Hello and welcome back.

Yesterday I talked about creating villains, today I will talk about creating heroes, also known as the central character or protagonist of your story.

To start, your hero must have some sort of flaw that is challenged by the events and the person must either overcome the flaw or is challenged by it. In a nutshell use the 5 W’s. Your story is about a _____ who _____ did what_____ when_____where_____why_____ and don’t forget how_____.

As an example a story about a scientist who discovered the cure for cancer (or insert any other disease) naively believed Big Pharma would put profits over people and bring the cure to the public. After he goes into hiding when his life is threatened he goes on a mission to get the cure uncovered and brought to the world.

Another thing to remember when creating your hero is they can’t be the perfect person. The guy who is heavily muscled, has ever woman swooning over him, or the lady who is so beautiful every guy is ready to divorce his wife to be with her.

Creating protagonists who have no flaws creates for a boring story. You will need to make your character fail at things throughout the story, that way it becomes a situation where maybe this story doesn’t have the main character win in the end.

There will be allies for your hero, and other enemies besides the villain.

A trick I’ve mentioned before is list ten things that could challenge the hero, or ten flaws the hero could possibly have and use the one most appropriate for your story and/or the one that will cause the hero the most difficulty in overcoming. This way you keep the reader guessing as to whether or not your hero will win in the end.

Hope this helps, have a great day.