Here’s an excerpt from my new post at The Night Bazaar, “Heroes and Heroines:”
I’m never quite sure what makes a hero, which I think is probably the key to knowing what makes a hero.
I look at it this way: if being a hero was easy, everyone would do it. But it’s not just that being a hero takes work or sacrifice…on the contrary, it takes knowing what to do to remedy a grievous situation, or at least prevent it from getting any worse. That’s actually a really tall order for most of us.
A hero is somebody who’s willing to get the knowledge necessary to understand what can be done without screwing up the world even worse than it’s screwed up. That doesn’t mean all protagonists are heroes — far from it. Many, even most, might have some heroic qualities…especially in adventure fiction. But that doesn’t make them heroes.
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