Writing Powerful Protagonists (and Antagonists!)

 Sleep, sleep, what is sleep?

I came across this post recently, which has me… concerned about Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, because it makes it seem as if you’re essentially playing as a whitewashed version of the villains from Secret of the Kells.

Also I want to write about Wheel of Time, but I feel that I’d be more insightful once I actually finish the series. 

So let’s talk about something else instead.

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Writing Powerful Protagonists (and Antagonists!)

[I may have written about this kind of thing before. If so, I’m sorry. But I’m on a tight deadline and didn’t sleep very well.]

I remember back when I was in middle school or so, all of the fantasy writing advice was about how you shouldn’t make your protagonists very powerful, to avoid making them Mary Sues. I don’t know if many of the fantasy authors I read today ever heard that advice, but I suspect they either haven’t or decided to ignore it. 

There is a noticeable trend in fantasy, especially urban fantasy, to write characters who are powerful. They are wizards, demigods, heroes of unmatched skill. And you know what? That’s okay. That’s fine. Having a powerful protagonist isn’t a bad thing. The trouble is when the story doesn’t serve to challenge that protagonist.

Let us take, for instance, Superman. I have heard it said very often that Superman is a very boring character because he is unkillable. And in a badly written story, this is true--the tension is gone because we know that Superman will not die. This was, in fact, the problem I had with the animated film Superman vs. the Elites--while the ideological conflict was interesting, the final battle was meant to be a tense duel where we were supposed to be concerned about Superman’s wellbeing in a fight where no one was wielding any of Superman’s weaknesses. I kept yelling ‘He’s SUPERMAN!’ at the screen the last twenty minutes of this film.

But a good Superman story pits him against powerful opponents. Now, a powerful opponent doesn’t necessary mean someone who has strength to match Superman, although it sometimes does. Lex Luthor can work as a perfect foil to Superman not because he can counter Supes blow for blow, but because he can arrange situations in which Superman’s powers will not save the day instantly. The comic Superman for All Seasons comes to mind. And even then, the issue isn’t “Will Superman die?” but “Will Superman be able to save everyone?”

Still, it is a very difficult balance to walk, and I don’t know if all authors can manage it. Dresden Files, for instance, does a pretty decent job, but by populating the world with characters who are just as powerful, if not more so, than the protagonist. He also spends a large chunk of several novels trying to figure out exactly who the antagonist is, as he’s an investigator by trade, so he can’t exactly just blast the bad guy when he first appears anyway. And when he does, they turn out to be powerful wizards or magical beings as well, so he has to use his wits. Yes, Harry Dresden is a powerful wizard, but he’s hardly the only one, and power doesn’t equal everything in the world Butcher has created. Battle Ground culminates with a battle against a Titan, in which Harry doesn’t have a hope of beating by himself.

Compare this to, say, Hounded, the first book in The Iron Druid Chronicles, in which when the main character finally fights the antagonist which has been apparently trying to kill him for centuries, he easily outfights and kills him. Also the main character becomes immune to death in the second chapter of the book. That is… precisely how not to write a powerful protagonist. 

Wheel of Time, which I’m reading now (so again, I could be completely butt-backwards--I haven’t finished the series yet), has some issues in this regard, and I have mixed feelings about how it handles it. Yes, Rand is powerful, and yes his main antagonists are the powerful Forsaken, who are around his level in magic. And many of them take disguises and make elaborate plots to lure Rand into a trap to kill him. AND Rand is also trying to navigate politics because everyone wants something from the Dragon Reborn, and this hinders his job significantly. Also he’s slowly going insane. And the other characters aren’t anywhere near as powerful, and have more of a challenging time defeating opponents. Yet when Rand actually gets to battling a Forsaken, it seems as if that in direct confrontation he curbstomps them one by one. 

And like I said, it takes a while to get there; very often he gets saved by one of his friends too, so it isn’t exactly like Rand shows up and hits the Win Button. But it is a bit frustrating to me, at least, that so many of the Forsaken just get one-shot’d with Balefire or stabbed. Then again, like I said, I am far from finished with the series, and I know that this series has a habit of bringing back characters that we think are dead.

One of the troubles I have with Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan is that the new villains aren’t really that powerful, in comparison to past villains of previous serieses. They’re deified Roman emperors, with a powerful corporation. So they should be something like mythological Lex Luthors, but in essence they’re… not. Partially because they’re in a book series aimed at kids, I imagine, but aside from Nero, they tend to be very straightforward about their plans, challenging heroes straight on and stamping their company’s name on everything. When our heroes have conquered gods and primordial personifications, it’s a little bit of a downgrade to move to three guys who essentially have some superstrength, a lot of flunkies, and keep attacking the heroes who can summon lightning or floods or earthquakes or zombies head on, it’s a bit difficult to take seriously. Yet the narrative does.

Although again, I haven’t finished this series, and I want to reiterate that I’m way above this series’s target audience by this point in my life.

There is a balance you have to make. The easiest way to make this balance is to make a believable powerful protagonist work is to give him or her equally powerful antagonists. But if you don’t do that, you can make it work through adding enough complexity and making the villains smart enough that the heroes can’t just blast them on page ten. The key to making powerful protagonists is, quite simply, by writing competent antagonists.

[I suppose that also writing an interesting and well-developed protagonist is also key in this, but I’m tired and this has gone on long enough so far.]

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