Cast Contrast
A post about writing about disappointing idiots without disappointing people
For a while, I’ve felt that if I was a smarter writer, I would probably make all of my protagonists seven-foot tall, muscle—bound badasses who think of wrestling death as a relaxing way to spend a Tuesday afternoon. I tend to write quite action-heavy books after all, and readers, it is well-accepted, generally like competent protagonists. We tend to identify with our protagonists and it’s nice to feel that the person who we’re invested in is both deserving of that investment and someone who will also reward us with a little vicarious cool. I’ve certainly enjoyed my time reading about such folk. I think the protagonists of every action book I recently recommended tends toward that mold. And yet, unfortunately, I have always been drawn to writing about incompetent nitwits.
Largely, I think, this is because I find incompetent nitwits quite funny, and I’m generally trying to inject some humor into proceedings. Also I suspect that part of it is that the experience of an absolute chucklewit clowning his way through life feels closer to my lived experience. You right what you know, right? And while I’m performing some self-examination, it’s worth admitting that there’s also some self-defeating masochism in there too. Writing the super-competent übermensch has always felt a little too easy. Where’s the fun in getting an Arnold Schwarzenegger stand-in out of trouble? He’s just going to murder everyone in the room while bullets bounce off him. Throw Michael Scott from The Office into the same situation and get him out alive—now that’s a fun challenge.
But I’m also aware that my love of idiots failing upwards is not wholly universal. That was the main topic of my rewrites of Yesterday’s Hero, in which—in my agent’s immortal words—the protagonist “couldn’t even make love competently.” I had to go back through it and figure out ways for Arthur Wallace to demonstrate areas of competence. I had to figure out what his areas of strength were and rejig solutions to problems so they played to those. I had to make sure he was driving the action forward.
So that’s certainly part of writing an incompetent hero—making them not wholly useless. Which, I think is a fair recommendation. Everyone has something they’re good at after all. (Well… the vast, vast majority of people do, at least). And so, making sure that your protagonist does have some areas to shine is certainly key to the whole affair. They may not be a fighter, but they can be a thinker, and can come up with clever ways to avoid a fight, or to use their environment to their advantage, etc, etc. I’m sure you’re probably already familiar with the idea.
The other trick I have enjoyed using, however, and the one which appeals more to my love of nitwits, is making the protagonist look good by surrounding them with people who are even more incompetent that they are. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and in the land of the absolute imbeciles, the man with half a brain suddenly looks like someone we can cheer for.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t argue for having secondary characters who have NO redeeming qualities, but their areas of competence can be more narrow. They can also, conveniently fill-in areas where your lead protagonist falls down.
To shamelessly use my own work as an example, in my Dragon Lords books, the main protagonist Will is an absolutely dreadful fighter. However, he falls in with a group of people who are very good at fighting, so they have that base covered for him. But my goal was to be a little more varied than that. One of the secondary characters, Quirk, was smarter (albeit not wiser) than Will, so she was able give him advice from time to time. And Firkin, who was not smart or wise in anyway, had a sense of wild-card madness that hopefully made up for Will being so incredibly uptight all of the time. So Will’s weaknesses were covered, and yet (at least hopefully) he remained someone that readers could root for by being the one rational voice in the crowd, the one person who came up with workable plans, and the one person really driving the action forward, while the other characters clowned about around him.
What’s more, you don’t just have to do this to make your protagonist look good. You can do it with antagonists too. We all like a relatable villain, someone who’s motives we agree with, but whose methods are vile. (Although at some point, I will definitely have to write about the appeal of unrelatable villains). But let’s say you want a Magneto-like bad guy at the center of your work. Well, it’s easier to make your antagonist feel sympathetic if you surround them with people who are far more evil than they are. Antagonist X may be murdering people by the dozen, but at least they’re not as bad as those guys. Antagonist X is taking a more reasonable approach and so they can’t be all bad at heart. Again, lean into the contrast, let that do some of the work for you.
This being the conclusion, I feel like this has somehow become a clarion call for laziness. I didn’t mean it that way. But I also used the word “trick” earlier instead of “technique” and that’s probably because “technique” sound too highfalutin a word for what I’ve been describing. Really, again, this is meant to be a tool to throw in the toolbox, useful for some jobs, not useful for others. But hopefully, one day, as you’re rummaging around for the right tool for the job, it’ll look better than some of the others, if only by contrast.
Thank you for reading Something’s a Little Off. If you’re interested in sampling some of my stories, and in reading an excerpt of my upcoming novella, why not check out the sampler linked to here?