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Hellooo, everybody! Recently I took a poll asking which
tropes you'd like me to cover next, and we got a landslide vote. You guys want me to complain about
terrible heroes and heroines, and I gotta say, I'm right there with ya. Everyone knows I love
a good hero's journey, but some writers be fuckin shit up, so let's discuss. Before I get started,
I wanted to give a huge thank you to my all time favorite learning platform Skillshare who has
generously sponsored today's video. I've been working with Skillshare for a while now and I
have loved the process. They have been incredibly supportive of my platform and they have made it
so much easier for me to post regular content for you guys. Skillshare is an online learning
platform specifically designed for creators, that means designers, artists, writers, whatever! This
platform was designed for you. They have over 25,000 classes covering a range of topics.
I personally enjoy their classes on creative writing, business and marketing. However, they
also have classes on drawing, public speaking, web design, and so on. The last class I took on
Skillshare was ‘Writing Flash Fiction’ by fellow author and YouTuber Hanna Lee Kidder. I definitely
recommend checking it out, it was amazing and so informative. I also have a couple of classes
available on Skillshare. I've got one all about how to grow your author platform, and another
breaking down the book release process step by step. So if you're looking to build an audience,
or if you want to release your novel the right way, you should totally check it out. Skillshare
has got some goodies just for you, stick around until the end of this video to find out more.
First we've got some bitching to do. I’m breaking down the ten hero tropes that need to be killed
and burned to the ground. Cuz they suck. Number One (1): The hero with the dead wife. Everyone
knows about the woman in the refrigerator. Anyone with any taste, hates the woman in
the refrigerator. But this trope is so much more than that. There is an entire MC trope surrounding
a hero with a dead wife, and people keep writing about him over and over again. His wife died. It's
usually murder and the culprit is, you guessed it, his enemies. He becomes cold and hardened, jaded
to the point where he rarely if ever expresses any human emotion. But this is a good thing, because
emotionally unavailable men are like, so hot. Of course he's gonna fight the good fight against the
baddies. He'll probably accumulate a band of loyal skilled followers, because man, that one note dead
eyed bastard is cool, am I right? Along the way he'll screw lots of gorgeous women who are madly
in love with him, but he can never commit himself to them because remember, he's damaged goods. If
this character sounds familiar, it's because he is the lead in 50% of all action adventure stories,
and he needs to retire yesterday. Number Two (2): Wild red hair. Nowadays you can usually spot the
heroine of the story based on her wild red curly hair. You see, her hair is a metaphor, it's wild
because she's a free spirit, she can't be tamed. I don't know if you know this, but hair always
dictates personality. For example, my hair is brown cuz I'm a piece of shit. Next, her hair is
curly because someone with straight hair probably wrote her. This chick lives in mediaeval Europe
with zero access to styling balms, which means she probably looks like shit. Lastly, her hair is red
because it's unique, just like she is, along with every other heroine who has the same hair color
and personality as she does. But then when you see the author's face claims for her, it's gonna be
some hot blonde chick with bottle-red, because the natural redheads are too pale. Ew. Here's an idea:
if you don't like the way redheads look, give them a different hair color dummy. Number
Three (3): The grizzled, alcoholic, anti-hero. His life's hard. The road is tough and he is
not your goddamn hero, all right. You can tell by the whiskers on his face and the empty bottles of
alcohol in his dingy apartment. They're empty cuz he drank them, in case you didn't get that. He's
not a normal hero, he's a cool hero. Sometimes he’s even edgier than a five o'clock shadow and
Scotch neat. His Scotch is neat because everyone's heard of Scotch on the rocks, it’s too cliche. And
he’s not a cliche. Sometimes this anti-hero takes pills, snort cocaine, or even beats his wife. Cuz
nothing's more original than a white dude with an inferiority complex, who treats women like shit. I
wanna be just like him. So cool. Number Four (4): But I don't wanna be this impossibly cool thing. A
lot of times the hero faces an impossible dilemma, something that a normal person would struggle to
overcome. Maybe they discover abilities that come with a steep price. Usually their initial response
is to nope on out of there, which makes total sense. Then there are situations where the hero
is rewarded some impossibly cool thing: powers, magic, a royal birthright, a connection to the
gods! And their first response is, “No! It can't be true. I'm just a regular teenager. All I wanna
do is live a normal life.” No one wants to live a normal life. Unless you're a grown up in destitute
or in dire circumstances, normal is not going to be your goal. Give these powers some consequences
or else no one's gonna buy the hissy fit. Number Five (5): The princess who is bad at princessing.
