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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44088
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44088
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I think what you're trying to ask is, how do I have a main character who isn't given a bunch of nice things by the author just to make them stand out. How do you have a chracter who isn't given "wise thinking, good luck, a charm, in some cases special powers, too"?

To be sure, there are a lot of successful stories out there that have protagonists with special abilities. But this isn't always true. There are also a lot of stories where the main characters are perfectly ordinary, then are thrown into some extraordinary circumstances. Frodo and Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are two excellent examples of this kind of character. The Lord of the Rings is set in one of the most highly-developed and deeply magical settings in literary history, and yet Tolkien went out of his way to make his main protagonists hobbits, a race hand-crafted to be as mind-bendingly unadventurous and plain as possible. The result is that when Bilbo and Frodo are dragged into the world outside of the Shire, the simple lifestyle they're used to is contrasted against the dangerous and chaotic situations they keep on finding themselves in. And because they're such ordinary men, they consistently have to solve their problems with quick thinking, strength of character, and raw bravery, all of which they have to learn on the way. They don't get to rely on any special powers or unearned wisdom to get them out of danger.

Frodo and Bilbo do obtain the ring during their stories. But they don't start out with the ring as something core to their characters - it's something that comes into their lives during their adventures. And when it does, it complicates their stories and defines what happens to them. And everyone else around them on their journeys is dealing with equally as weighty responsibilities or magic. When you write a story, your main character will be thrown into some unique situations, whether they're ordinary protagonists or not. But done well with an ordinary main character, these situations could potentially happen to anyone in the story - they just happen to fall into the laps of the characters the reader is most invested in.

* * *

I'm also wondering if you've gotten burned out on Mary Sues in bad fiction and want to avoid writing Mary Sues yourself. A Mary Sue is a main character who the author is clearly in love with but is insufferable to the reader. These characters consistently have a few ugly traits:

- Mary Sues are always able to solve problems by using special powers or strength of character that they had at the beginning of the story. They're never forced to change because of or struggle with a problem.
- Mary Sues are always treated as being morally in the right, even when they do things that would be unacceptable from anyone else. For example, anyone they insult or get angry at is treated as though they deserved it, but anyone who responds in kind to the main character is treated as though they're out of line.
- With the above two problems, readers aren't going to have much of a reason to care about a Mary Sue character. Bad writers try to compensate for this by giving their characters tragic, edgy backstories.

That first point can be badly exacerbated giving a poorly-written character special powers or a good luck charm. But giving a unique character special powers does not automatically mean that they never run into a problem they can't solve without that power.

The Incredibles I and II provide some positive and negative examples of this. At the beginning of The Incredibles II, the main characters battle The Underminer but lose the fight and trash much of the city in the process. For anyone else in the story, this would have been treated as incompitent at best and the start of a slide into villainy at worst (a la Incrediboy's decent into becoming Syndrom). But the movie instead treats the Inredible family as having done their best and undeserving of the consequences that follow failure. This is a very mild case of a Mary Sue - The Incredibles II is a great movie at the end of the day. By Pixar's high standards, though, the way this doesn't quite sit right is one of the valid criticisms leveled against the film.

In contrast, the first movie still gives the family the exact same powers. But the core conflicts aren't about those powers. They're about Bob being torn between protecting his family and wanting to relive the good old days of openly being a superhero. This conflict cannot be directly addressed by the application of superpowers, so the characters have to deal with the core issues in other ways. It's not until Bob is willing to prioritize his family over playing hero that the main characters are able to work together as team well enough to defeat Syndrome.

If you're worried that you can't write a main character with unique gifts without making them fall flat, the solution is simple: Make sure that they encounter problems that can't be automatically solved with the abilities they had the start of their stories, and when they fail, make sure they face the consequences for those failures. As I discussed earlier, you don't have to give main characters special powers to make them successful characters. But you don't have to go out of your way to avoid giving them special powers, either.

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