Writing Fantasy Heroes

by Jason M Waltz (ed)

  A heroic fantasy hero might undertake this quest, but his reasons would be different. You certainly couldn't appeal to his patriotism, or his desire to do ‘the right thing.’ You'd likely have to pay him, either with gold or something else of value, and he'd be alert for any double-cross. He'd complete his task efficiently, with little fanfare, unless he discovered that his employers had double-crossed him or left out a particularly important bit of information. If so, he would have no qualms about betraying them and resolving things in his own way (The best example of this, and of the concept of the veteran hero in general, may be The Wild Bunch. Ernest Borgnine tells William Holden, "That [giving your word] ain't what counts! It's who you give it to!”).

  And this is what readers love about him, and what compels writers to tell stories about him. While the ‘hero's journey’ will always remain a valid template because it reflects who we are, the ‘post-journey hero’ shows us as we hope we'd become. It's comforting to think we might be as tough, resourceful, clever and dangerous as Conan. We may identify with Luke Skywalker or Frodo, but we want to be Han Solo or Aragorn.

  So when creating your hero and telling his adventures, don't be afraid to make him a grown-up, with experience and mileage under his sword belt. To quote disgraced guru Carlos Castenada, "Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.” And while the tale of the making can be thrilling, the tale of the made has its own unique thrills as well.

  Two Sought Adventure

  Howard Andrew Jones

  I learned the hard way (years of rejections) that before you can write any character successfully, you have to know who they are and what their likes and dislikes are, what they think, how they react, what they like to eat...almost everything. You should strive to know them so well that when you chance upon something about them you haven't figured out—their favorite drink, say, or how they ready themselves for bed—the answer is obvious to you. You have to inhabit the skin of your protagonists. Believe me, if you don't find them fascinating enough to spend time with, no one else will want to do so either.

  That's not to say you have to know the life history of every doorman or spear catcher who stumbles into your scene, but you certainly have to walk in the shoes of all of your main characters, and all of those who have any kind of substantial interaction with them. You can get a lot of great mileage out of a minor character with a little motivation who interacts with your protagonists, as opposed to having your heroes converse with a dull characteroid.

  One of the ways Shakespeare reveals character is by having his protagonists converse with a variety of people. These interactions highlight different aspects of the central characters so that our understanding of them deepens. The bard is a fine model in all manner of ways, but relative to this discussion I should mention that one of his great strengths is bringing life to even minor players, like the two murderers of Henry VI in Richard III. When Henry confronts them, one of the fellows has an attack of conscience, which makes the other's deed all that more monstrous. A lesser writer wouldn't have bothered giving either of these one-scene characters personality or motivation.

  If you have multiple heroes, then you'd better know them equally well: strengths, weaknesses, peculiarities. Since I'm assuming that you're interested in adventure fiction if you're reading advice from me, let me also assume that you're wanting your heroes to function as a team. That's good, but it's no fun watching a team work perfectly all the time. Design those heroes so that there's natural conflict built into their relationship—create rough edges so that there will be abrasions sometimes when they interact.

  The first adventuring heroes I ever saw in action were Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Some people leave McCoy out of the discussion and think the focus is about the friendship between Kirk and Spock, but if they do, they're missing a key ingredient. These three are the unit that makes the greater hero.

  In lesser hands, and in popular mythology, Kirk is a simple action hero—maybe he's a little smarter than some, but he's mostly sly and he always has an eye for the ladies. In the strong episodes, notably almost all of those scripted in the first season of the original show, Kirk is a man of action who is also an intellectual. Having Spock and McCoy as his advisers allows the viewer to see the internal dilemmas Kirk is feeling acted out between Spock (intellectual) and McCoy (emotional/intuitive). Of course the best Star Trek writers rounded these characters so that they became much more than cardboard representations of Kirk's internal concerns. But the two different understandings of the world as seen by Spock and McCoy are the genesis of the conflicts between the three characters and why, when they work together, great things get done. It is as though one super hero—or one fully realized human being, with intellect and intuition/emotion working together—is on the job.

