On Writing

Today, I reviewed Nothing to Lose by Lee Child (see the previous post). I didn’t like the book, but it made me think about what makes a good hero — and what doesn’t.

For the most part, I think Child’s character, Jack Reacher, is a great hero. He’s big and tough and knows how to take care of himself, and he has a few interesting quirks, like only traveling with the clothes on his back, a toothbrush, and his expired passport in his pocket. Simply put, Reacher has, well, character.

So why didn’t I like Nothing to Lose? Because Reacher comes off as a super hero in the book — nothing can touch him. Not the bad guys, not the law, not even the pretty woman that he hooks up with. He blows into town, eliminates the bad guys, and hits the road. Normally, I like Child’s action-adventure formula just fine, but in Nothing to Lose, Reacher didn’t struggle at all. Nobody challenged him — not the bad guys and not the law. He pretty much ran around and did whatever he wanted to with zero consequences.

You’re hero can be whip-smart and tough as nails, but the bad guys need to be just as cunning and strong. Otherwise, your hero is just going to walk all over everyone, like Reacher does in Nothing to Lose. I don’t think that kind of hero — a super hero who can do absolutely no wrong and is always smarter than everyone else — makes for a good read. There’s just no suspense with a super hero like that.

If you’re reading genre fiction, you know that the hero is probably going to win in the end, and that the journey is what’s really important — the twists, the turns, and how your hero figures out how to defeat the bad guy. But make your hero too strong or your bad guys too weak, and you’re likely to bore your reader, rather than keep them turning the pages. That’s how I felt with Nothing to Lose. The book would have worked a whole lot better for me if Reacher had been just a little less clever or the bad guys just a little bit tougher.

Lots of great heroes are super heroes, especially when it comes to movies — James Bond, Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series, Clint Eastwood in practically every movie that he’s ever made. But they all face challenges in their movies. With Bond, a woman that he’s close to usually dies or betrays him or both. Willis runs around barefoot in the first Die Hard movie. Clint gets the stuffing beat out of him in tons of films. These guys might be super heroes, but usually, they face some pretty big obstacles along the way.

I know what you’re thinking — that my heroine, Gin Blanco, is pretty much a super hero too. Well, maybe she is. She has powerful magic, she”s an assassin, and she’s doesn’t hesitate to put people down any more than Reacher or the other heroes that I’ve mentioned do. In fact, I’d say that Gin is even more bloodthirsty than Reacher and the rest of these guys are. (Well, except maybe for Clint — nobody’s tougher than Clint.) But hey, I am writing urban fantasy here. Violent and bloodthirtsy are usually part of the deal. 😉

One of my friends who read Venom several months back told me that she liked the book because Gin struggles so much in it. Not to give away too many details, but Gin basically gets her ass kicked three times in the book — and only once is by design. Sure, she’s a semi-retired assassin, but that doesn’t mean that she’s invincible — or that she doesn’t miscalculate or screw up from time to time.

For me, one of the best parts of writing the Elemental Assassin series is coming up with the villains — and making each one just a little tougher than the last. Gin’s powers are growing, so I think the bad guys should get meaner, nastier, and more powerful as well.

I think Gin is a pretty cool hero, and I want to match her up against villains who really challenge her — bad guys who kick her in the teeth and make her dig down deep to find a way to defeat them. The journey and the struggle — that’s what it’s all about in genre fiction. Those are the kind of books that I like to read, and hopefully, those are the kind of books that I’m delivering to my readers.

What about you guys? Do you like super heroes or not? Who are some of your favorite heroes/heroines?