She wants to be a good princess, the best princess the land has ever seen, but she's
just such a disaster! Her hair is never in the proper place, she's terrible at curtsying, and
these dresses are just too dang tight. “Aurora, you dirtied your gown yet again!” “But mamma,
I can't help it. I love riding horses so very much. “Horses aren't for princesses Aurora. You
should know that by now.” “But Mama, I love riding with the boys. I love the feeling of the wind in
my hair, and a strong powerful force between my legs.” “That sounded sexual.” “Pretended it
didn’t!” “My sweet daughter. You're a woman now. Every princess from every fictional kingdom in the
history of literature is expected to behave in the exact same manner. There's a status quo to uphold,
and for the sake of regurgitating tired plots, our author really needs you to suck at sipping
tea. Even though anyone with hands can do it.” “But mamma!” “Silence Aurora, you've disappointed
me for far too long!” Number Six (6): Femininity is for pussies. Like her last point, or heroine
isn't remotely feminine. But that's why she's our leading lady. She's not like other girls.
Her strength comes from her masculinity. She's one of the guys, girly stuff is for airheads. She’ll
remind you of that at least twice a chapter. I am completely fine with a female MC who is
not remotely feminine, but do we need to vilify femininity in order to validate her existence? A
lot of feminine conventions are tough as shit. You know what I see when I look at heels? Danger! This
ain’t just sexy, it's a goddamn weapon. Yeah, manicures are pretty, but with stiletto nails,
I could claw your face off, back up bitch. Femininity and weakness are not synonymous, stop
trying to make it happen, no one buys it. Number Seven (7): It's just a scratch. It's hard writing
action scenes in fiction because any injury sustained could potentially be fatal. This is
why so many writers have plot devices like healing magic or superstrength. It makes it so that you
can rough up your characters without them keeling over. Then tere are writers who cut off their
regular human character's arm and go, ‘whoopsie, bet that tickled.’ Then the character continues to
fight the battle. How? How are they not writhing on the ground in shock? How have they not passed
out from blood loss? I see this done with all kinds of injuries. Do you know how serious an
arrow wound is? Those things will fuck you up. Unless your character is immortal or magical,
I expect you to treat their serious injuries seriously. Number Eight (8): Save her from her
shitty boyfriend. Our hero is madly in love with the perfect woman. She's smart, and beautiful,
and so, so kind. But oh my god, her boyfriend is such a dick. Like we're talking cartoon level
douchebag. Clearly our hero has to save her from her awful relationship. How else will she get out
of it? Certainly not of her own volition. I hate this trope because no matter the circumstance it
makes the female love interest look so, so bad. Either she has no idea her boyfriend and asshole
in which case she is mind numbingly stupid, or she knows he's an asshole and she's perfectly fine
with it. You know who's happy to fuck an asshole, another asshole. It takes a true garbage human to
be attracted to someone who happily degrades other people right in front of them. Guess who's not in
love with your love interest? This lady. Number Nine (9): The useless warrior woman. I love a kick
ass female character, and even better, she doesn't need a man to save her. Well, except when she's in
danger, which is literally all the time. How the hell do you get off writing a soldier fighter,
or most commonly an assassin, who is so adamant that she needs no help at all, and yet,
never once proves it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she can't stumble from time to time,
the love interest can swoop in once or twice, I'm cool with it, it's swoony. But every goddamn
time? She was described as lethal. You're done goofed up there writer, cuz I'm not believing
any of that shit. And Number Ten (10): Fuck all the hoes. Our main guy slays all the baddies,
and bucks all the bitches. Of course he does. I'm not saying our hero can't get laid, but does he
have to put it in everything? At that point he's just asking for syphilis, and nine times out of
ten, the dude is a chauvinist and a womaniser. Wonderful. How insecure are these writers that
they need to live through a fictional character, getting his fictional dick, fictionally wet. The
only people who are impressed by this cliche are old eggshell ego men, and they're gonna die pretty
soon. Who are you gonna market these books to then? So that’s all I got for you today, if
you're writing heroes or heroines like this, stop it. I can't take it anymore. A huge thank you to
Skillshare for sponsoring this video. They have my back and I love them for it. If you're interested
in learning more about creative writing or the business end of publishing, I highly recommend
Skillshare. They're super cheap, an annual subscription is less than ten bucks a month, but
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