13.12: Q&A on Heroes, Villains, and Main Characters

Your Cast: Brandon, Valynne, Dan, Howard You had questions about heroes, villains, and main characters. We have answers! Here are the questions: How do you make planned power increases not seem like an ass-pull¹? What do you do when your villain is more interesting/engaging than your hero? How do you know when a character is unnecessary and needs to be removed from the story, or killed off in the story? What tricks do you use when you want the reader to mistakenly believe a character is a hero, rather than a villain? Which is more fun for you: creating a villain, or creating a hero? How many side characters can you reasonably juggle in a novel? What are the drawbacks to making your villain a POV character? If your villain doesn't show up until late in the story, how do you make their eventual appearance seem justified? How do you get readers to like a character who is a jerk? Liner Footnotes ¹ We hadn't seen "ass-pull," the a nouning² of the idiom "pull it out of your ass³" as a noun before. ² Bill Watterson gave us the verb form of the word "noun" indirectly in the final panel of this strip. ³ For those unfamiliar with the extraction-from-orifice idiom, it means "make it up on the spot," with a negative connotation, suggesting that the reader can TELL that this was invented in a hurry.

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