The Hero.

So I haven’t written a blog in about two months. That is one of the many joys of writer’s block. Other than writer’s block, the main reason I haven’t written any blogs is because I have been busy. (This is a very shocking fact. Normally I just sit around thinking about books.)

And the reason I’ve been busy? I have started going to school. For somebody who likes to write about human nature, I haven’t really had much experience of being around lots of people. Well, until last week.

Naturally, all this exposure to human nature makes me think about my writing, and about my characters. What I have realized is that humans are absolutely nothing like fictional characters. I mean, I knew this already, but not to the same extent. For example: the character of Kai. He just wouldn’t exist in the real world. As someone who has spent the last week-and-a-half around fifteen-year-old boys, I can say with 100 per cent certainty that they are nothing like they are in books. Specifically, nothing like they are in my books.

And that started me thinking about the concept of The Hero. The Hero is the good guy; examples of his personality traits include “getting the girl” and “defeating evil”. The Hero isn’t always a guy, sometimes he’s a girl, but today I’m talking about male versions of The Hero.

Girls who read a lot of books often find themselves frustrated by the lack of perfect males in the world. Don’t get me wrong, there are some nice guys in the world. But is nice enough? Nice doesn’t slay dragons and carry you away to castles in the clouds. Yes, booknerds want their guy to be sweet and kind, but they also want him to be heroic and brave, to be dark and mysterious. And in real life, most of those qualities don’t mix.

So where does the idea of The Hero come from? How do you get from the average real guy to Mr Perfect? How did this archetype come about when most human beings are so…depressingly average? One of my theories is that it came about in the age of knights and chivalry, when the act of going off to kill people over a bit of land became glorified. A guy would go off to fight in the 100 Years War, and before he left he would be all like “I love you. Promise to marry me so that if I die I know that you loved me”. And then he went off and killed a load of French guys in the name of “I have protected you from the French, my love. I am a hero.”

Yeah, that’s one theory. The other theory is that people romanticize real life in their heads to make it more interesting. I spend at least fifty per cent of my time doing this. The fact is: things are more interesting when you add some imagination. The problem with this is when you start adding imagination to people. These people are never going to live up to how they are in your head, and you’ll be sorely disappointed, and they’ll be wondering what they did wrong.

The people you meet, the people you see every day, they are almost certainly not going to be The Hero. They’re not going to sweep you off your feet and risk their lives to defend your honour. But The Hero does exist, I am sure of that. His good qualities are just more subtle. I believe in The Hero, I believe that he is out there somewhere. I also believe that any one of us can be The Hero, if we make the right choices. Sometimes the dragons that need slaying are only words, and sometimes the people who need defending aren’t damsels in distress, but just people who need to know they’ve got someone on their side. And as for castles in the clouds, I’m with Henry David Thoreau on that one. He said “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

And now, a round of applause for me because I managed to write a whole blog without using Phoenix as an example of something.