Someone To Look Up To – Strength Overcome

Two weeks ago, I introduced the idea of the mentor, of this person who has advice and wisdom and skill to offer the hero, things that they give the main character purely to help them.

Last week, I discussed a variety of clichés concerning these folks, and ways to make our own mentors stand out from the crowd of bearded hermits (admittedly, it doesn’t take much to stand out from that crowd).

Today, I want to talk about an important relationship in your novels, one that ties those two things together in a powerful way: the mentor and the villain.

I’m not talking about the villain’s mentor (although they should technically have mentors, too, since literally everyone has at least one mentor in life… anyway), but rather the relation between the hero’s mentor and the hero’s villain.

You see, the mentor displays everything the hero could be. The mentor – after all – has the skills and wisdom that help equip the main character to overcome said villain. Without the mentor, the hero could not win. Therefore, the mentor is key to the hero’s plan, and therefore a key obstacle to the villain.

This relationship is easily seen in so many of today’s classic fantasy sagas, which is why I will primarily use them (as I have before) to display this, and make some observations.

Show Strength

When you read Lord of the Rings, you immediately see the power of Gandalf, even if the hobbits see mostly fireworks and mischief. Tolkien paints him as one of the most obvious mentors in the history of mentors. Sure, he’s a white-bearded old man, but he’s also shown as incredibly human in his weaknesses and incredibly human in his strengths. Without Gandalf, Frodo would never have survived, not to mention that he might have never left the Shire in the first place. Gandalf’s wisdoms helped them through all their trials, even when they were without him.

Gandalf’s power is shown most clearly in Moria, as he holds back the Balrog. This monstrous demon of past ages is halted by an old man with a staff and a sword.

That is power.

Before your readers believe that the mentor is actually worth the villain’s time, you have to show their strength and necessity. Show us how your Frodo can’t survive (or even START the adventure) your Gandalf. Give us every reason to care about this character.

Another great Tolkien mentor is Aragorn. Sure, we tend to consider this man an Ally, but I see him as more of a mentor. He cares for the Hobbits: he leads them, feeds them, trains them, guides them. Without Strider, they’d never have made it to Rivendell.

We see his power in healing, in fighting, and in leading. Aragorn’s power is shown clearly and without doubt.

When you create and show your mentor to the world, let us see their strength, as well as their weaknesses. Show us their imperfections along with their strength, so that they become very human, and very powerful.

Breaking Strength

The thing is… if the mentor is so powerful, the villain must be that much more powerful. To create a true villain, they have to be able to win. That means the villain has to beat the mentor, right?

There’s a common trend of showing this defeat before the villain then faces the hero, to show how out of place and weak the hero is.

In Lord of the Rings, the Balrog wins. This servant of the dark powers we’ve yet to face defeats the strongest member of the Fellowship. In Star Wars, Obi-wan is defeated by Darth Vader, the servant of the dark powers we’ve yet to face.

Writers like to do this in the darkest moments, showing the hero at their weakest and the villain at their strongest. It shows us how much the hero has to grow before they can even begin to have the slightest chance of winning.

While this is powerful (and I advocate it wholeheartedly), we find a lot of clichés here that are proliferated because of these stories. For instance, the most common character death (no statistic I can provide, but if you go out there and look, you’ll find this to be true) is that of the mentor. Everyone kills the mentor. It seems that killing the mentor is the only way people know to show this defeat.

The thing is… why is death the only way mentors can be defeated? That’s not very original of us, if we just accept the fact and kill off our mentors blindly because that’s the way everyone shows how powerful their villain is.

No.

Dare to be different.

If it’s cliché to kill the mentor (and it is), then how do we show the mentor’s defeat? I can think of several ways, which I’d like to share, if that’s all right:

Physical defeat. While killing the mentor fits in this category, there are also several other ways this can go: when the mentor has a physical talent they pass to the hero, show the mentor’s defeat in that physical talent. Whatever it is, the villain bests them at it.

