Specifically, I was determined to avoid the hero-as-self-aware-damaged-person paradigm. I'm afraid as a reader I got sick of all the depressed and miserable alcoholics that increasingly peopled the genre.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The author expresses a deliberate choice to avoid writing heroes who are overly self-aware or emotionally damaged like many genre contemporaries.
- In plain terms
- He wanted to avoid writing depressed or miserable alcoholic heroes common in the genre.
- What can you take from it?
- Writers can differentiate their work by subverting common character tropes.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What makes a protagonist compelling?
- How do tropes evolve?
Another view
Avoiding damaged characters might limit exploration of complex human experiences.
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