Superstar Appeal

The storyline revolves around the protagonist, while the hero holds larger than life characteristics.  To fascinate readers and make them swoon over your lead character’s every gesture, develop heroic traits within your protagonist.  

Humanize your protagonist’s inner being.  Delve into his thoughts and understand his feelings.  Then, heighten dramatic impact by emphasizing his attributes.  Make them gigantic.  As long as you keep him grounded with down to earth qualities, don’t hold back on exaggerating his regular-guy strengths. 

Whereas the uneducated janitor in your apartment complex holds the door open for you and carries your groceries up the stairs, have your protagonist drop out of college to start a multi-billion dollar computer company and design chips that keep each room of his mansion at his heroine’s ideal body temperature.

Whether you open with the protagonist’s great deeds or her humble side, hint at her alter ego, her opposite characteristics within the beginning of Act I.  A passionate introduction to her current mindset provides a stepping stone for exposing her fantastical loveliness.  She might want to save all the deer in the world and begins by divorcing her husband of three months for going deer hunting with his pals. 

Readers consider themselves to be great people.  They contemplate their strengths and intellectual cleverness all day long, until they pick up your book and begin reading.  If they don’t meet a mirror image of their puffed up personas, readers feel disappointed in your story, disappointed in humanity, for being as pitiful as they really are.   Exaggerate positive qualities within your protagonist.  Turn him into a hero that rivals the attributes of that heroine who wrestles an alligator attempting to eat his ruan-away parrot.  Your readers bond with characters they believe are as superior as they are.

Heroic protagonists don’t have to be physically strong.  She might be the most compassionate woman at her church or gentlest creature who admits her weaknesses or dreamiest individual hoping for a better tomorrow, after 2012.  Prove that an ordinary person possesses extraordinary abilities.  Make your readers fall in love with themselves.