heroes Archives | Staci Troilo

Even Heroes Sometimes Fall

by Staci Troilo

I didn’t think I was going to watch the Olympics. Not because the athletes and the games don’t interest me. They do. I’m a sucker for a good competition. I’m just not crazy about the coverage, and I haven’t been for the last several games. The announcers try to make drama where there isn’t any (and we all have too much of that in our lives as it is, especially those of us with teenagers in the house), and this whole tape delay business is annoying. I already know the results; why bother watching?

Because I love the competition.

And because these athletes deserve our support. They worked so hard for such a fleeting chance at glory, why not give them their fifteen minutes? After all, these are the heroes of our generation, the ones we tell our children to emulate.

When I was a child, I saw Nadia Comaneci score the first perfect ten in gymnastics, and I was hooked. (Yes, I know she wasn’t then an American citizen, but I was young at the time, what did I know, or care for that matter? Her performance was amazing!) That same winter, when Dorothy Hamill took gold in figure skating, I was begging for her haircut, along with the rest of the girls in America. *Clears throat* years later, my kids share that fascination with the Games and the athletes, waiting to see which of their heroes are going to climb the podium and claim the gold.

The thing is, heroes don’t always win. (tweet this)

Shaun White trained for the last four years for the Sochi Olympics. And for many years before that. Everyone expected the “three-peat” in the halfpipe. Shaun was the reigning champion, having won the gold at the last two Winter Games. He had stiff competition, sure, but come on, he’s Shaun White. He’s untouchable.

When you lift your heroes to lofty heights, they have a long way to fall. (tweet this)

White came in with high expectations on his shoulders, placed on him by the world and by himself. That’s a lot of pressure. He was prepared, and he continued to train while he was in Sochi. Maybe he trained too much. He doesn’t usually show up as early as he did. Maybe breaking his routine messed him up. Maybe the conditions of the pipe (less than stellar) conspired against him. Maybe he psyched himself out. Maybe his competitors were just better than him on that given day.

It really doesn’t matter. The event is over. Our lives go on.

It matters to Shaun White, who placed fourth.

It matters to Iouri Podladtchikov, who won gold.

The rest of us realize that sometimes, heroes fall. Sometimes at the worst possible time. (tweet this)

In the Olympics, there are no second chances. Just a lifetime of if only and what if.

In real life, there are second chances. If our heroes fall, we can watch their reactions and see if they get back up and rally (true heroes) or give up and go home (fair weather facsimiles). Everyone falls at some point. Let’s make sure we’re only emulating people with the courage to get back up.

For Writers

You’re going to face adversity in your journey. You’ll hit writer’s block, you’ll get rejection letters, you’ll receive bad reviews, you’ll be ignored. What are you going to do about it?

You can give up. Obviously you weren’t supposed to be a writer.

Not.

You are a writer because you have a passion for the craft, a burning desire to share your stories with the world through the written word. If you stumble, if you fall, you don’t stay down. You get back up and keep going, clawing your way if you have to. I know, because I’m a writer, too. I’m with you. And if you can’t get up on your own, let me know. I’ll help you.

And this desire to succeed? Don’t forget to instill it in your fictional heroes, too. To be interesting, characters have to face adversity. To be realistic, they have to fall. But to be heroic? They have to get back up again.

Today Americans “celebrate” Presidents’ Day. What used to be a celebration of two presidential birthdays has been consolidated into a day to honor all US Presidents. Love them or hate them, agree with their policies or not, this “holiday” began because of our first president who fought to establish this country and our sixteenth president who fought to keep it together as a single nation while liberating all its citizens. These are true heroes, and we shouldn’t forget or belittle their contributions.

Athletes, leaders… maybe family members, military personnel, or public servants. We all have heroes. Would you like to share a hero’s story here? Or maybe you’d like to discuss your favorite heroic moment of the Olympics? Let’s chat.

Five Ways to Write a Successful Hero

My in-laws are here this week. In fact, they came a day early. I was woefully unprepared. There was no food in the house. I was in the middle of cleaning. Their bed sheets weren’t even on the bed yet. I was wearing my housecleaning clothes: sweat shorts and a ripped and stained oversized T-shirt that I “borrowed” from my husband years ago and never returned. Hey, I do the laundry. If he wants it back, he should wash it and put it in his drawer. Anyway…

Their arrival could have gone a few different ways. My in-laws could have looked around with disdain and made snide comments, but they’re too classy for that. (What they thought is another story. I’ll never know, and I like it that way.) My husband could have blamed me for the mess and sat there waiting for me to scramble. (I was scrambling anyway.) Or he could have explained how busy we’ve all been (which is true), explained that we expected them the following day (also true), and then pitched in more than he already had been to get the place serviceable. Which was what he did. My hero.