  There are a large number of fine Kirk/Spock/McCoy scenes, but since my primary focus in this essay is actually on how to portray two heroes working together, I want to excerpt a great scene from a relatively weak episode in the second season titled “Bread and Circuses.” The Enterprise is exploring a parallel world where Rome never fell. Spock and McCoy are in a cell after having survived participation in a televised gladiatorial combat. They have no idea what has been done with the Captain. At the start of the scene, a fairly relaxed looking McCoy is watching Spock methodically examine the bars of the cell. Descriptive notes are from my transcription; I have no idea what the stage instructions were.

  McCoy: (Genially) Angry, Mr. Spock, or frustrated perhaps?

  Spock: Such emotions are foreign to me, Doctor. I'm merely testing the strength of the door.

  McCoy: (Still kindly) For the fifteenth time.

  Spock: (Returns to inspecting the way the door is attached to the cell.)

  McCoy: Spock. (He stands up and walks close, looking a little awkward, as though he's uncomfortable with what he's about to say.) Spock, I...know we've had our disagreements. Maybe they're jokes, I dunno. As Jim says, we're not often sure ourselves sometimes (laughs self-consciously) but what I'm trying to say is—

  Spock: Doctor, I am seeking a means of escape. Will you please be brief.

  McCoy: (smiling) Well, what I'm trying to say is...you saved my life in the arena.

  Spock: (matter-of-factly) Yes, that's quite true.

  McCoy: (A beat—his expression falls and he snaps) I'm trying to thank you, you pointed eared hobgoblin!

  Spock: (A beat—he is briefly puzzled, then recovers.) Oh, yes, you humans have that emotional need to express gratitude. 'You're welcome' I believe is the correct response. (He turns away to continue his examination of the bars.) However Doctor, you must remember that I am entirely motivated by logic. The loss of our ship's surgeon, whatever I may think of his relative skill, would mean a reduction in the efficiency of the Enterprise and therefore—

  McCoy: You know why you're not afraid to die, Spock? You're more afraid of living. Each day you stay alive is just one more day you might slip and let your human half peak out. That's it, isn't it? Insecurity. Why, you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm decent feeling.

  Spock: (This has hit home and, looking away, it takes Spock a moment to pull together and turn with aplomb and arched eyebrow to act as if nothing has happened.) Really, Doctor?

  McCoy: (Softening) I know. I'm worried about Jim too.

  Now a lot of the reason the scene works is because of the way Deforest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy carry it; Nimoy as Spock is clearly masking his own nervous energy and frustration by trying to be productive and methodical. The sudden shifts in tone are handled beautifully by Kelley, who plays McCoy as a kind-hearted man who can take sudden offense then immediately back step. But a lot of the power is there in the script as well, understated. McCoy realizes that Spock is hiding his emotions and decides to call Spock on it, but when he sees his shot went home, his expression softens and he admits what Spock is unwilling to say, that he is worried about what's happened to Kirk. They
manage to communicate even if it's not in the way either of them is comfortable doing.

  Fritz Leiber's famous rogues, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, are similar to Spock and McCoy in that they don’t always work smoothly together. It's well noted that there is a city mouse/country mouse dichotomy between the men, but there is also one of regional difference—Fafhrd coming from the icy northlands and the Mouser from the warmer south—and size—Fafhrd being large and powerful, the Mouser being small and quick. Then, too, they differ in temperament, and not along stereotypical lines. While the Mouser is quick and sly, Fafhrd is no hulking dummy, though he can be stubborn. Both are cynical, but whereas the Mouser has a rather ironic modernist take on events, Fafhrd can be both superstitious and sentimental. Yet they are as close as brothers. They bicker and fight and sometimes even drift apart, but they stick together and when the going gets rough they trust one another, no questions asked. That doesn't mean that they can't be irritated with each other even as they're working together.