Other forms of physical defeat include physical wounds, physical imprisonment, and physical weakness.

Mental defeat. An even better way to show the mentor’s defeat is to show the villain outsmarting them in some way. Mental defeat is much more powerful than physical defeat. Mental defeat leaves your mentor feeling powerless, in spite of their physical abilities and talents that they still possess in full measure. When the villain outthinks the mentor, it makes our main character look hopeless.

When the villain can mentally torture the mentor, it creates far more fear than physical pain. The truth is, people care a lot about their brains. They like having full possession of their mental capabilities. When a character loses that control, the reader loses it, too.

Emotional defeat. This is the most powerful and also the most difficult sort of defeat your characters can suffer. When the mentor is defeated emotionally, they aren’t sure if the goal is worth it anymore. It puts the themes and morals of the “good guys” at risk, on the line, at the brink. When the mentor questions what is right, the reader will, too. That’s the perfect place to have your reader. It’s the place where they are the most invested, the most vulnerable. It’s when you have the chance to show them that despite the questioning of those who we respect, the good is still good and the truth is still the truth.

In Conclusion…

Mentors are, as I’ve said before, excessively important characters. They drive your hero to greater heights, and they pull the reader along.

Done wrong, they’re cliché and flat and boring and we don’t care a bit about them when you destroy them.

Done right, and we weep right alongside the characters as they break down and question their own beliefs. Done right, mentors are powerful, powerful people.

Someone to Look Up To – Reversed Clichés

Last week, I discussed the importance of mentors, and what makes them different from other characters. Today, I’d like to further discuss such characters, but this time look at the cloud of stereotypes and clichés that follow these vital fellows.

Old-Man Wisdom

One of the most common clichés, the one that follows from some of the greatest sagas of our time, is that mentors have to be aged. More specifically, they have to be old white men with some sort of facial hair and a deep, voice and slow speech pattern.

While I have nothing against white males (I mean… I am one, so there’s that), this is a common stereotype that I feel stories suffer from. Here’s the deal: look at the mentors in your own life. How many of them are old men with large beards and a love of monologues? Myself, I can think of one mentor in my life (of dozens) that fits about half of that bill.

Here’s the deal: mentors don’t have to be old to be wise. You don’t need a hermit or an ancient wizard to find wisdom.

This idea can work, of course, as it’s been done in some of the best (arguably) stories in the history of writing. Look at Gandalf, at Dumbledore, at Obi-wan, at so many others who fit the “old man with a white beard” cliché. They work powerfully for their story because they started the cliché. They’re the reason the rest of us want to have that kind of mentor in our story and feel like it’s necessary for everything to work out.

Turns out, that’s not necessary at all.

The Normal Mentor – Humanness

Whatever you may think of The Hunger Games, Haymitch is one of the best mentors out there. Sure, he’s a white male, but he’s also human.

See, Haymitch has been through life. He’s experienced the things that the main character is about to go through. His unique experience as a human has equipped him to be a natural mentor to Katniss.

But it also turned him into a broken human being. A terribly, terribly human character.

To me, Haymitch expresses the true form of a mentor: mentors are humans who’ve made all the mistakes the main character tends to make. They’ve already messed up, so they know how to advise those about to make those same messes. They’re not super-human perfections who sit on a plane above the rest of us, they’re human.

Another good example of a human mentor is Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler (from a variety of Batman-related things). This is a man who’s seen a lot, and been through most of it. He knows how being human works, even when his employer does not. This insight allows him to give Bruce advice that saves him, many times.

Once again, however, mentors don’t have to follow the cliché of elderly men. Take George Macdonald’s The Wise Woman, for instance. In this short book, the mentor is a woman who has a great deal of advice and knowledge, for she’s lived a life of humanness. It gives her a power, and reveals a wonderful mentor.

We might also consider Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, where we find three mentors in the form of the Mrs. Whatsit, Which, and Who.

