To have a solid story, your writing has to be full of all kinds of characters—from protagonists to quirky side characters to the love interest to the villain. But one character specifically is missing from a lot of modern writing—a character that is vitally important to your story and your impact on readers.
Who is this crucial piece to a powerful novel?
The hero.
The Captain America, and the Tony Stark. The imperfect savior, and the wounded human. The loyal friend, and the burdened leader.
The character that points to your theme, teaches a lesson, and leaves your audience feeling empowered and motivated.
And if you want to give your readers a strong message and leave them convicted, you need a hero. Someone to give your writing that extra impact and emotion, because, without heroes, your writing is bland… and powerless. Read on to find out how to truly make your characters heroes.
Why Heroes?
Heroes are what made the classics. And they have all of a sudden become forgotten by culture.
Take Lord of the Rings for example. A classic that spans the test of time and, while being over sixty years old, still enraptures audiences all over the world. Why? Because it had that vital piece: heroes.
In fact, it had a whole cast of heroes. Without them, Lord of the Rings wouldn’t even be remotely close to the classic we know and love.
All the classics that control literature have solid, well-developed heroes. And not perfect heroes with perfect lives in perfect homes—no. Heroes that are scared, like Frodo, and cowardly, like Sam.
Without heroes, Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Keeper of the Lost Cities, and Harry Potter wouldn’t be the stories we have fallen in love with.
But what do heroes do? Why do we need them?
1. Heroes Set Examples
One way to leave your readers with a message, or a theme of any sort is by providing them with heroes.
And I’m not saying that your hero has to be pretty and perfect and do everything right and always make the right decisions, but they have to be able to use their mistakes and flaws to tell the readers what you want them to hear.
For example, Black Widow from the MCU has so many flaws—she was an assassin and, like she says, has a lot of red on her ledger. Yet through her mistakes, she is able to show the Marvel audience that our pasts do not define us. We can fight for good and make a new future for ourselves. We don’t have to have our futures determined by the mistakes in our past.
Or for a literary example, Frodo from Lord Of The Rings has a lot of problems and makes a lot of mistakes. But he is able to show readers that we need someone outside of ourselves to save us sometimes. God loves and uses us even in our failings and mistakes, and just because we mess up doesn’t mean He can’t use us.
Without a hero, you lose a very powerful way to create a theme and leave your audience feeling impacted and empowered.
Yet when you add heroes, you give readers the chance to follow an example that you want them to. You give them someone to look up to, to follow, to idealize, and to want to be like. And you give them someone to learn from—and in a non-preachy way, too.
2. Heroes Show Us There Are Heroes
Another big problem with the absence of heroes is that we forget there even are heroes. Our literature is so full of morally gray characters and characters that make bad choices, and no heroes.
But when we put heroes in our writing, we are showing our audience that there are still heroes. And the encouragement in that is astronomically huge.
For a more contemporary example, Before I Called You Mine is what I would call my soul story—the book that I feel literally describes me. And it’s because in it the protagonist pushes past deep emotional loss and pain and shows me that we can keep fighting. We can keep going even when it is so so hard.
Or, the dad in Coral. He would definitely not be seen as the hero from the beginning of the story, but as you keep reading about his unchanging love and care for his son and his wife, you are just… brought to tears. His unconditional, misunderstood love, showing me that there is that kind of love out there, encouraged me to keep loving. Keep caring.
We need to be reminded that there are heroes and we can make a change in this world when we fight for the right things. We need to be encouraged to keep fighting—keep standing up for what’s right.
And heroes are that encouragement. Heroes show us that it can be done, even when it’s hard.
Seeing heroes in the stories we read, instead of just “meh” characters, encourages us to be like them, and calls us to a higher standard when we see that people can change, and people can do the right thing even when it’s hard, and people can fight for what’s right.
Forgetting that heroes exist is a great tragedy, and by putting them into our stories, we help our readers not forget. (For more reasons why writers need heroes, check out this article.)
But does literature really need heroes? What do books look like without them?
Does Literature Really Need Heroes?
So now we know why we need a hero, and what a hero is, but what would literature be without them? Are they really that important?
To answer this, let’s look at two examples of books that are done really well, but could have been done a lot better if they had heroes.
