# Do you think exaggerated 'heroes' can be interesting?



## makmakmob (Oct 19, 2010)

I became curious about this recently after reading an article about the various comics that the writer believed were very important for the development of batman as a character (not that I will claim this article as of itself is a masterpiece); I had always assumed that batman would never be 'developed' as he's simply so exaggerated. He continuously succeeds at what he wants to do (that is, stop bad guys), has a 'dark' past and such, sounded more to me like a mary sue than anything and only really hanging on by the so called 'rule of cool', you know, because HE'S THE GODAMNED BATMAN. But no, apparently he is possessed of plenty sophistication, and his character will even go through sudden spurts of growth and change!

I've recently found the characters from certain stories of my own taking such a turn; both with abilities beyond what anyone would normally be able to do, but not quite superhuman; somehow grounded by weaknesses within the real world. Do these characters have a genuine ability to grow and grab the reader's attention, and even be rooted for? What do you think?


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## ScottyDM (Oct 21, 2010)

Batman and other long-running comics, as well as almost all serial TV shows and books, suffer from Static Hero Syndrome. This is most easily avoided when the creators make an effort at producing an overall story arc--such as the TV shows _The Prisoner_ or _Babylon 5_. Thus you could put your lead character through life-changing events because his personal story is on an arc, not frozen in stasis. 

Most writers feel static characters in a serial are a necessity because they want to start the story in the same place each week. It's not really about the hero, but about the Villain Du Jour and how the hero defeats him or her. Some modern serials attempt to spice that up a touch by giving the hero some secret that's supposedly going to be revealed over the course of time--or not. Usually revelation is only hinted and, but never delivered. For example Red John, whom you know the show's heroes will never catch.

Batman and a few other comics have attempted to fix Static Hero Syndrome by completely remaking their title character from time to time. Thus you get "Batman 2.0", "Batman 3.0", etc. Batman is older than dirt, imagine if he was the same superdude introduced 71 years ago. How boring! Of course you have to kill off a guy like that a few times over the course of his career--literally or figuratively. Smash and then rebuild story canon.


Maybe the lesson is that to avoid hindsight editing, plan on interesting characters who have internal conflict and who change over the course of the story, from the very beginning. Here, the "very beginning" means once your final edits are done and you're getting ready to submit the story, or post it to the Web. Sometimes we need to live with our characters a bit before we begin to understand them.


For NaNo this year I'm going to spin a story I started to write as a novella, into a novel. I'm part of a Meetup group here in the Springs and this year we are prepping for November by doing character and plot building exercises.

A few weeks ago we were taking a good hard look at our characters. I realized I had a static villain. That was okay by me, but Anita would have none of it. She kinda beat me up about the villain and I knew she was right. It took a few days, but I finally came up with some real motivation, goals, and internal conflict for my villain. That helped my hero too because he now had something he could play off of. And it seriously tweaked the hero's internal conflict as well. Plus the new villain pumped up the final bits of the fight scene--his death now means something.

I thought that having a villain who is a force of nature, like a flood or a tornado, is fine. But it's so much better to have deep characters.

S~


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## ScottyDM (Oct 23, 2010)

Developments:

This past Thursday Anita beat me up again (figuratively) because my villain's villain is static. For God's sake he's a demon! A force of nature like a tornado or an earthquake. And he's only got two scenes: In the prologue he creates the villain by giving him werewolf powers. And in the next-to-last chapter, after the hero kills the villain, the demon appears and collects the villain's soul.

There is no growth or redemption for my demon. He just is. <grumbles>

Now the villain is far more important. He's even got POV in a few scenes. And Anita's right--he needs to be deep with psychological vulnerabilities.

S~


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## sunandshadow (Oct 23, 2010)

I'm not 100% sure what constitutes an "exaggerated hero".  But, I've seen several great, deep characters who had superpowers or were a genius among geniuses or something like that.


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## Aeturnus (Oct 23, 2010)

I don't see why not providing it's good.


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## ScottyDM (Oct 23, 2010)

A lot of those old comic book heroes are perfect. Batman always wins, and let's not forget Superman. As makmakmob suggested, these characters sometimes feel like Mary Sues. So how do you fix such characters so they aren't boring?

Well, "kill" the character and remake the series canon.

Or start with a character who isn't a Superman.

This is more than possible in a novel, but gets a touch difficult in an open-ended series. Yea, Superman had his kryptonite, but was there ever any real possibility he'd lose? Heck, you don't need superpowers to become invincible, just be a regular character in an open-ended series. Did anyone ever think Bones (Dr. McCoy) of _Star Trek_ would ever die while visiting a planet?

So the most effective way to prevent any character, not just an exaggerated hero, from becoming too big for his britches is the willingness to kill that character--and have him stay dead.

S~


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