What Makes a Hero?

This week we welcome one of our favorite authors, Mary Blayney, to talk about one of her favorite subjects: Heroes.

What fun to be asked to spend the day with the Rockville8. Not long ago I spent a weekend with most of them at a writers’ retreat that I hope is well on its way to becoming a tradition. In the course of our free-wheeling, food and drink aided discussions, I brought up the subject of heroes. I am going to enlarge on it here because it’s a favorite theme of mine. Thanks to the 8 for giving me a chance to share it with a wider audience.

First one very important caveat: for this exercise I use hero as a gender neutral term, with thanks to Keely for reminding me of that.

For romance writers heroes are our stock in trade. Because the happy ending, or at the least an uplifting one, is an essential element of our stories, the hero triumphs, almost always on more than one level.

Due to early exposure to Joseph Campbell’s HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES I’ve been thinking about my definition of a hero for years. After writing more than fifteen books and novella I’ve got it! What fun to open it up for further discussion here.

For me and my characters a hero has honor at the core of his being and is willing to give more than he can afford to give.

Every hero I have written accepts the burden of those two qualities. With gender neutrality in mind, I would say that Charlotte Parnell in TRAITOR’S KISS is the ultimate expression of those elements. Charlotte lost and then rediscovered her honor in a hard school. By the time we meet her Charlotte is willing to give up everything, including her identity, to right wrongs of which she has been a part. Her behavior in living her concept of honor does not ring true with her nineteenth century peers, but it is there as deep and sure as it is in the more conventional hero, Michael Garrett in LOVER’S KISS.

As disappointing as it is, I know not everyone has read my regency set romances published by Bantam or the novellas Berkley publishes. (But, hey, you can always check out the title at MaryBlayney.com)

With that in mind, let me give you some more widely known heroes in literature. Atticus Finch in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ranks high as does Sidney Carton in TALE OF TWO CITIES. My favorites are lesser known but worth the effort if their names do not ring a bell: Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith from the book CORDELIA’S HONOR by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Aral and Cordelia meet when they are on the opposite sides of a war set some time in the future. Their journey to a much challenged happily-ever-after is the epitome of honor and willingness to sacrifice. Indeed, it’s hard to decide whose sacrifice is greater. In fact Aral does sacrifice his honor for a greater good, but then Cordelia is willing to jeopardize hers to spend her life with the man she loves. Cordelia’s success at maintaining her honor is the theme of the second half of CORDELIA’S HONOR.

Cordelia and Aral’s journey brings them together for a lifetime that we, as readers, share through the journey of their son, Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. In the rest of the books in this series Miles struggles constantly with the same questions.

I would love to know what your definition of a hero is and if you have any suggestions for my list. How about someone loved by readers who does not exhibit those qualities? Both Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara come to mind. Is that why their love story fails? I think that’s the subject for another blog. If I’m invited again.

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You can find Mary's latest Novella, "The Other Side of the Coin" in the anthology The Other Side, out now.

The Magic Ring of Myth: The Stories We Tell and Why We Tell Them

“Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.”

~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Last weekend, I sat and watched Leap Year which had been newly released to DVD. Okay, so I didn’t just watch it once. I replayed it probably half a dozen times or more. As I studied Amy Adams’ and Matthew Goode’s unlikely courtship on the screen, I tried to figure out why I loved this story so much. Especially since critics had panned the film. The movie had a shelf-life of, what, three days on the big screen? Finally, it struck me late Sunday evening why I’d fallen in love with Leap Year. Something about the romantic comedy tapped into one of my Ur-Stories. These are those myths that are at the core of each story we read, listen to, watch . . . or write. They help us understand the random events of our lives.

I’d first heard of the Ur-Story last summer when mystery writer S. J. Rozan spoke on the topic at Seton Hill University. She addressed the stories that fiction writers tell. Not just the mystery, romance, fantasy, horror, or science fiction dramas you see played out between the pages of so many genre books these days, but the deeper myths that lie at the core of those stories. “Life is what it is; fiction tries to tell you what it’s about,” she said. “The Ur-Stories behind crime fiction, the myths on which it’s based, are two epic battles: between chaos and order, and between good and evil. . . . The stories that interest me, though--the pieces I lift out and present to you--are the ones where order is a mask for evil, where for good to prevail the world has to explode into chaos and not everyone finds a happy ending. That’s like life, and amazingly, it echoes the process itself; the writer’s job is to make order--fiction--out of life, which is chaos.”

What did Leap Year tell me about my own Ur-Stories? I still didn’t know. So I pulled out my copy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces to figure it out. How could I be so wrong about Leap Year? I loved this movie. It’s the modern-day self-actualized Cinderella who goes on a quest to an enchanted land to propose to her Prince Charming only to find she’s been mis-cast. She’s really more a Beauty who heals the Beast she finds along the way. And, well, Prince Charming doesn’t really love her. He loves the idea of her as Cinderella. Okay, these are archetypes I enjoy. Cinderella. Beauty and the Beast. But so what?