  I could cite any number of wonderful bits from the long career of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but one of my favorites comes from the moment in “When the Sea King's Away” when they are exploring a strange cavity beneath the ocean. A mysterious magical entity has created a tunnel through the water for them. The ocean is held up a few feet over their heads, but rolls on to the sides. Fafhrd, who is far less cautious, advances in with a torch, which is filling the area with smoke. There is plenty of phosphorescence to see by.

  “Blubber brain!” the Mouser greeted him. “Put out that torch before we smother! We can see better without it. Oh, Oaf, to blind yourself with smoke for the sake of light!”

  To the Mouser there was obviously only one sane way to extinguish the torch—jab it in the wet muck underfoot—but Fafhrd, though evidentially most agreeable to the Mouser's suggestion in a vacantly smiling way, had another idea. Despite the Mouser's anguished cry of warning, he casually thrust the flaming stick into the watery roof.

  There was a loud hissing and a large downward puff of steam and for a moment the Mouser thought his worst dreads had been realized, for an angry squirt of water from the quenching point struck Fafhrd in the neck. But when the steam cleared it became evident that the rest of the sea was not going to follow the squirt, at least not at once, though now there was an ominous lump like a rounded tumor, in the roof where Fafhrd had thrust the torch, and from it water ran steadily in a stream thick as a quill, digging a tiny crater where it struck the muck below.

  “Don't do that!” the Mouser commanded in unwise fury.

  “This?” Fafhrd asked gently, poking a finger through the ceiling next to the dripping bulge. Again came the angry squirt, diminishing at once to a trickle, and now there were two blue bulges closely side by side, quite like breasts.

  “Yes, that—not again,” the Mouser managed to reply, his voice distant and high because of the self-control it took him not to rage at Fafhrd and so perhaps provoke even more reckless probings.

  “Very well, I won't,” the Northerner assured him. “Though,” he added, gazing thoughtfully at the twin streams, “it would take those dribblings years to fill up this cavity.”

  These sorts of disagreements among friends are what I use to inform my own fiction, and discussions between my characters Dabir and Asim, the scholar and warrior adventuring their way through an 8th century Arabia replete with dark wizards and things man was not meant to know. Here's a short excerpt of Dabir and Asim's attempt to obtain some answers from a reluctant scholar (“Sight of Vengeance,” Black Gate 10, 2007). They've had to force their way into his house.

  From out of the dim hallway beyond the reception room came a hairy Turk, naked save for his vest and pants. In his hand he bore a huge curved saber.

  I leapt into the hall and whipped out my blade. My blood sang! Here was the sort of challenge at which I excelled. Leave Dabir to his dusty books—swordcraft was my field of study.

  “Begone!” he cried, and swung at my head.

  Sparks flared in the gloom as I caught his sword against mine. He had strength in his wiry arms.

  “We need answers, Asim!” Dabir cried from behind, which was a not-so-subtle admonition not to kill the fellow. Dabir had scolded me in the past for leaving no foe left alive to question. Doubtless he supposed that sparing an enemy is a simple matter when each is trying to behead the other with a sharpened four-foot length of metal.

  Asim and Dabir may be loyal comrades, but they're often critical of each other, just as real friends might be. Yet I don't make every one of their waking moments a descent into bickering any more than Fritz Leiber did with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, or the script writers did with the original Star Trek characters. That would be like watching a married couple pick at each other. They should be free to criticize one another to one another, but they should depend upon one another as well. It's not just about moments of weakness—there should be moments of strength, of working together like a well-oiled team, of standing back-to-back when the chips are down. If they are among other adventurers or folk, it should be clear from their attitude and stance that these guys are together. There's a wonderful scene in one of the greatest Star Trek episodes, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” (written by Harlan Ellison, revised by D.C. Fontana) where Kirk and Spock are confronted by Edith Keeler about exactly who they really are. They are trying to blend in to the New York of the 1930s as they search for Dr. McCoy, and the astute Keeler senses that they are out of place. Spock asks where she thinks they do belong and she answers: “You? At his side, as if you've always been there and always will.” Even someone newly acquainted with these two senses the loyalty between them.