For this first example, I honestly really enjoyed it. But I enjoyed it solely as entertainment. It wasn’t impacting, wasn’t powerful, and the only thing it made me do was… laugh. The series was not a bad series, but it could have been done so so much better if it had heroes. Especially its second installment.
In it the main character pretty much gets beat up the whole book and doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything.
Yet if they had added a hero the story could have had so much more impact because we could have actually learned something more than that people with broken legs can climb up cliffs and still win sword fights.
A hero could have taught the main character that true friendship is loyal and steadfast and doesn’t depend on circumstances. A hero could have shown readers that even when friends go through a lot together and maybe even hurt each other, they can still be friends because friendship goes beyond that.
Yet because there wasn’t a single hero and the book was made up of sketchy pirates and betrayals, I learned nothing and didn’t even come away wanting to read the next book. It needed a hero to give it some extra flavor.
So was it a terrible book? No. Could it have been one hundred thousand times better with a hero and a few lessons? Absolutely yes.
So yes, literature does need heroes if our goal is to strengthen and empower our audience. Literature without heroes is missing out on a whole avenue of impacting readers, why would you choose to let your story make that fatal mistake?
How To Make Your Characters Heroes
We need heroes. They’re vitally important and are a piece that so many authors are missing. But how do we create heroes that impact our readers? How do we take our characters… and make them heroes?
1. Give Them Flaws
This is a very important point, but a point that a lot of people get wrong.
Obviously, our characters need flaws. It’s what makes them sympathetic and relatable and not just paper-thin, fake people on a page. But when dealing with a hero—someone that a lot of people are looking up to and following their example—you have to identify the flaws as flaws.
You can’t give a character a flaw just to make them relatable, and then turn that flaw into something good, or acceptable, or not even address it at all.
Heroes should be able to learn from their flaws and you as a writer use that to teach your audience, but you can not, under any circumstances, put those flaws in a light that makes them ok. You can have an assassin that does a lot of bad things but then becomes a hero as they learn to fight for the innocents and maybe even sacrifice their own life in a fight for good, as long as you make it clear that murdering is wrong.
A good way of doing this is to show the consequences of the flaws. Show how murdering, stealing, or putting your identity in others, for example, can affect the character. And then as the character grows and finds the truth, you’re teaching your audience that truth.
So give your characters flaws, but make them learn from the flaws so that they can teach your audience.
2. Make Them Interesting
The one thing about heroes that pushes a lot of people away is that heroes tend to be… boring. And stagnant. And bland.
Don’t make your heroes like that. They don’t have to be boring unless you make them that way.
People think that heroes have to be perfect, always make the right decisions, and always do the right thing—they don’t. Heroes make mistakes, mess up, and hurt people, just like everyone else. They have flaws. They’re not perfect.
So when crafting your heroes, don’t make them perfect. Perfect is boring.
Give them tragedy and loss. Give them a quirk, a weakness, a hurt. Some people would say Captain America is boring, and maybe a lot of people don’t like him for that.
But Tony Stark is a hero too, it just takes him a while to show it. And he’s really interesting.
The thing that makes him interesting is that he isn’t perfect. He makes mistakes. He has weaknesses. He has heartaches and trauma in his past.
And your characters need that too—they need to be fully rounded and filled out. Give them a weakness, flaws, backstories, traumas, and quirks. Fill out a character questionnaire to really get inside their head. Know how they think by taking a quick personality test from the perspective of your character.
Get feedback from other people on how sympathetic your character is. Listen to other people’s opinions—how do they view your character?
It’s so important to be both inside your character’s head, but also to get outside feedback because sometimes you’re too close.
But most of all, don’t make them perfect, take the time to really invest in diving into your character, and your readers will fall in love. And when your readers adore the hero, everything the hero does has more impact.
3. Give Them Someone Outside Of Themselves To
a) Love
When your character has someone to love, they automatically have someone to fight for. It also makes them selfless, two characteristics of a hero.
And, when you give your character someone to love and fight for that is not themselves, that instantly makes them more sympathetic and relatable. It makes your character both a hero and a likable hero.
b) And follow
Just because a hero has other people following them and their example, doesn’t mean they don’t need anyone to follow themselves. Preferably, they would be following God or a mentor that represents God or answering to an authority like the government or a leader.