That’s when I stumbled across Campbell’s discussion on the monomyth and the role these myths play today. He says, “In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams. The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.” So this myth at the core of Leap Year spoke to me. It resonated with the private, secret myths I clutch close to myself as I journey through life. I explore these same messages of transformational love and healing, and enjoy using archetypes like Beauty and the Beast, the tortured dangerous hero, the feisty empowered heroine in my own writing. No big surprise then that I’d discovered such an affinity for Leap Year.

Does everyone do this? Seek out stories that affirm their core beliefs? Or is it just me? I started to look around at the people who surround me. Yes, they did it, too. It’s why I write romance novels and why my best friend reads fantasy. It’s why my eleven-year-old is drawn to the lyrics of Owl City’s Fireflies and my scientist father-in-law loves Asimov and old science fiction movies. We’re drawn to these myths like magnets to an invisible electro-magnetic field. You don’t have to look far to see the evidence. It’s there in the books we read, the music we listen to, the DVDs we watch, the fairy tales we tell our children, and the stories that we as writers write. So why are these myths so important? And how did they get there?

Myths capture our imagination. And without even trying, we seek them out. Myths help us order our world, manage chaos, and draw meaning from what appears to be random occurrences. We find kernels of truth in the myths that populate our lives. But what’s their ultimate purpose? Joseph Campbell says these myths help us cross difficult thresholds, allowing us to transform the way we think, both consciously and subconsciously. They help us arc and overcome the barriers in our own lives that hold us back that keep us mired in the muck. They’re the stories that remind us of our past and inform our future. They keep us from remaining static. They spur change. “It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward [to] counterac[t] those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back,” he says.

So where does that leave writers? Do we try to shape the myths at the core of our stories to get across a particular message? I’m not sure we can because our privately held myths have shaped us. Our stories rise from this magical spring of myth, whether we like it or not. We can’t help it. The words that spill out of our mouths when we speak and from our fingertips when we craft our stories are already part of our personal mythology. It’s individual truth made universal in our characters and novel themes. Writers are what Campbell calls the “artist-scientist: that curiously disinterested almost diabolic human phenomenon, beyond the normal bounds of social judgment, dedicated to the morals not of this time but of his art. He is the hero of the way of thought--single hearted, courageous, and full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.”

As writers and scholars of humanity, we need to understand the role of myth. How our past has shaped us. How myth draws an audience to a certain underlying story within a specific genre. If we can identify the story behind the story in our own work, we will better understand what rings true for our characters and their struggles. We can even begin to help our agents and editors know how to market our books. We’ll begin to piece together why Jane Q. Public loves a Regency-set marriage of convenience story while she stays far away from the roller coaster ride of modern-day suspense. But more than that, as writer-readers, when we begin to analyze what our literature says about our generation, we can tune our ears to the heart cry to which we’ve grown deaf. By reading popular fiction (mystery, thriller, suspense, romance, YA, science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels) and the lyrics of our modern-day poets, singer/songwriters, we can become adept at translating life chaos into orderly, saleable fiction.

So how does this help me understand why I loved Leap Year while no one else liked it? I understand the myths that have shaped me and I’m able to track my own personal journey as a writer. I see my overriding Ur-Story. My characters always experience a life-transforming love that makes them want to risk it all. They choose to leave behind their controlled comfort zone in order to grow and change. And because they risk it all, they always find their happy ending.

Does knowing this make me a better writer? I think so. Not everyone cares to reflect on life, to grow, or change--in real life or fiction. Change is hard. But I choose to be one of the heroes Campbell mentioned who believes that knowing the truth will set others (and me) free. So I will listen. I will hear the mythos of our generation as it echoes through our popular fiction because I care to know where we’ve been and where we’re headed. And as Mary Chapin Carpenter’s lyrics say so well, yes, each of our hearts does know the way. “It’s worth it all learning at last . . . The future begins with the past . . . We’ve traveled so far to be here.” Will you open your ears? What does your Ur-Story say to you? I think it matters. How about you?

We’ve Traveled So Far (excerpted)
by Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Age of Miracles

I found myself wondering today
Why do some go and some stay
Do each of our hearts know their way
Through valleys of sorrow and tears
Across oceans of longing and years
And the sound of it all in my ears

I traveled
I traveled so far
I traveled so far to be here

It’s worth it all learning at last
The future begins with the past
Step out of the shadow it casts
And let the sun shine on your shoes
Kick ‘em off in the rain if you choose
There’s nothing like nothing to lose

We traveled
We traveled so far
We traveled
We traveled
We traveled so farWe traveled so far to be here