Who doesn’t love a hero? Someone you can idealise, see yourself in, or aspire to. We love to follow them on great adventures, endure dangers both physical and emotional, and we like to hope that they make it out alive. A compelling hero is key to the success of any story. Whether they’re paragons of virtue vanquishing a mighty foe, or just some guy trying to make their way through this bitch called living, we need someone to root for. Thankfully media is rife with great heroes to take inspiration from in my own writing so a lot of the heavy lifting is done for me.
I’ve compiled a list of five heroes in fiction that have influenced or inspired me. Some of these are characters I’ve loved since I was a child and others I’ve only recently discovered. But they all excited me, and they’ve all influenced my writing and helped me create better heroes.
Luke Skywalker
From Tatooine farmboy to Jedi master. Luke’s journey through the original trilogy is the archetype for the hero’s journey. Despite this, Luke never feels formulaic or boring. We see him struggle with anxiety, rage, and fear but it’s Luke’s constant struggle to do the right things despite his shortcomings that makes us fall in love with him. He’s not a paragon, he’s just a boy thrust into exceptional circumstances and trying to protect his loved ones. His character is only made more effective when contrasted with his father Anakin Skywalker, better known as Darth Vader. Anakin’s turn to the dark side is informed by a fear of losing what he loves whereas Luke’s adherence to the light is informed by an acceptance that they may die but that he’s going to try saving them anyway. In the end of the day it’s Luke’s love that pulls Anakin back to the light showing himself to be a true hero.
Indiana Jones
How good do you have to be to have two heroes on this esteemed list? Ok maybe I’m a bit biased considering Star Wars and Indiana Jones were two of my main obsessions as a kid but for good reason! George Lucas just gets heroes. Indiana Jones differs from Skywalker in that we join his story when he’s all ready an established adventurer. It’s seeing his previously firm beliefs about how the world works challenged that make him so compelling. He’s just as amazed about seeing (or not seeing) the Ark’s power as the rest of us. Indiana Jones was written to be an American James Bond, a fact made clear in Temple of Doom when he literally comes on screen dressed in a white tax that bears an eerie resemblance to a certain Scottish actor’s iconic outfit as the spy. This is hammered home even further when that same actor comes into the third film to play Indie’s father. Effortlessly suave and cool, Indiana Jones is a riot to watch. Whatever your opinions of the subsequent movies, it’s hard to watch the original three and not find at least one moment that gets you punching the air and whooping with glee. It also helps that Indie has a hobby which we can all empathise with, punching Nazis.
Barney Guttman
Barney’s a recent addition to my heroes list. Created by Hamish Steele and transitioning from comic to cartoon to comic to cartoon to comic again, I first encountered Barney stressed the fuck out at work and in dire need of a comfort show to watch. This led me to Dead End: Paranormal Park, the cartoon based on Hamish’s Deadendia graphic novels and became immediately obsessed with Barney. He felt so real, from the relationship he has with his brother to his struggles getting boys to like him I saw a lot of myself in him. But it was actually someone else that I saw in him that caught my attention. Barney is trans, and so is my fiancé and this was the first time I saw someone like him represented as the hero in a story. This sent me on my own journey of realisation of how scant the representation of trans men in fiction is and inspired me to start writing my own story with a protagonist inspired by my fiancé (coming soon to book shops in about four years' time when I get around to finishing it). The thing I loved about Barney is that, despite being surrounded by the supernatural, a lot of his conflict centres around what is real. Whether it’s feeling like he has to hide parts of himself from his boyfriend or running away from a family that doesn’t fully accept him, Barney’s struggles feel authentic and relatable.
Ciaphas Cain
If you haven’t guessed already, I’m a massive Sci-fi fan. I love exploring new galaxies and meeting monstrous and intriguing aliens. One of the franchises that I have developed a growing interest in is the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. One of the first series that brought me into this world was Sandy Mitchell’s Ciaphas Cain books. Centring on the titular protagonist, we see Ciaphas do his absolute most to avoid the kind of insane violence that the 40K franchise is known for and yet somehow finding himself constantly in the middle of it. Ciaphas’ cowardice and the way that everyone around him seems to think of him as this heroic figure bring a lot of humour into what can sometimes be a very depressing universe. This dissonance is part of what makes Ciaphas a great character, he is the absolute antithesis of the kind of hero you’d expect to be in this universe and yet he works so damn well! It’s important to look at your hero in relation to the universe they inhabit and see how you can use that to make your hero even more interesting.
Shizuku Tsukishima
Shizuku isn’t a hero in the traditional sense. She doesn’t perform feats of daring do or slay monsters but her arc in Yoshifumi Kondō’s Whisper of the Heart really spoke to me and quickly elevated the film to one of my favourite Studio Ghibli films. Spurred on by a need to prove herself while the boy she has a crush on goes to Italy to study violin making, Shizuku becomes obsessed with the task of writing a novel to prove that she can follow her dreams also. This comes at the expense of her relationships with her friends and family, her education, and her own physical health, perfectly emphasised when she quite literally falls from her desk and sleeps on the floor because she’d been writing all night for so long. In the end, the novel isn’t amazing, it has promise but it’s not perfect. It’s this gut punch that resonated so much with me about Shizuku’s character. Creatives are often presented with the idea that in order to be a “real” artist, we have to throw our whole being into what we create without regard for anything else. The starving writer stereotype is treated like an ideal. Whisper of the Heart demolishes this idea, showing that, while it’s important to be passionate about your art, it’s not worth destroying yourself for. Shizuku fails at writing a brilliant novel, but she succeeds at writing a novel, and she succeeds at proving she can follow her dreams. Whisper of the Heart asks, isn’t this enough? It’s so important to allow our heroes to fail, to fall short of their goals because in the end of the day, that’s life. I know I might never write a classic that will be studied for generations. But I might write something that someone likes. Isn’t that enough?
I picked these five because they all had an impact on me and they all taught me something about characterisation and humanity which have helped inform my own writing. Who are your five? What did they teach you? I’d love to know.
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