Okay, that might be a bit overdramatic, but my life isn’t in peril on a daily basis. But in fiction, heroes don’t always have to be saving lives. Sometimes they just come to the rescue of an unprepared leading lady. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes for all kinds of situations, but there are ways to ensure you create a believable and likeable hero. Here are five rules to follow when crafting heroes for your fiction.

Heroes need noble professions
Don’t automatically default to the billionaire playboy philanthropist. Bruce Wayne has been written about enough already. A hero can be wealthy, but he certainly doesn’t have to be. Heroes can be middle class, they can also be living paycheck to paycheck. Income doesn’t matter. The key is to make their professions honorable. Whatever they choose to do with their lives, whatever their pasts and their histories, they need to have good intentions and actions in the present. They should also have the means to date a woman. That doesn’t mean five-star resorts and fancy restaurants, but he should be able to do better than PB&J sandwiches in the bed of his truck.
Heroes are men of action
Introspection is fine for the leading man, in fact, it’s encouraged. There’s no better way for readers to get to know the hero than to hear his thoughts, in his voice. But heroes are, by definition, men of action. Don’t let this guy spend too much time thinking without doing something. We want to learn about him, but we want to learn about him through his actions.
Heroes need to be open to new things
Two peas in a pod or opposites attract? I always vote opposites. If your hero and heroine share too many of the same traits, their relationship is going to be dull. The exciting relationships are the ones where the guy and girl come together from two different ends of the spectrum. That means, however, that one of them is going to want to go to the football game while the other is ordering ballet tickets. (It really doesn’t matter which one is which—don’t play into stereotypical gender roles all the time.) Let your hero not only willingly agree to give up his activity in favor of hers; let him enjoy her activity as well.
Work with a quirk
Yes, I know that was a suggestion I used for the heroines, but it holds true for the heroes, too. Guys aren’t always cool and collected. They have idiosyncrasies. If it’s not a nervous tick or a tell of some sort, then he’s likely to have some weird habit or an odd collection at home. Perhaps it has something to do with his car. Everyone has a quirk. Show his. Let us learn about him through his. Is it endearing? Is it weird? Is it something that is sentimental and emotional? Reveal something about him through the quirk.
MAKE HIM FLAWED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yep, another repeat. But this one definitely bears repeating. No one’s perfect. He might be perfect for the heroine, but he isn’t flawless. He can have wonderful qualities most of the time, but not always. He’s going to have indecision. He’s going to have doubts. And sometimes, sometimes, he’s going to do something completely idiotic and make the heroine angry. It’s okay. They’ll work it out. He’s still a good guy. He’s just not perfect. And that’s precisely what will make him the perfect hero for your story.

Heroes come in all kinds of packages: long and lean to big and bulky; boardrooms to operating rooms; the open range to the gun range. How they look, what they do, where you find them… none of that really matters. It’s all window dressing. What matters is what’s at the core. Heroes need to be flawed, challenged men striving for redemption, and they are successful by saving (or helping to save) the leading lady.

photo courtesy of Chris Hartford: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knight_at_Battle_Abbey.jpg

Five Ways to Write a Successful Heroine

I’d like to spend some time over the next few weeks working on elements of a novel. Today I thought we’d talk about the leading lady, or the heroine, primarily because I was sick this past week and spent more time reading than writing. The novels I read I won’t name, but they all had something in common: the leading ladies bugged the crap out of me, and soon I’ll tell you why. But first, a personal anecdote…

Yesterday was my seventeenth wedding anniversary. What does that have to do with the price of chocolate at Walgreens? I’m getting to it. See, Corey (that’s my husband) and I were high school sweethearts (awwww). We grew up in the same town, attended the same church, knew many of the same people. We actually had crushes on each other in junior high school, but we didn’t tell each other, or anyone else. When we finally got together in high school, we were (sickeningly) inseparable. Our relationship matured through college and long distance romances when he worked out of state. We even had some long distance issues during our marriage when his job took him away from our family for extended periods of time. Now we’re all under one roof and, although we’re not in our home state, we’re happy with our lives. Is everything perfect? No. But our relationship is perfect for us. Are we perfect? (Pause for hysterical bout of laughter.) Heavens, no! We’re perfect for each other though, and we know each other’s short comings and accept them.

Enter today’s heroine.

