Cheap Heroism and Villainry

Bovodar breaks his chains to fight for his life in the castle of Valemod, the Polar Bear King.

The following comes from a blog post titled, If You're Worried About Story:

I don't believe in either cheap heroism or cheap villainry, as both are the product of mediocre writers with insufficient imagination. While I would consider Captain Europa to be a villain and the Global Justice Initiative to be evil, he most certainly does not.

Nor do I believe that my favored side must always win. After all, the ultimate heroism is self-sacrificial, and I am not even remotely hesitant to kill off even my favorite characters if the story's logic demands it. (The fact that this also helps solve the fatal perspective-character-inflation problem is merely a fortunate side-effect.) Nor do I ever indulge in the storytelling fraud that is so often present in Martin, Marvel, and DC stories; there are few literary devices for which I have more contempt than "bringing back" an obviously dead character. It's not only lame and fake drama, it is unnecessary for the sufficiently skilled writer.

 I also don't believe my favored side should win.  And yes, I'm also willing to kill off my characters for the same reasons as this author outlines.

As for what he calls "cheap heroism or cheap villainry," sometimes there simply is a bad guy and a good guy.  Beowulf vs Grendel, Arthur vs Mordred, Aragorn vs Sauron, Kirk vs Khan.  It's a common dynamic.  I will grant that complex characters make for very interesting stories.

This latter quality--complex characters--I believe, is showing itself in my recent fiction writing.  Bovodar and the Dragons is turning out to be not as simple as Bovodar's first adventure.

Check out Bovodar and the Bears, available on Kindle.