May 07 2009
Writing Tip of the Day: No Guardian Angels!
Your hero should be accountable for his actions. If his actions don’t have consequences for him, the plot will be much less satisfying.
Guardian angels are characters that remove accountability and make the hero’s actions meaningless. For example, Heroes’ Claire had at least three guardian angels (Noah, Peter, Nathan and possibly her mother). That’s really undramatic. By giving your character guardian angels, you remove opportunities for them to deal with the repercussions of their decisions. That usually makes them boring and less impressive. For example, when the feds come to lock the mutants up, Nathan has Claire removed from the wanted list. Repeatedly. If Claire is meant to seem like an interesting, proactive hero rather than a helpless damsel in distress, it would be much more compelling if she solved her own problems.
Another problem with guardian angels is that they tend to sideline the hero. Children protagonists are particularly vulnerable to this. If the parent swoops in to solve the kid’s problems, why are we reading about the kid? No one wants to read a parentis ex machina, especially young readers.