I’m not sure when it happened, but I think I know why it occurred. Many of today’s leading ladies are being put on pedestals so high that Zeus would have to look up from Mt. Olympus to see their feet. And they’re being written this way so they seem strong, capable and desirable. Guess what? Women can be strong, capable and desirable without being COMPLETELY FLAWLESS. These love triangles where two amazing men are fighting over Ms. Right (who, by the way, isn’t even that great half the time, they just seem to think she is), are tired and cliché. Ms. Right needs to be real. She needs to have flaws, and not just superficial ones that she notices, but ones that the men notice, too. Our daughters need realistic role models so when they read our books, they don’t feel that they fall inexplicably short or think that men have to duel over them for them to be worthy of love.

The books I read this past week had heroines that were either so helpless that they needed the men to rescue them or were so over the top wonderful that the guys couldn’t get enough of them, but in every case they were the “perfect” women: flawlessly beautiful, intelligent, generous, giving. Every man on the planet stopped and stared when they entered a room. Enough, already.

Here are five points to keep in mind to create a believable and likeable heroine in a novel.

Get in your heroine’s head
We need to see things from this woman’s point of view. We need to think her thoughts, in her voice. Respond to things realistically, avoid melodrama, but give us something we can really sink our teeth into so we can get to know her and like her. As with any character, the best way to get to know her will be through her ability to deal with conflict. Put her in stressful situations as soon as you can so we can see how she reacts. We need to feel her emotions, and let us experience them with her. This isn’t the place to hold back.
A little less conversation, a little more action please
I know, women complain. I’m a lovely and likable person, but even I have been known to utter a negative word or two here and there. The women who sit around bemoaning their lots in life waiting for the hero to rescue them need to be eliminated from literature. I’m not suggesting the heroine rush off half-cocked without a plan (the woman who acts without thinking also needs to be eliminated from literature), but there needs to be a methodical plan of action in place. Believe it or not, woman can be rational.
Give us a believable reaction to her beauty
She may be a knock-out, she may be an untraditional beauty, but she’s going to be good looking. In either event, she shouldn’t be obvious about it. This woman isn’t going to be staring into mirrors appreciating what she sees. However, I wouldn’t go to the other extreme, either. Humility is one thing, arguing about it and denying it is another. If she is complimented, she shouldn’t be shocked, and if she’s complimented repeatedly, her man shouldn’t have to convince her he finds her gorgeous.
Work with a quirk
Everyone has a thing. A nervous tell. A boredom tick. Something. The heroine needs one, too. A twist of a ring, a twirl of the hair, a bounce of the leg… Pick a thing that you can use to display emotion for your leading lady and use it. But use it sparingly. It’s just another layer for you to build with and us to unravel as we get to know the heroine.
MAKE HER FLAWED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did the bold, all caps, and several exclamation points do enough to keep your attention? This is the most important one, so I hope so. This woman isn’t perfect, so don’t make her be perfect. She makes bad decisions (although they need to be consistent with her character). She has bad hair days. She loses her temper. She doesn’t always recycle. She runs out of gas on the interstate when her cell phone battery is dead. She’s NOT perfect. No one is; why would she be? Lower the pedestal.

photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:French_Kiss.JPG

Heroes

This past week, the world lost two heroes. One hero lost his standing in society and one hero lost his life. If you believe in a higher power, and I do, you can understand why I believe the former is the greater tragedy.

Lance Armstrong is an American citizen, but he was renowned the world over as a seven-time winner of the Tour de France. Does that make him a hero? Not to me. Sports figures are celebrities, not heroes. His accomplishments were legendary, but not heroic. What made him a hero was his triumph over cancer, combined with his ability to take the adversity he faced, the fame he’d acquired, his innate talent, and his drive and ambition and create an organization that raises money to help cancer patients every day. I don’t know if he’s guilty of the accusations levied against him, nor do I care. What I care about is whether those accusations will ultimately cost his foundation, and therefore, the cancer patients who benefit from it. The loss of the titles isn’t the tragedy; the detriments to the organization is.

Neil Armstrong was also an American citizen, but he didn’t even belong to this planet. He left footprints on the moon. He risked his life for his country when we were engaged in the space race, and he left this earth to help the Unites States win that race. However, when he set foot on our moon and said, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” he wasn’t just talking about our country; he was talking about the world. Decades later, our country collaborates with several other countries in space, working on the International Space Station, an endeavor that probably wouldn’t have been possible without Armstrong’s efforts. His passing is a sad thing for those loved ones he leaves behind, but his legacy is a proud one.

As writers, we will likely never have titles that can be stripped from us. We will probably never have one line that the world stops and listens to us speak. But our words do live on for eternity, so we should choose them carefully. We shouldn’t steal them from others. We shouldn’t carelessly and quickly publish them and move on to the next project without concern for quality or integrity. We may never be heroes, but we do touch people’s lives, and we have a responsibility to do so to the best of our abilities.