A Few Tips for Your Hero

Despite my lack of experience with boys, I've come to know that there are some really good guys in fiction. And good guys is a key thing to a popular book these days. I decided to write a post about a few tips for making a expectional hero in your book.

Tobias Eaton (Divergent)
Percy Jackson
Peeta Mellark (The Hunger Games)
Kristoff Whatever-His-Last-Name-Is

These guys are have different personalities, come from all kinds of universes, and have a unqiue voice. But they do have one thing in common though. Can you guess what that?

They all wanted one girl.

Sure, it might have took them a little while to realize that. But once they did, there was no turning back. They loved the girl no matter what. Katniss hated Peeta some of the time. Annabeth drove Percy crazy. Anna and Kristoff... well.. they speak for themselves. No matter what, though, they never ditched their girl to find another one. Even when the situation seemed pretty hopeless.

If you want to make your guy likable, I think that's the most important quality to have. A guy that is not only willing to commitment, but a guy who has his eyes out for one girl. I loved Maxon from the Selection, but he will never come close to Peeta. They're both great, nice, and mature guys, but Peeta loved Katniss, only Katniss. Even when she was a total jerk to him, there wasn't a doubt in his mind. That's something Maxon (or America for that matter)  didn't have.

Not all first impressions of the your male will be the reader's final opinion of him. In fact, usually not. However, it's more important for the first impression to get the reader's attention, to make them want to know more about him. I'll show you what I'm talking about.  Let's take a look at a few different impressions.

The first time we see Peeta up close is in a flashback in Katniss's perspective. He gives bread to her when she and her family are starving. Obviously, this is good evidence that Peeta is a nice guy. It goes deeper than that though. Because of the situation, we want to know more about the boy with the bread. If Katniss had mentioned that he was kind to hear whenever she went to the bakery, it wouldn't have had such a grip on us. But Collins went deep into Katniss's mind without warning. It showed us more about Katniss's character and what little we know about Peeta.

Now here's a interesting introduction with a less familiar male character. In The Charmed Life Series by Jenny B. Jones, Bella first meets Luke in the journalist class. For a good reason, Luke doesn't like Bella and is not very happy that the teacher puts her on his newspaper staff. Right off the bat, Luke makes Bella know that he does not like her and couldn't more angry about this arrangement. Basically, he acts like a jerk to her. Now, our opinion of him does change, eventually, as the book goes on. Despite his obvious anger issues, we find interest in this boy because he adds conflict and humor to the situation. Even though he is hated for a good reason, he does catch our attention first thing.

Do you see what I mean? I could mention more too. The knife throwing scene from Divergent. The "Reindeers Are Better Than People" song. Even though these scenes give us a totally different opinions about these men, we're still interested. These authors used different actions too. In the bread scene, Peeta doesn't say anything, but in A Charmed Life, Luke does most of the talking. Either way, these actions and words are what makes the reader want to know more.

When you introduce your key guy character, what do you think will interest the reader? What does he say? What does he do? Are his words the attention getter, like Luke, or is the reader captivated by his actions, like Peeta? Comment and tell me about it:)
Thanks for reading! Happy writing!