fiction as entertainment

Recently I ran across the term Overpowered Main Character.

I said to myself, “What the heck is that?” After reading the definition, I said “Oh, that’s what heroic characters are.”

If you’re like me, as writers we’re told our characters have to have flaws and then overcome them in the story. That we have to write the Hero’s Journey every time we put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, or voice to recorder.

As readers, we are bombarded with sales pitches telling us the author writes about flawed characters. Reviewers pan books where the characters aren’t flawed and therefore not “realistic”.

Now, to be honest, I’ve never cared overly much for the Hero’s Journey. Nor do I care overly much to read about flawed people. I want to read about people. Period. They may or may not have any flaws. Their warts don’t matter much to me. I want to see people.

I read for entertainment. I read to get out of my world and to take a trip to a different world. Usually one that doesn’t much resemble my own.

That world may be the fantastic world of Conan the Barbarian. Or it may be the ordinary settings of Jack Reacher’s world. Or it may be the hidden world of Pellucidar. Or the jungles of Tarzan. Or the California of Philip Marlowe.

But wherever the book takes me, I generally don’t want to read about flawed characters. Realistic characters — yes. Flawed ones — no.

Let’s face it, people are a bunch of odd ducks. A combination of good and bad, normal and perverse, ordinary and exciting. It is what makes us interesting. Variety, after all, is the spice of life.

When I read fiction, I want to escape me and my world and vicariously become the main character in a different world. I want to be the main character. So why the heck do I want him flawed? I don’t. Because if he is — then he’s no different than I am.

And I don’t want to read about myself. If I did, I’d write in my journal.

I don’t want to read about me. I want to vicariously identify with a larger than life main character. James Bond. Indiana Jones. Captain Kirk.

The Hobbit is often cited as a perfect example of the Hero’s Journey. Perhaps it is. I don’t care. What draws me to the book are the characters. I’ve re-read The Hobbit five times and I don’t usually re-read books, but the characters are so intriguing I just love to take a trip to that world every now and again.

The characters in The Hobbit are lifelike, but they transcend anyone I know. I like Bilbo at the beginning of the book and I like him at the end of the book. I don’t really give a fig about the journey and his change from Baggins to Took.

I revel in the the mini-dramas between and amongst the characters. That’s what makes the story.

I want characters who are realistic, yet larger than life. Who have a commanding presence I can respect — warts and all.

My character Pierce Mostyn is not an exciting one. Even with his strawberry blond hair, nothing is visually distinctive about him and he is easily forgotten, which is probably an advantage for a paranormal G-man.

Yet, the one thing he has that I don’t is calmness under fire. He is unflappable. Something I wish I was. He can also get himself and his team out of any monster-created jam that he finds himself in. Something I probably couldn’t do.

Justinia Wright is larger than life. Rather over-the-top even. She is “normal” on steroids, coupled with a whole heck of a lot of eccentric. Harry, on the other hand, is all sorts of normal. He’s the counterpoint to all of Tina’s eccentricities. Add to that, their sibling bickering and you have characters like us, but unlike us in that they get rid of all the bad guys.

Bill Arthur, the narrator of The Rocheport Saga, is my wannabe character. If I could be someone else, I’d want to be Bill Arthur.

He isn’t physically overpowered. But he is overpowered when it comes to imagination, leadership, and strategic planning. He’s also unflappable under fire.

The Overpowered Main Character is the person we all dream of becoming. Jack Reacher crushes bullies. Who amongst us hasn’t at sometime been bullied? Jack Reacher is our vengeance outlet.

Recently, I’ve been reading Michael-Scott Earle’s Tamer and Star Justice series. Both feature an overpowered main character. And in reading these books I can’t help but think of characters such as Tarzan, Superman, and Conan. There’s something viscerally appealing about a character who will always be triumphant. Probably because we want to be triumphant.

Boring, I hear some of you say. No, not really. The excitement is in seeing how our hero beats the odds. And the odds are always against him. Just like we feel they are so very often against us.

Fiction is entertainment. I don’t want my books to give me the same world I wake up to every morning. To me, that’s boring.

The Overpowered Main Character: he’s who we really want to be.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

Conan image is from Lancer edition of the Conan stories.

Share This!

A couple weeks ago, I was talking with a friend and he mentioned that now that he was retired, he wanted to read the classics. His reason was he wanted to experience the great literature before he died.

I’ve been giving that conversation a think, mostly because I love to read and I too see the Grim Reaper lurking up ahead.

However, when I think about the classics of literature, one word comes to mind: boring. But perhaps that is unfair. After all, what classics are we talking about?

Are we referencing Shakespeare and Milton? The Divine Comedy and Le Morte d’Arthur? War and Peace? Faust? Trollope? Thackeray?

Or are we talking about Riders of the Purple Sage? Dracula? Carmilla? Sherlock Holmes? Poe?

But before we go further, just what is a classic anyway?

Merriam-Webster defines a classic as: “serving as a standard of excellence: of recognized value”. However, that definition begs the questions: Who’s setting the standard? What is the standard they’ve set? And to whom is it of value?

In other words, at the end of the day, classic literature is merely the result of someone’s opinion.

The classics are usually defined as those books generally considered to be great literature. Works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Proust, Conrad, and the like. Books that academia has decreed to be great literature. And books that, generally speaking, few people today have read outside of professors making them read them.

And while a bunch of dry and dusty academics are certainly entitled to their opinions, I’m rather fond of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s position:

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

Notice Burroughs’s first point: no fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. I like to think Shakespeare would agree with him. After all, Bill wasn’t writing great literature, he was writing to make a buck. And to do so, his plays had to entertain.

The point of any story is entertainment. Sure there may be a moral or lesson. But if the story doesn’t entertain — it’s an essay, not a story.

Burroughs goes on to note that if the story does in fact entertain and is clean, then it can be called good literature. Good literature is any story that entertains the reader and contains positive values.

To my mind, though, Burroughs’s most valuable point is the final sentence: The best literature is that which can form the habit of reading — in those who might not otherwise read anything.

That is a very powerful statement. The best literature is that which can turn non-readers into readers.

Quite honestly, I think reading Tarzan can make a reader out of a non-reader faster than can War and Peace.

For myself, I read fiction to be entertained. I read philosophy if I want great thoughts. And sad to say, I find the so called great classics boring. They don’t, in fact, entertain. Perhaps they did at one time, but for the most part they don’t today. IMO.

Burroughs valued reading over great literature. It was important to him that people read. That they wanted to read, hence his valuing of entertainment over greatness. And his valuing a book that turned a non-reader into a reader, over one that didn’t.

And being a reader, I think Burroughs was right in his valuation.

I’d much rather read a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs over anything by Thackeray, Dreiser, Tolstoy, or Dickens. They’re boring. Burroughs is exciting.

If you want to read the so called classics, go ahead. As for me, I’ll take the likes of Robert E Howard, Seabury Quinn, H. Rider Haggard, and Cordwainer Smith. Or the works of small press and indie authors such as William Meikle, RH Hale, Richard Schwindt, Andy Graham, Brian Fatah Steele, Caleb Pirtle III, or Crispian Thurlborn. They write the best literature.

Good literature is fiction that entertains. The best literature is that which turns a non-reader into a reader. And for any author to pen a book or story that can so move a non-reader to become a reader, that author has done a great thing to improve all of humanity.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

Tag: fiction as entertainment

The Overpowered MC

The Best Literature