  Anyone who's really serious about writing a pair of heroes should not only read the Lankhmar stories, but should watch and re-watch Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid for all of the fabulous interaction between the characters. Just after the opening scene of the movie, Butch and Sundance ride back to the hideout to discover one of the gang members is bucking for leadership. Butch is the erstwhile leader and Sundance his best friend, and while they're a part of the gang, it's clear from speech and attitude that Butch and Sundance are a tighter unit still than the rest of the group.

  I could randomly open nearly any script page from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid with dialogue and find a gem, but to provide a quick window into their relationship I've chosen the concluding moments of the movie, when Butch and Sundance are wounded and holed up in a small building in Bolivia, getting ready to make a dash for freedom. As anyone who's seen the movie knows, Butch and Sundance have no idea that the opposition outside is far more deadly than they anticipate. Butch, always more gregarious, hides his nerves with dialogue as they're peering out toward the sunset, planning their escape route.

  Butch: I've got a great idea where we should go next.

  Sundance: Well I don't wanna hear it.

  Butch: You'll change your mind once I tell you—

  Sundance: Shut up.

  Butch: O.K.; O.K.

  Sundance: It was your great ideas got us here.

  Butch: Forget about it...

  Sundance: I never want to hear another of your great ideas, all right?

  Butch: All right.

  Sundance: Good.

  Butch: Australia.

  Sundance: (Looks darkly at Butch.)

  Butch: I figured secretly you wanted to know so I told you: Australia.

  Sundance: That's your great idea?

  Butch: The latest in a long line.

  Sundance: Australia's no better than here!

  Butch: That's all you know.

  Sundance: Name me one thing.

  Butch: They speak English in Australia.

  Sundance: (Surprised) They do?

  Butch: That's right, smart guy, so we wouldn't be foreigners. And they ride horses. And they got thousands of miles to hide out in—and a good climate, nice beaches, you could learn to swim—

  Sundance: Swimming's not important; what about the banks?


  That dialogue's great—it's almost criminal of me to stop typing it in, because I'm pretty sure you want to know what they're going to say next. If you've never seen the movie, or haven't seen it in a while, I strongly urge you to watch it if, for nothing else, to take in that beautiful character-driven dialogue that in turn drives the plot.

  In this excerpt from the first Dabir and Asim novel, The Desert of Souls (Thomas Dunne Books, 2011), I would like to say that I kept these sorts of scenes in mind, but in truth I didn't model any of the conversation off of any of the preceding excerpts I've shown you. I created the characters in such a way that they clash sometimes even when they're working together. Every writer will have different tricks that may work better for him or her than they will for others, but I find that when I know my characters and their differences well, their dialogue pretty much writes itself.

  That said, I wouldn't have known how to draft such a scene if I hadn't been paying attention to similar scenes and listening to how real friends talk the whole of my life.

  In this chapter Dabir and Asim have been trapped in a magical realm by the sorcerer Firouz and are making their way through the place at night, encountering strange and peculiar things.

  It was not too much longer before the sun gathered up the last of its colors and sank in a glorious bed of gold below the horizon. Then the stars came out and if there is one thing I could pluck from my mind’s eye so that all might see, it is the sight of the stars glimmering there above the Desert of Souls. Although heavens are usually beautiful and clear in a desert, here they were impossibly glorious, flaming balls of different hues set in velvet folds of deepest indigo. No gold nor silver nor precious gems can equal the beauty of that vision and the words to describe that magnificent, splendid web of light do not exist, or at least cannot be commanded by this feeble hand.