Looking At Reality

Consider the immense variety of your life. Look at how many mentors you have. Right now, I can pull out a dozen names without having to pause for more than a few seconds. Easily. I know I can think of more given time and a piece of paper to write down names so I don’t repeat myself by accident. I’m sure you can, too.

Mentors are all around us. Everywhere we go, every sphere of our lives, we have mentors. Those who have gone before us (sometimes they’re younger than we are, which may feel weird, but it’s true). What about characters? When you develop your characters, how many mentors do you give them?

A lot of the time, it seems like we give them one. One mentor, who can fulfill all their needs.

That, however, is not good at all. It’s not realistic, and it puts too much burden on one character. When Obi-wan is given all the responsibility to teach Luke and be his mentor in all areas of his life, it results in an all-powerful mentor who knows everything and a rather flat main character who only has dimension in areas where Obi-wan also has dimension.

Characters need more than one mentor. They need to be like Harry, who has Dumbledore for certain, but also Lupin and Hagrid and Hermione and Mrs. Weasley and so many others. Each character has many, many mentors. Sometimes, people are mentors to each other. Those relationships occasionally go both directions, and rarely does a relationship just go one way. The mentee has to have something to offer the mentor as well.

Clichés: A Short List

Before I end this, I’d like to offer a short list of clichés that reveal themselves in our writing quite often, and potentials for something different:

The old man. I’ve already beaten this one repeatedly, and I think it’s fairly obvious how to reverse this one: make the mentor not an old man. Simple enough. I mean, he can even still be a man.

Conveniently strong in all the ways the hero needs. I mentioned this last week, but a lot of mentors somehow happen to have talents that match the hero’s quest exactly. But what about all the other talents that mentors can have that aren’t exactly what the hero needs? We can find powerful contrast in stories where the hero has to come up with an original solution to a common problem because their mentor taught them something that’s hard to use to solve that problem.

Killed in the darkest moment by the villain. Not to spoil anything, but the three I used yesterday all fit this, and everyone seems to have decided that this needs to be a thing in every novel. The main problem is this: the mentor is supposedly the most masterful person your character knows, and they’re taken out. There’s nothing wrong with showing how the villain is more powerful than the main character through a defeat of the mentor, but why are mentors the easiest kills in novels? They should be the hardest for the villain, even if they’re the first.

But… what if we didn’t kill them at all? What if instead we show them defeated in some other way? Show their spirit broken in some other way.

Grumpy, belligerent drunkards. I realize I just used one of these exact clichés to talk about a fantastic mentor, but this is a cliché that worked for that situation, but not for many that people try. Haymitch was grumpy, belligerent, and drunk a lot. For his character, background, and situation, it totally makes sense and we pity him for it.

All those other drunk mentors who have no reason to be grumpy? I don’t understand them. I realize we want our mentors to be humans, but why does their one flaw always have to be a bottle of bourbon and a scowl? There are so many other possible flaws out there that make them more human than pulling at a cigar while swirling brandy.

I feel like mentors are beaten only by villains in the area of stereotypical, cliché actions. At least the hero has some variety. Mentors currently have two basic varieties, which is a real shame.

Let’s work to make that different. Will you join me?

Someone To Look Up To, Part 1 – Gaining Wisdom

 We’ve all got people in our lives that we look up to: parents, professors, adults who’ve invested in our lives since we were younger. These people – these mentors – invest so deeply in us that it’s hard to separate their advice and our daily actions. We look up to them and rely on them and trust that the advice they give is good.

Who are these people? They’re mentors. They’re all over our lives, and everyone seems to have at least one. Therefore, it would make sense to expect to see them in stories, right?

Of course, we’re all familiar with the idea of a mentor. If we’ve read a book or seen a movie, we’ve seen a mentor character. Classic examples include Obi-wan Kenobi from Star Wars, Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, and Dumbledore from Harry Potter. There are others, but these three give us good material to work off of.

