do battle with evil and ensure justice is done.
Comic book superheroes are a product of modern society but they’re really nothing new. Larger than life heroes have been a fixture in many cultures for thousands of years. Like present day superheroes, they were either gifted with extraordinary powers or armed with magic weapons.
Heracles (or Hercules as the Romans called him) was an early version of Superman. A son of Zeus sired with a mortal woman, he was gifted with enormous strength and fought with many monsters, defeating them all. So popular was this figure, he crops up in other cultures such as the hero Samson of Israel. In fact both of these characters may be based on the much older figure of Gilgamesh, ruler of Uruk, said to be of mixed divine and mortal ancestry (much as Heracles was).
Ancient heroes often battled monsters threatening humanity, or obtained some boon such as fire and an important food crop such as wheat or maize. Sometimes they would manifest as twin heroes such as Castor and Pollux, one mortal, the other semi-divine. Navajo stories speak of Slayer of Monsters and his twin Born for Water, who destroyed monsters who were depopulating the earth. The theme of twin heroes crops up even today in the original Star Wars trilogy, where it is revealed that Luke and Leia are actually twins.
Not all ancient heroes had super powers. Some, like the modern-day Batman, were simply gifted individuals with special weapons; King Arthur with the mystical sword Excalibur, the cap of invisibility given to Perseus when he went to kill Medusa, the staff of Moses used to swallow up the magic staffs of the Egyptian priests and part the Red Sea.
Some heroes lived entirely by their wits. Odysseus, during the years he spent trying to return home after the Trojan war, relied on trickery to overwhelm the Cyclops attempting to devour him and his crew, and had his men block their ears with wax to keep them from hearing the alluring songs of the Sirens.
One thing many of these heroes have in common is their fallibility. Very few if any of them had it easy. Gilgamesh fell into a deep depression after the death of his friend Enkidu. Fearful of death himself, he went in search of the secret of eternal life only to have it slip through his fingers. Heracles was subject to occasional fits of madness actually killing some of his own children during one episode, while Odysseus’s arrogance often got him into as much trouble as it got him out. King Arthur sowed the seeds of his own destruction when he inadvertently begot Mordred on his own half sister, Morgan-le-fay. Perseus accidentally killed his own grandfather when throwing a discus at some funeral games.
It’s important to keep the above in mind when writing fictional heroes. Modern-day hero making writers sometimes forget to give their characters feet of clay, instead making them flawless, invincible and beloved by anyone who meets them. There is a term for these types of characters; a Mary Sue. Mary Sues tend to be female but can be male as well. Male and female Mary Sues are interpreted as a sign of amateurish writing although if you’ve watched recent movies and tv series, you’ve probably seen more than your share of Mary Sues. Of course ancient composers of legends and myths created their own share of Mary Sue types.
The temptation to make your hero so perfect they can triumph against anything is a strong one. But the heroes we remember best are the ones less than perfect, whose struggles against their own flaws mirror our own. So make your heroes bad tempered, overweight because they like sweets too much, awkward, depressed, traumatized, whatever it takes to make them live and breathe on the pages you write.