Because every hero was once someone in need of a hero to save them.
Maybe it’s a mentor, a parental figure, an older sibling, or even God, but to make a character a hero, they need someone’s example to follow themselves. They need someone to answer to outside of themselves. No one’s going to be perfect, and a hero can’t set an example for others unless he’s following the example of someone else.
Heroes need people outside of themselves to love and follow, or they’re not going to be any different than the villains who are doing everything for themselves and for their needs and wants and by their rules.
4. Reward Their Good Choices
One of the biggest problems I see in the heroes in current literature is heroes that commit treacherous evils… and nothing ever bad happens. Or they are valiant and heroic… and nothing ever happens at all.
For example, in a lot of stories the main character or the good guys do really bad things, and after they turn to the “good” side, those bad things are never punished. In The Runaway King, Ronin is the pirate king and actually really hurts Jaron, and yet his bad choices are never punished.
Or, a lot of books show characters doing good, moral things that are never rewarded, for example, in Letters to the Lost, Rev is a super solid, dependable character. And yet his good choices and lack of bad choices are never rewarded.
You have to show that when your characters do something good, even if it’s not a “happily ever after” ending, there is something good that comes out of it.
Going back to the Captain America example, at the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier, Cap stops fighting Bucky, and Bucky almost kills him… but he doesn’t. Steve’s good choice to sacrifice himself for Bucky and stop fighting doesn’t end in something necessarily “good” for him, but it does end in Bucky’s change of heart. So it’s a good reward for Cap’s good choice.
But when characters aren’t rewarded for good choices, at least in some way, or are rewarded for bad choices, that can put across a very harmful message. As writers, we have to be very clear on what is good and what is evil and be careful to not imply anything when writing our characters and the outcomes of their choices and actions.
5. Give Them Something To Fight For
A true hero will keep fighting for what he believes in, and no matter what, until his dying breath, keep fighting for that. When they know something is right, like Captain America in Captain America: Civil War, they won’t back down for anything.
This shows very strong character, and, when push comes to shove, shows the difference between a true hero, and a villain. Because a villain, or an anti-hero, won’t sacrifice everything for their beliefs. A hero will.
Strong beliefs can come from your hero’s fears, and how that drives them to fight against their fears. Or they can come from a hero’s past—fighting for something connected to their backstory and trauma. Strong beliefs can even come from the people they love around them because when characters love others, they’re going to want to fight for what those people are fighting for too.
For example, in The Runaway King, Jaron is fighting for his country, and to get his friend back. His beliefs and fighting for his country come from his past as the son of a king who never fought or stood up for his country. And his fight to get his friend back stems from his fear of not having any friends or people he can trust.
Any belief, any cause, any truth is something your character can be fighting for, as long as it stems from their internal conflict and they fight for it with everything in them. The important thing is giving them something to fight for and pushing them to keep fighting for it even when it’s hard. That’s what forms a true hero.
The Ultimate Hero – Jesus Christ
In the end, though, we have to remember who the ultimate hero is—Jesus Christ.
And while our heroes do not have to be (and actually definitely should not be) perfect like Him, we have to make sure that everything we write is glorifying Him. Our goal in writing is to honor and praise him, and with every word we write, every character we create, and every hero we craft, we have to remember Who we’re doing it for.
If you’re struggling with creating heroes, just look through the Bible at David or Gideon, or Rahab. None of them were perfect, and none of them made all the right choices, but in the end, they glorified God and brought Him glory.
Model your heroes after them—not perfect, with lots of weaknesses and flaws, but pointing everyone who sees them to the ultimate Hero.
And, if you’re still struggling to write heroes, we have created a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating compelling characters so that your heroes are both compelling, and heroic.
So do our books need heroes?
I think Bucky would say yes. Because if Captain America wasn’t the hero he needed, Bucky wouldn’t have been saved. Bucky would be… The Winter Soldier, not the Bucky everyone loves.
Broken characters need heroes to save them, like that quote says, “evil queens are the princesses who were never saved.” We need heroes to set examples and teach readers, but we also need them to do what heroes do best: save.
Our words are powerful. We can make a difference. We can create stories that are powerful and effective and make a difference. And heroes can be that tool in using our words to change the world.
Bucky needed Steve, just like our stories need heroes.