In short, the mentor is a vital part to your story. Without them, you lose a bit of realism that your story desperately needs. I’d like to spend the next three Fridays talking about these powerful characters, and how to do them right and how to do them wrong.

The Vital Aspect

While all mentors should be different from each other (although in practice it seems they’re all very similar), there’s one aspect that they should all have: something to offer the protagonist. Look at the three I mentioned above: Obi-wan teaches Luke the beginnings of the force, Gandalf protects and guides and defends Frodo, while teaching him valuable lessons of mercy and trust, and Dumbledore basically shows Harry how to be the Boy Who Lived.

Mentors don’t have to be old men with white beards. The three I just gave you are the reasons why that prototype is a cliché now. They did it first, so we have to come up with our own ideas or suffer the mocking comparison. Mentors do, however, need a purpose. If they have nothing to offer their protagonist, they’re actually an Ally, for whom you can see my posts last September.

What is this that the mentor has to offer? Well, that depends on your story. Generally speaking, it’s some sort of advice, skill, or example. For Luke, he needed to know about the force (a skill). For Frodo, it was protection and knowledge (advice). And for Harry, it was all three.

What about your character? What does your protagonist need? For my characters in Agram Awakens, there are a variety of things they needed. For Bea, it was comfort, healing, and advice (provided by an elderly priest and his wife). For Deyu, it was a friend (provided by someone I can’t name because spoilers). Taynan needed skills and protection (provided by a villain, actually…), Gaream needed sage words of advice and calming (provided by his father), and Deng-el needed motivating words of encouragement (provided by his wife).

Notice how different these characters are. Many of them aren’t old men (Gaream’s father and the priest aside). In fact, many of them aren’t that much older than the protagonist (for instance, Deng-el’s wife is younger than he is). I’ve read a book (and can’t for the life of me remember the title) where the mentor was a young girl and the main character was a middle-aged man.

So what’s makes the mentor different from the ally? After all, an ally should have something to offer the protagonist as well, shouldn’t they? Well, yes. The difference is this: the protagonist cannot survive without the gift of the mentor. They can survive without the ally. It would be much more difficult and they’d have to work much harder, but they could do it in a pinch. The ally has their own story, after all, and their own goals. They just happen to be able to help the protagonist as well.

When a mentor enters the story, they become inextricable. Without them, your protagonist fails.

Creating a Worthwhile Wisdom

So. Our mentors need to be wise in some way. They have to be able to pass on this wisdom to the protagonist.

Cool.

Now what?

How do we decide what this wisdom is? We look to our protagonist, and we look to our mentor. What does the protagonist need? What is the mentor good at? Where those two things collide, that is where you find your wisdom.

However, you should never look just at the protagonist’s needs. When you do that, you end up with a flat mentor. Why? Because they become nothing more than a plot point. All characters should exist of their own right. The best way to ensure this is to develop your mentor separately from your protagonist. Never develop them with the protagonist in mind. Don’t make them a master at the sword just because your main character needs to be good at it. Make them a master at the sword because they spent thirty years in the army and have since been training new recruits. Make it an integral part of who they are before you make it what they pass on.

A Side-Note

This is something I wanted to address briefly before I finish this post. There’s this common trend in books for the protagonist to meet the mentor and/or the ally and/or the love interest during the book. Personally, I find this weak and distracting.

Why?

Because it takes time to form a mentor-mentee relationship. It takes months and months and years to form that kind of relationship. Not ten days riding horses together.

When a protagonist meets the mentor for the first time in the second chapter, then suddenly grows to trust and accept them as a mentor in t-minus 0.00002 seconds… it immediately stops feeling real to me. It’s not really a mentorship, it’s a thrown-headfirst-into-trust relationship, and those are rarely healthy in reality.

Anyway. That’s just a personal side-note that I thought might be helpful before I wrapped this thing up.

Mentors are powerful characters. They can sway the story one way or another. Without them, the protagonist fails. They fail miserably. But with them… with the help of the mentor, the protagonist and the story can fly.