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blog Mythic Guide to Heroes & Villains — Sacrificial Heroes

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
Black Dragon submitted a new blog post:

Mythic Guide to Heroes & Villains — Sacrificial Heroes
by Antonio del Drago

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This is Part 4 of the Mythic Guide to Heroes & Villains.

As mentioned in Part 3 of this series, a hero is capable of experience fear, but moves forward regardless. He knows that his course could mean the death of him. In some cases, this truth is grimly ever present. And grimmer still, sometimes this fate does in fact befall the hero.

Not every hero survives the villain’s wrath. But their death is not in vain.

In some cases, the hero perishes in a battle that claims the life of both himself and the villain. Such a fate befell Sherlock Holmes in his final battle against Professor Moriarty in The Final Problem. Sherlock's fate would later be changed due to obsessive demands from fans and publishers. At the time of the story's original publication, however, Sherlock had genuinely died.

Similarly in Le Morte d'Arthur, the protagonist — King Arthur Pendragon, — dies in battle against his evil son Mordred, killing Mordred in the process. King Arthur's sacrificial death was powerfully depicted in the film Excalibur.

Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
 

Naomi Rey

New Member
I woke up to a wrinkle in my story today. At some point in the story, my MC goes from fighting for all to bowing out to protect her family. It's been a part of my story since the beginning, I knew it was coming. But when I actually wrote it, it feels like the MC is reversing so much on who they are, I don't know if I"m doing something plausible. How do I take a MC on a 180, without doing a Daenerys-disservice to the reader and character?
 

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
I woke up to a wrinkle in my story today. At some point in the story, my MC goes from fighting for all to bowing out to protect her family. It's been a part of my story since the beginning, I knew it was coming. But when I actually wrote it, it feels like the MC is reversing so much on who they are, I don't know if I"m doing something plausible. How do I take a MC on a 180, without doing a Daenerys-disservice to the reader and character?
Hi Naomi,

Have you tried using some foreshadowing? A little foreshadowing, sprinkled here and there, can make such changes seem a lot less jarring.

You may also want to tweak the character's motivations a bit, so that the change is consistent with what has been driving her forward thus far.
 
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