I’m a new writer (about to go and do a uni course in September) and I must admit that I’ve found this post incedibly useful. I wasn’t looking for answers or anything like that but it’s helped me.

I’m writing a graphic novel at the moment and well this post has really helped me decide something, that I suppose is very important to the story. It revolves around a decision the protagonist has to make and I was really toying with whether I should do that or not.

Finally I’ve made up my mind, it’d odd how you can read something and then you just know what should happen.

Thanks!

Are you going to write more of these for 2010?

@ Kath – You might enjoy China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun, which has a main character who’s pretty and perfect and is known as the Chosen One, until about a quarter of the way through the book when she drops out of the story entirely and it turns out it was her less-than-perfect mate that was the hero all along

Noble and morally perfect protagonists annoy the hell out of me. You’re supposed to like them ’cause they always do what’s ‘right’ (or at least right from the point of view of white middle-class folk from a Christian culture) but you’re also supposed to continue loving them when their infallible rightness gets loads of undeserving people killed…

@ Aditya – Cheers for the review! As to the screenplay, the movie rights to Malice have been sold and there’s already a screenwriter working on it, I’m afraid.

@ Tara – Hmm. I may avoid that series, then. That kind of stuff makes me gnash my teeth. Like you say, how are you supposed to like a hero who you think is an utter idiot?

Every single bad event in the book is her fault. I don’t mean that she made a tough decision and had to face the consequences – that would be far too understandable. No, she just constantly and repeatedly makes ridiculously stupid decisions that even a child would see were wrong and then angsts about the problems it causes.

She has a super-powerful demon protector who gave up Hell itself for her? She leaves him. Her friend is in serious might-get-picked-off-at-any-moment trouble? She angsts and gets a massage. The Devil is prepared to tear the very flesh off her bones? She goes to him.

However, the supporting cast is far superior, and it is them who keep me coming back (even if the author decided to kill off my favourite one).

I’m an independent scriptwriter from India. Couldn’t manage to find any info regarding your agent so I figured this was as good a place as any to contact you. Just finished reading Malice and loved it. I’m interested in adapting it to a screenplay. Any thoughts on that? I’d love to get a dialogue going.

Cheers,

Aditya Wadhwani

If the protagonist doesn’t ever seem to do anything, or if you just don’t care about the outcome of their seemingly inevitable actions, it’s hard to get that sucked into the story.

I do hate it when there is a protagonist who is only there because he/she has to be. I’m a sucker for a horde of well-developed characters! Like Maliris, I loved Retribution Falls so much for this very reason.