Thoughts On Characters And Bravery.

In the books I read, having brave main characters is kind of a given. Most of my favourite books are futuristic/post-apocalyptic/dystopian. They contain these horrible worlds full of horrible things that the main characters try to overcome.

I never thought about my characters being brave. I knew that some of them were, but I never realized that almost all of them were.

By “brave” I don’t just mean risking their lives. I mean brave in so many different contexts. In who they are, in how they are, in what they believe in.

In Divergent (one of my all-time favourite books) there’s a line which goes “I never thought I would need bravery in the small moments of my life; I do”.  And I started thinking about that, and realized that it actually applies to a lot of fictional characters.

I always thought that if I lived in the worlds of the books I write ~ or the books I read ~ that I would be brave.

Three nights ago, I was standing on a chair, screaming; completely at the mercy of a dead mouse. I hate mice.

And thinking about it like that, I realized just how brave my characters are.

If someone even mentions the word “rat”, I start freaking out, yet my characters face things they fear on a daily basis. And they stay sane (sort of).

I spend so much time criticizing my characters, that I often forget to admire them.

There are characters like Persephone, who are brave because they would turn the world upside down for someone they love, or for something they believe in.

But there are characters that are brave in other ways. There’s Kai, who is brave enough to love Phoenix (that takes bravery, believe me).

And there’s Melinoe, the main character in AMEND.  When I was writing it, I never considered her to be brave. She was so cold, so sadistic/masochistic/horrible. But she is brave.

She went through so much, and she was mostly alone. Yes, that may have been because she alienated most of the people who cared for her, but that doesn’t make it easier.

Melinoe’s bravery came mostly in the last couple of paragraphs of the last chapter of AMEND. She lets her guard down, and perhaps that’s the bravest action of all.